This Chicago teacher sees a sinister motive in the avalanche of hostility to teachers. Teachers were always considered admirable even though teaching was not well paid and not very prestigious. But these days, teachers have become “enemies,” who soak up money and do little work, who get “paid for breathing” and “tenure for life.” None of this is true. This teacher sees a dark side:
The teacher bashing was key to changing public perception about teachers because in order to squeeze money out of cash-strapped districts, you have to cut personnel. It certainly was unfair and hurt, but it was just a tactic in a larger war to privatize a public good.
This is about Rupert Murdoch’s Wireless Generation and Apple iPads delivering online tests 4 or more times a year to every child K-12 in Chicago. And re-selling student data to CPS to evaluate every teacher.
This is about a brutal teacher eval methodology based on junk science. It is imposed at the same time as tough common core tests that most believe children will do poorly on. And all to provide an excuse to fire roughly 6,000 CPS teachers and vastly increase class sizes.
This is about remaking the 3rd largest school district in the nation as a scalable market for Rupert Murdoch’s and Apple’s benefit. This is about hedge fund managers placing their bets on these companies getting huge contracts in the largest school districts — that is why they have flooded Chicago with tv and radio ads demonizing teachers.
And this is about Democrats raising billions of dollars in campaign funding.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Amen! Remeber that our business schools and economics departments teach that econmics is amoral: The market will always find the “right” answer given the available information. And business is all about maximizing shareholder profits. Therefore, corporate America grabs every opportunity to exploit new profit sources and has no moral barrier to its behavior.
Education, as Rupert Murdoch himself has claimed, is a 600-billion-dollar market waiting to be exploited. Following the logic of our business schools and economics departments, investors and industry have a huge incentive to capture that market–no holds barred. Anyone in their way is fair game.
Actually economists teach that markets sometimes find the correct price and allocate goods efficiently. Markets also fail under a variety of circumstances.
I agree that may be true when pressed, but I still suggest that most of the so-called neo-classical economists push the notion of market infallibility to the public and students. And much of the school reform movement has been based on the “let the market find the best education solution through competition” argument by politicians and pundits. But even so, I think it’s clear that much of the teacher bashing is about discrediting the public schools in order to replace them with for-profit charters.
I am not sure you have to press all that hard. The publication The Economist, for example, has long pushed for a carbon tax to address global warming.
I think that economists argue that families value the ability to choose a school that matches their needs and goals for their children and society will gain if children are matched with schools that better serve their needs.
I’m not sure how the carbon tax fit into this discussion. As for choice, your statement is a perfect example of the circular reasoning of most economists–Given a choice that offers a perfect solution, someone seeking perfect solution will benefit from that choice. In fact, your statement demonstrates my point that economists assume that the market will always find the optimal solution. When you face real markets that emphasize marketing to influence market choices, and consumer ignorance and uncertainty about their current and future needs, then your pat statement about choice is meaningless. And as you will learn from reading the posts here, the market is full of corporate marketing BS and outright lies, and the parents really don’t know what they want, need, and can actually afford.
A carbon tax addresses a market failure, in this case a negative externality.
I did not say anything about optimality of the choice, just that there is a potential gain if parents and students have the option. The public school system has long recognized this by allowing students to choose classes in high schools and, in some jurisdictions, allowing students to choose schools.
I would guess that you are against these choices as well. Do you have a curriculum in mind that all students will take or should teachers and administrators just decide what is best for each student?
In short, it is nothing more than a grand bank heist.
Here is more to this story:
Fox News’s Parent Company Has Contracts With Chicago Public Schools
from The Daily Change
“There’s one news outlet that has been very unsympathetic to the striking teachers and staff in Chicago, to say the least. Fox News has been blasting the Chicago Teachers Union since the strike began; host Greta Van Sustern proudly proclaimed that “CHILDREN LOSE!” on her blog as teachers began their actions.
But in its spree of teacher-bashing, there’s one very serious conflict of interest that Fox News has failed to disclose.
Let’s start in 2010. That’s when Fox News’s parent company, News Corporation, acquired the education technology company known called Wireless Generation by purchasing a 90 percent stake in the company. Soon afterwards, former New York City schools chief Joel Klein — who had a history of warring with unions — became head of the education division at News Corp.”
http://boldprogressives.org/exclusive-fox-newss-parent-company-has-contracts-with-chicago-public-schools/
If your intention is to privatize public resources or the Commons – which is the sole purpose of so-called education reform – then you must effectively neutralize those institutions and constituencies that would defend them.
So it is with corporate education reform: the Overclass knows that teacher’s unions, as self-financed working class organizations, are strategically placed to defend the public sector and public schools. Thus, the unrelenting scapegoating, demonization, slander and attacks. And the inevitable pushback, which we ‘re now thankfully seeing in Chicago, and which will hopefully encourage and embolden teachers everywhere to fight back.
And all other unions, public and private sector. Do not forget Caterpillar.
Read this well written post:
Why Do People Hate Teachers Unions? Because They Hate Teachers.
I was on our local school board for eight years and saw how the small incremental increases in Steps and COLA’s resulted in the loss of excellent teachers who were just starting out. It just broke my heart. School districts’ income across the country are taking hits from both federal and state sources and as we deal with loss of income, we need to be able to have the flexibility to evaluate and keep the teachers we need versus trying to make do with the teachers who are at the top of the seniority ladder (some are, of course, outstanding but it is not necessarily a good indicator of a “good teacher”).
I know that teachers don’t like to be evaluated because of all the political issues with administrators and the unfairness of the student demographics of their classes, so perhaps teachers and their union heads should get together and comeup with a fair way to evaluate their individual job performance.
Oh, sigh, here it is again – that stale old meme about how teachers refuse to be evaluated at all. But it’s hard to fault you for being uninformed, but then, it’s not like you would have heard any differently in the major media.
You were a school board member for eight years? That means you must have had some experience with negotiating teacher contracts at least indirectly. If you want young teachers to stay, then you put more money into early steps. That was a discussion I remember happening during one negotiation. The union recognized that the schedule had become weighted a little too heavily toward the veterans and agreed to a readjustment.
I also take exception to your implication that teachers are not evaluated. In what universe? If teachers get to the top of the salary schedule and are not good teachers, then the administration has not been doing its job. Teachers object to being evaluated based on student standardized test scores. The research overwhelmingly points to the unreliability of such data.
I don’t think the post is about evaluation as much as the inability of school boards to compete with other employer’s salary offers. That school board member would have liked to be able to offer a competitive counteroffer, but could not.
Teacher bashing isn’t really new, Ichabod Crane the timid schoolteacher afraid of his own shadow in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow has been around since the early 1800’s. I also experienced it in 1981-my first year of teaching. One of my students informed me she wanted to be a teacher and her mother, an attorney, told her she was too smart to be a teacher. The general public just doesn’t get it. Thank you for posting the Art Teacher’s essay on a different post, it reminded me of the really important “stuff” that happens in this profession.
This post says it all.
http://educationnext.org/what-the-chicago-strike-is-really-about/