A new reader has joined our discussion and is looking for answers to important questions. I assured this reader that we have explored these topics in some depth; that we know that the purpose of reform is to eliminate unions; to get rid of tenure; to cut the budget for schools; and to privatize the greatest extent possible, with profits where possible for smart investors in “reform.”
I invite the new reader to hang out with us and join our discussion.
Any advice for the new member of our discussion group?
| Please forgive me if I am pulling this conversation back to farmed-out ground (I’m new); but is it fair to say that the gist of the corporate-backed educational “reform” movements today is generating cheaper teachers?This is how the equation boils down for me (a public school teacher). As I’ve been trained to show my work, my thinking is that the greatest “reform” that privatization and charter school movements bring is the elimination of union contracts. And that the primary consequence of eliminating unions in any field is lower labor costs.If the above argument holds water, is it acceptable to eliminate the obfuscating phrase “educational reform movement ” and replace it with the clearer “reducing educator salary” movement? Or, more simply, the “labor-busting” movement? Or the “cheapness” movement?In a similar vein, I am wondering if Dr. Ravitch and others have exposed the cant behind the argument that problems with tenure stem from unions. There don’t seem to be many general-public sources pointing out that no one from a public teacher’s union awards tenure to teachers. Every single public decision to grant tenure is made by an elected school board, advised by its appointed educational managers. If the nation’s schools are saddled with incompetent tenured teachers, the blame falls on leadership and management, does it not? From all the complaints being voiced about tenure that outsiders — many from the world of corporate management — it seems pretty clear to me that the nations educational managers apparently couldn’t recognize an incompetent teacher if they got hit with a hammer by one of them. What is eliminating tenure going to help this group of apparently bumbling crop of managers transform into brilliant predictors of pedagogy? At least tenure forces educational decision-makers to live with the consequences of their incompetence. Lifting the pressure of having to evaluate their teachers in three years and educational managers will be even less accountable for their bad decisions. In the world of corporate management, weakening the chains of accountability is an insane act — something that you would think the corporate nabobs nattering about our schools would understand. Unless they absolutely do understand what they are saying is absurd but don’t care, since the real goal isn’t improving our schools at all. |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
For profit charter schools are clearly interested in hiring the cheapest teachers possible. It lowers costs and rewards shareholders who want high profit. Another cost savings: like the Japanese automakers in the late 60s and early 70s, charter schools is the fact that they do not have any legacy costs. A new charter school doesn’t have a backlog of pensions to pay, doesn’t have a health insurance or unemployment history (a history of costs in these areas tends to increase the budget), and– in many cases– doesn’t have to participate in the State pension system. Conservatives have jumped on unionization as the primary driver, and to an extent union contracts DO define these benefits. But in the 50s and 60s, when the original teacher’s contracts were negotiated, the private sector offered analogous compensation packages to their employees. You can’t blame unions for seeking compensation packages that mirrored those offered to higher payed private sector employees with similar education. You CAN question the shareholders decision to lower everyone’s compensation and job security to increase profit. See this essay for a more extended explanation: http://waynegersen.com/2011/12/15/broken-covenants/
I think the clearest name would be CorporateOwnershipMovement.com
This new reader is right on when saying that pay and benefits are ultimately granted by boards of education, and are not just due to unions. That is a very valid point. To be fair, though, you have to understand the realities that those boards face…politics, other outside influences, scarcity of resources to name a few. Like most things, the solution to all of this is simple to say but seemingly hard to actually accomplish…true collaboration! As long as boards, districts, unions, and others are competing with each other, we all lose.
Welcome to the debate!
I use the word privatization to describe the mass effort to dismantle our public schools You’re right, of course. One major goal is to lower teacher wages and benefits and increase turnover at public schools to the same high level charters experience because of charters untenable working conditions.
But it is all being pushed at a hyper speed with an amazing amount of money, coordination and control by foundations like the Gates, Broad and Walton, and by false “grass-roots groups” like DFER, SFER, Stand for Children and Stand First, because of the profit to be made.
The Common Core standards created a scalable, national marketplace for online tests, curriculum, and textbook. All because, supposedly, the US is falling far behind on PISA test scores.
[But those scores tell a different story when comparing apples to apples, i.e., ommitting the scores of our poorest children. Remember, the US leads industrialized nations in the percentage of children living in poverty — 22%. Finland, at the top in PISA scores, has 4% poverty because their government decided social safety nets and equality of educational opportunity were vital.]
At the back end, Murdoch’s corporation will sell back to districts and states mountains of student test scores and related data. Do you trust Murdoch with your child’s personal information? A committee in Parliament investigating his NewsCorp hacking scandal found Murdoch unfit to lead as CEO.
All eyes should be on Chicago now, where the teachers union is on strike and fighting all these forces in order to prevent the profession — and the children’s school day — from being sacrificed for profit. Everyone from Silicon Valley to hedge fund managers are keen to push technology into the schools in an untried fashion for their profit.
Also, you might be interested in this excellent article.
Outing ACT: Test-and-Punish Doesn’t Educate, but It’s Profitable for Testing Companies
http://truth-out.org/news/item/11361-outing-act-test-and-punish-doesnt-educate-but-is-profitable-for-testing-companies
Not sure this fits here, but…
Does anyone here have the power/ability to try some new research, in the name of educational reform? Maybe one of your hero superintendents would be interested.
It would require a school filled with good teachers who know how to work together. They would be required to participate in team building activities and learn to trust each other before the school year begins. This must be true of every teacher involved in this research. Teachers would be required to spend time getting to know their students. They would have to use a variety of techniques to teach their students, rather than depend on the dictates of an administrator. Two daily recesses, one at lunch and the other either in the morning or afternoon, would be required. Teachers would have to depend on their own observations, and collaboration with their teammates, rather than on data, to drive their instruction. Teachers would be required to schedule their days, in conjunction with their teammates, rather than expect an administrator to do it for them. Teachers would have to spend their days teaching, rather than testing, as they would be required to know the strengths and weaknesses of their students, without the constant use of data collection.They would be required to have common planning time, in which they would determine the best testing approaches for their group of students. Administrators would have to agree to allow students the help they need rather than determine who gets help according to how many open spaces there are. They would also be required, when asked, to co-teach with a teacher, in order to have a first hand understanding of what is going on in a given classroom. Parents of students would be required to attend parent teacher conferences, as well as meetings that will teach them how they can help their children become better learners. The success or failure of this research will be determined by the following: 1) teacher narratives of their observations, 2) student projects, including explaining in detail, what they have learned, 3) degree of parent participation, 4) degree of administrative support, 5) state required test scores. If this school is to be compared with others, all of these factors must be used in the comparison.
This research project is in draft form and would require teacher input, as one of its core beliefs is that those who best know the needs of the students are those who are closest to them, their trained teachers and their informed parents.
The “genius” of what happened in Wisconsin was that by cutting compensation and all-but-killing unions Scott Walker and the Republican legislators were able to cut spending while making (a mostly false) case that they had not cut programs and staffing and therefore quality. Further, by inflicting critical injuries on teacher unions they severely damaged the ability to resist top-down management and reforms, as well as a significant source of political action against their broader agenda, which includes privatization of many public services, among other things.
I would say that cutting spending and taxes is very high on their list, but it isn’t the only thing.
Killing the unions is a critical step in the overall game plan of privatizing public education.
Hi, New Reader!
I certainly hope you decide to stay with on our journey and join us in trying to preserve publication education (and make it truly better for all in the process).
As a member of a school board in southern Maine, the husband of a public school teacher, and one who is trying to fight the corporatist charter-voucher-virtual school movement, I hear a lot about teacher tenure and unions. Here are my thoughts and observations:
1. “Tenure”, at least as it works here in Maine (where it’s called “Continuing Contract”), is simply the presumption that a teacher will be given a contract to teach the following year. Un-tenured teachers must have their contracts reviewed each year. So, tenure is not a job guarantee; it’s only a presumption of contract renewal. This is not like tenure in higher academics.
2. If the budget is cut, or the principal or superintendent wants to fire a teacher (for good cause), tenure does not protect the teacher.
3. I would not put too much emphasis on school boards and legislators. School boards cannot hire or fire teachers; that’s what principals and superintendents do (at least here in Maine). Boards approve hirings and firings, but I haven’t seen them overrule a management hiring or firing decision yet. Boards certainly advise the superintendent of parental or public complaints about a teacher, but then it’s up to the superintendent to act. Legislators have no role in any of this.
4. I agree that the crux of the matter of quality lies with the superintendent as the highest-level manager of the school system. If they or the principals don’t have the courage to discipline and fire bad teachers, then the school board needs to find a new superintendent. But we also have to remember that it’s hard to fire someone, as I learned on a few occasions in corporate practice. Also, you can’t fire someone without having a good replacement in the wings. Sometimes, a school (or any business as well) can be stuck with mediocrity despite their best efforts at replacement. The New York Times wrote about this problem with respect to a school district that wanted to replace several principals, but couldn’t attract better replacements not too long ago.
5. I think the resentment of the unions stems from the perception that the unions use their collective bargaining power to force school boards to accept tenure. Boards and legislatures did not enact tenure on their own. I suspect that the idea behind tenure was to encourage teachers to stick out a probationary period by offering a seniority status that sounded very “academic”. In some ways I also suspect that’s backfired, since the term has very different implications between public grade schools and higher academia, and the public likely doesn’t understand the difference. Also, the public has very little understanding of unions; they only know the caricatures that the business-friendly press has been pushing for generations.
6. As for accountability, in my years working as a patent attorney at a number of law firms and bio-pharmaceutical companies in Silicon Valley in the ’90s and ’00s, I found that maintaining accountability was rarely important to managers. In fact, I came to see that real power in business organizations was defined by the ability to avoid accountability while taking rewards. Dilbert is a an eerily accurate picture of modern business culture.
My take on all of this has evolved into a multi-dimensional game. I think the current goal of most reformers is one or more of three things: (1) extend the reach of a profit-oriented business mentality into all aspects of life by taking over governmental functions; and (2) facilitate the expansion of religious and other “non-standard” forms of education by creating educational systems that use public funds to support such education. The drive behind both has strong philosophical grounds in the conservative movement that has grown since the end of the Second World War. The drive behind the first also reflects the greed of modern business, which wants to divert public tax money to their coffers.
No matter the motivation, what is also clear is that the reformers will say and do almost anything to get their way. I suspect they see unions in general, and teachers unions more specifically, as organized resistance that can summon financial and political clout to block the reform agenda; to that extent such resistance must be eliminated.
What can we do? First, we have to answer the tidal wave of editorials, op-ed pieces, marketing and other forms of propaganda that trumpet the canards of “choice”, “freedom”, “quality” and whatever else these charlatans peddle, with facts and explanations. Second, we have to demand that our representatives and union leaders start taking leadership roles in our communities. Too often I have found that the very people I expected to be resisting the reformers are ignorant or too cowardly to be effective. We need to make it clear to these people that they can be replace just as quickly as bad teachers for failing to do their jobs.
Finally, the teachers and board members have to assume a greater role as leaders. We need to push on the issues I just noted instead of bitching around the water cooler or yelling at the television screen. But we also need to consider the public’s perceptions of schools and teachers and start to act proactively to address their genuine concerns before they become political footballs. Too often I see and hear teachers brush off parent criticisms and complaints as just a lot of ignorant babble. Just remember that these folks vote, write letters to the editor, and donate time and money to political campaigns.
Welcome to all the newcomers who have finally been mobilized by this direct attack on teachers, one that they can now see and feel personally in their lives. It’s taken a while for things to get to this clear stage, though. Yes, the hostile corporate take-over of the public sector has been about you all along, but it is about so much more than you.
Killing unions is a critical step in destroying Thomas Jefferson’s hope, and our nation’s promise, of providing a free and equal education for all as a common mission. But the destruction of unions, and even the degradation of the teaching profession, aren’t the end goals of corporatization. Yes, they want the freedom to maximize their profit, but we teachers stand in their way for a different reason. We’re letting our nation and our people down if we narrow our goal to defending unions.
I see a pattern often on discussion sites, where one shill will put forward a crude defense of teacher union power, and then a partner will pick it up to turn it into a distraction. As workers, we teachers face some (not all) of the same threats as service workers, industrial workers, and farm workers; we should realize our right to unionization is exactly the same as theirs. So, let’s consciously expand the “we” who are under attack, and fight alongside all working people for our union rights and the human dignity of labor.
As teachers, though, we do have obligations that reach far above our role as defenders of economic justice for ourselves. We can use our unions to fight for educational justice in our nation, for all our people. Our dedication to the common good is part of the definition of our very profession. We can use unions to defend public education, or if necessary we can do it without them. The corporate reformists have made a mistake in thinking teachers can be politically marginalized by corrupting a few union leaders. They make the same mistake when they think the political power of workers is in the hands of our unions, and not the workers themselves.
Are there attorneys who actually specialize in representing teachers? Not the schools or the students but teachers? Our organizational legal rep has done more work with schools than teachers. I am still shocked by how few teachers belong to any organization at all! When they whine around the restroom-the only impromptu gathering spot since we have ONE for 14 teachers in two halls, I do ask if they belong to an organization and very few respond yes. Until the community sees that the educators are as separate from unions, school boards, districts and government as RN were from hospitals, Doctors and the healthcare industry, we will continue to be lumped in as players involved with all the bad decisions made that we are forced to implement. We need to be seen as professionals in our own right by parents and our communities. We finally have attorneys who specialize in environmental law, immigration law, consumer law, and intellectual property law. Every other profession I can think of has a known network of attorneys who specialize in the specifics of law related to that profession. Are there the same for educators? If so who are they? Seems knowing how the cases are going and reading them could give us some insight on what our rights and protections and “what an equally trained educator would do in the same circumstances” would help. The ACLU’s name is evoked often but their mission and focus is very different; looking at violations of constitutional rights compared to our rights as professionals. They do represent a teacher fired for religious or race issues but not because the superintendent hates outspoken teachers who disagree with policies. I have been reading books by Larry Ferlazzo and Alfie Kohn(PBIS isn’t working the way Louisiana forces us to apply it) and I wonder if my “union” should start hiring some of the trained and experienced Community Organizers Ferlazzo talks about?
You need to double check with your union. To my knowledge both major unions in Louisiana have lawyers who have background in education law. Who do you think helped, guided and filed the Act 1 and Act 2 lawsuits? It wasn’t a teacher. It was a lawyer(s) helping teachers representing the membership of their unions who did.