Arthur Goldstein is at his satirical best as he paints a darkly outrageous vision of the future, after the testing and privatization movement has finally achieved all its goals.
All the teachers have been fired (except for the Gates-funded “Educators for Excellence”), charter operators have taken over the New York City school system,, and Walmart happily trains all the students who couldn’t pass those rigorous new tests. And the new mayor eliminates term limits and elections.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think the goal is indeed to ensure the evaluation system is so unworkable and punitive that all teachers will be eliminated (except those that can successfully “game” the system) or we will have constant churn in the profession due to 80-90% turnover rates. Parents are blissfully ignorant but could be the sleeping beast that awakes. Certainly, neither the Democrats or Republicans are listening to the teachers. Sadly, this folly by our politicians will take years or a decade to repair in the classroom. I tell my kids run, don’t walk, from the teaching profession for what it is becoming.
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You said it duckmonkeyman. How long will people be able to “game” the system? That is all I listened to from so called educators and why I needed to run. I’m too ethical. And a very sad lesson for children!
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Let’s see . . . hmmm . . . what happens? The same thing that will happen when every school attains perfection and can no longer attain “Adequate Yearly Progress”!
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I think some of you are missing the point here.
Byzantine evaluation systems help with “churn”, yes, but they do something else. They enable administration to be the “good guy” and do “inadequate” teachers a BIG favor. When firing 90% of your teachers would make for an unworkable system, you can just take the ones you want to keep aside and tell them they can keep their jobs even though they don’t deserve them — if they’ll just sign off on a new kuttrayte kontrakt specifically designed for “developing” teachers who are willing to put in the extra work needed to “grow into professionals”.
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Contract? As in, union contract?
That’s so 20th century.
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Thank GOD for the Union contracts! Now, if we can only get the Unions to wake up and take active measures of resistance to the many frauds being perpetrated by the reformers!
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Bill,
Look at the actions of the AFT leadership in recent years – I’m not familiar enough with the machinations of the NEA to comment on it – and you’ll see it has enabled those frauds.
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I have my issues about the AFT leadership, having a huge fight with Melodie Peters, AFT-CT President about her lack of involvement in helping us resist and fight the reformers. Indeed, I have already stated that, should she lend AFT endorsement to Dannel Malloy in his reelection bid, I will withhold that portion of my union dues that goes to support AFT-CT.
That said, as a Union leader in my school, I have used the contract to help quite a few teachers that administration tried to harm. I would hate to forego the protections provided by our contract. The reformers want to see us lose our union supports and our contract benefits and protections. In fact, Stephen Adamowski tried unsuccessfully to negate district seniority in favor of school seniority while he was superintendent in Hartford. HFT won that fight.
I am no friend on AFT’s inaction in fighting for us; I am a huge friend of our local unions and the contracts they negotiate on our behalf.
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This is exactly why I supported Julie for UFT leadership and why I’m a fan of Karen Lewis.
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You got that right Michael!!! We are already seeing our contract violates…excessive paperwork (what a crock that clause is!!) and how lesson plans are implemented (that will be the first giveback!!).
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Bill,
Agreed.
My only point is that while the contract and people in the schools are being defended, we also need to expose the misleaders of our unions. They, and Weingarten foremost, are actively allowing our ability to defend colleagues to be destroyed.
Here in NYC, tenure has effectively been ended with a new evaluation system that our “leaders” won’t let the rank and file vote on. And so, as a distraction from that, they are calling for a sham demonstration on June twelfth for a new contract (we’ve been without one since 2009) when in fact the evaluation system effectively IS the new contract.
In 2005, Randi Weingarten started this process, negotiating a contract that eliminated seniority transfers, opening the door to the epidemic of school closings. Then, however, we at least got salary increases in exchange for selling off the contract.
This time, the union and its tough guy leader couldn’t even get a new contract and minuscule salary increase in exchange for selling us out on evaluations.
The contract is a (secular) sacred text for working people, but the misleaders of our unions are collaborating in its evisceration. Weingarten’s latest branding effort for this is “solutions driven unionism.”
A few more years of Weingarten/Mulgrew, and Gates-funded fifth columnist organizations like Educators for Excellence will be able to initiate decertification campaigns against the unions. After all, if the union has abandoned its members, and teacher churn (a major purpose of the new evaluations and so-called education reform in general) increases, why should young, temporary teachers pay over a thousand dollars a year in dues for no representation or protection?
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Michael,
I couldn’t agree with you more! Earlier this year, I met with Melodie Peters, AFT-CT President, about the need to proactively support the teachers at Garfield High who had the courage to stand up and resist NWEA by refusing to administer the tests. I also pointed out that we need to actively resist the so-called reformers in our state, such as Stephen Adamowski, Stepfan Pryor, Paul Vallas, etc. She became very angry with me and informed me that I was never to contact her again!
Our unions need to lead the fight instead of playing back-room politics. In CT, we are witnessing an active public relations campaign by the reformers, including television commercials, radio commercials, and newspaper ads supporting continued education reform. Our unions have remained silent about the destruction being waged by them. It is inexcusable!
So, instead of our complaining about our union leadership, what do we do about taking back control of our unions?
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Bill,
A deep, deep, dilemma for us all, but Karen Lewis and the CTU seem to be leading the way. She says that before the CORE slate was ever elected in Chicago, they started acting like the union, fulfilling a role the previous leadership had abdicated, that of defending teachers. That’s what alternative forces in the locals need to do: take on the job the elected officials abandoned, often having chosen instead to co-manage the rank and file.
I also think parents need education and support in helping their children resist the high stakes exams, which are the linchpin of the so-called education reform project.
There is an explicit effort to intimidate teachers from expressing their opinions about the tests, and to keep parents from opting their children out. These attempts at intimidation are signs of fear and vulnerability, not strength, since even if a significant minority opted-out, the testing regime would start to collapse.
I’ve come to the conclusion that parent and student resistance will hopefully open a breach that will revive teacher’s will to defend themselves collectively.
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As of this AM, the news from LAUSD is that the new Board, now including teacher Monica Ratliff, is considering as a first order of business, hiring back teachers. Sometimes things do work out but I will not hold my breath.
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Interesting read from 2008; Strategies for “successful” charter takeover:
http://educationnext.org/wave-of-the-future/
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No one is firing teachers..They are firing Testers..
I would say to the Testers…go open your own school..Become Teachers once again…show them the way it should be done….
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Helen Walton (Wal-mart)): “It’s not what you gather, but what you scatter that tells what kind of life you have lived.”
I guess she’s trying to scatter the ashes of public schools. Yes indeed, that will tell the kind of life she lead.
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