Lisa Alva Wood, a teacher in the Los Angeles public schools, belonged to an array of corporate reform groups.
She belonged to Educators for Excellence and other corporate-sponsored groups.
She participated in an E4E video, along with other teachers, supporting a group that promotes high-stakes testing, evaluation of teachers by test scores, charter schools, etc., all in the name of “civil rights” and “excellence.”
She believed in their promises, she thought they were sincere in wanting the best for all students.
Then she listened in to a phone conversation and was stunned by what she heard.
She realized that she was part of a “team” that was working to protect John Deasy.
She realized that she did not share the goals of the larger group, which consisted of some 51 organizations.
And she quit.
Here is a sample of what she heard and why she quit:
Long story short, these folks made a huge showing outside the morning Board meeting, while 35,000 union members were busy serving the needs of our youth. It was a much needed wake-up call. I began to realize the extent of the ignorance and hubris that fuels many ed-reform decisions, as well as the extent of my own ignorance. The addition of businessmen and socialites to a board I sat on made sense suddenly, as did their posturing and pronouncements. If you’ve ever heard people mis-speaking about things you know intimately, or talking about you when they thought you weren’t listening, you know how pained I was and still am. I couldn’t speak then and have just found the words, now.
Some of the groups in the pro-Deasy rally – Students First, Green Dot, KIPP LA – were to be expected, although they have no business in LAUSD’s superintendent evaluation. Others made me gag in wonder – Goodwill of Southern California? Inner-City Struggle? LA Education Partnership? I thought we were friends!
They weren’t talking about me, personally, but they clearly saw themselves as supporting their hero, a hero whose arch-enemy is my union, UTLA. It was, and is, very difficult to understand why they need to draw a protective circle in the sand around John Deasy. (Speculation is rampant, but facts are hard to come by). The bottom line for me personally is that there are too many good people distracted by too many superfluous groups. The best place for an educator to protect and promote public education is the teachers’ union. Over time, for better or for worse, the union is the educators’ bastion and it is set up via a democratic process in which any member can participate. If UTLA needs to be more positive and professional, we need to make it that way ourselves, but that’s another story.
What do these people want, for our youth, really? School choice is a wonderful thing for those of us who actively choose – but we all have the sacred obligation to provide a quality public education for all children. This means I could get my own daughter into a magnet school by filling out the applications, kissing principal butt, following through with phone calls and then getting her to the bus stop at oh-dark-thirty; I did that. But I still have a very real obligation to the kids down the street to make sure that our neighborhood school is fully staffed and resourced, and functioning with district support.
Bravo!!!
I would just add that, in addition to Lisa’s work with various reform groups, Lisa is a strong supporter of UTLA, someone who has worked hard to increase participation and expand leadership opportunities within the union. She’s a tireless advocate for her students, schools, and quality public education for all. She has a very broad approach to engagement, so the E4E connection, while highly relevant here, certainly doesn’t define Lisa as I’ve known her over the past few years.
” But I still have a very real obligation to the kids down the street to make sure that our neighborhood school is fully staffed and resourced, and functioning with district support.”
This is the argument against parent choice. Sure, parents have choices, but their choices should not negatively impact their neighborhood.
Beautifully expressed. Lisa was fortunate to get that me wake up call and I am grateful she shared her findings. I’m not against iPads, but most districts have started pilot programs, not ordered hardware for an entire district. There was more than one fool in that pool of callers. Please keep us updated.
The bottom line is that all educators have a duty to themselves, their students and the future of a real democracy, to be informed and to participate as much as possible. There are many, many avenues in our unions — professional development, NBCT certification help, salary-point workshops, site-based meetings, area meetings… the list goes on and on. We ARE professionals, focused on our visions and missions. We’re not whirly-eyed chanting crazies whose only interest is a sinecure. If you aren’t comfortable with your local union, please seek out your state or national chapter – there are many satisfying opportunities to participate in growing your practice or creating policy for our profession. I’m happy to chat with any educator or community stakeholder about improving public education in meaningful ways. Really. Let’s have a workshop, make a film, write a grant… we can make a better future.
Lisa, you’re naive about the motives of certain so-called “corporate reform” groups. Their goal is to de-professionalize teaching. They abhor the notion of teaching being on a par with other educated, trained professions: doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.
No, instead they want to degrade teaching to where it’s no longer a “profession”, and instead is just a short-term occupation with very little training, pay, benefits, etc.. They want teaching to be more akin to a job in fast food, retail, janitorial, etc.
E4E, TeachPlus, Teachers for New Unionism, etc. are funded by people who want to do just that while putting on a facade of helping teachers “have a voice.” Those folks want to profit from a takeover of education, and they can’t do that if they have to pay teachers decent salaries, health benefits, retirement, pay for advanced degrees, years of experience, … or if they have to have smaller classes. Smaller classes means more teachers, and that means more money has to go that same line item in the budget for teachers.
They create phony educational “think tanks” who spit out bogus studies—with a pre-ordained outcomes—that show that university education is worthless, that years of experience are worthless, that smaller class sizes are worthless… and then cite all that bogus data in their op-eds.
Test-score-based evaluation is a way to fire higher-paid teachers, then weaken and bust the unions. Think of the unions as a citadel fortress surrounding the gold mine of a trillion-dollar publicly controlled enterprise. The unions are the only thing standing in the way of privatization and the all-out pillaging of the public commons that goes along with that.
That’s why you have this massive propaganda campaign to destroy the public’s faith and confidence in teachers and their unions… or to separate teachers from their unions… from WAITING FOR SUPERMAN… to… WON’T BACK DOWN… to endless magazine cover stories, newspaper articles… I recall some corporate shill saying, “On the one hand, you have individual teachers who are admirable, and on the other, you have teachers unions, which are a total menace.”
Hey, those individual teachers ARE the union! Within each union—local, state, national— there is a healthy democracy whose ultimate goals are always the well-being and educational outcomes of our students.
A couple years back, the L.A. Times chose “Teacher Appreciation Week” (!!!) to run a daily series on the most extreme cases of bad teachers on suspension and getting paid while not working. That’s not a coincidence.
On the other front, there is a systematic de-funding of traditional, unionized, public schools, so as to trigger “failure”—a failure cause by that initial de-funding—and then use that failure that they actually caused as justification for closing traditional public schools and replacing them with privately managed “charter schools” that they claim are still “public”, yet they are no longer accountable or transparent to the public via a democratically-elected school board, and do not educate the whole “public”.
These forces have openly stated, “First, let’s kill all the school boards”, and replace them with mayoral control. When such an attempt was ruled unconstitutional in Los Angeles, they then tried—with some initial success—to place corporate puppets on the board who would execute the same union-busting and privatization that would have occurred under a mayoral-controlled district.
These forces “buy” people and organizations—from politicians like L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa and countless governors to film makers like Davis Guggenheim to respected charities like the United Way to newspapers to TV networks… all of this to carry out the goal of ultimate privatization of public schools.
Lisa, I could go on, but I’ll finish by moving over a COMMENT from your own blog on E4E’s failed attempt to expand to Pasadena, written by David Berk:
(NOTE the part I put in ALL CAPS… this guy saw right through E4E like an X-ray machine…
keep these words in mine when you see their participation in the New York State/City “town hall” pushing Common Core, or out here releasing scientific polls claiming that the vast majority of teachers are just dying to have their evaluations, hiring/firing, and pay determined by students’ standardized test scores… and don’t believe the “multiple measures”/”it’s only 30% of the evaluation” canard that E4E tries to throw out at you to obfuscate this… in their evaluation, 30% = 100%):
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David Berk permalink
December 7, 2013 3:04 pm
DAVID BERK:
“I’m waiting eagerly to hear about your next steps, Lisa.
“Little side story for you. E4E did their pitch in Pasadena to Pasadena teachers at an event they held here in town.
“To my knowledge, every single teacher who attended their event rejected their pitch. What stuck in my brain were the words their reps used over and over and over again…’We want to help amplify teachers’ voices.’
“At the same time, they wanted all of us to sign their ‘pledge,’ which basically, was the complete Students First / DFER/ Eli Broad education manifesto. Pro school choice, anti-teachers’ rights, pro-test standardized test scores, etc., etc.
“It seems to me that if E4E were truly about amplifying teacher voices as opposed to the voices of their sponsors and leadership team, they would be about advancing teacher unionism, about admitting all comers whether they agreed with those in leadership or not.
“For me, it seemed that THEY WERE FAR MORE ABOUT USING TEACHERS AS AMPLIFICATIONS DEVICES FOR THE VOICES OF THEIR FUNDING SOURCES THAN THEY WERE ABOUT ADVANCING THE VOICES OF INDIVIDUAL TEACHERS AND CREATING INDIVIDUAL TEACHER LEADERS WITH THEIR OWN VOICES / HELPING TEACHERS FIND THEIR OWN PATH.
“Believe it or not, when I first started teaching, I didn’t like unions and I believed in standardized test scores. Then my opinions evolved quite a bit. 🙂
“From reading your blog, it seems you’re straddling two worlds I straddled when I took the anti-education-reform-establishment plunge.
” ‘Is this a case of irreconcilable differences?’
“For me it was. I’ll await to hear about if it’ll be the same way for you.”
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Seriously, Evan or Sidney, or Ama.. or whoever… how can Educators for Excellence credibly claim that they want an organization of teachers who are free to express and “amplify their voice”, then have a mandatory, filtering “pledge” for joining—one that insures that everyone in the group strictly adheres to the narrowest of privatizing, union-busting education policies… not to mention the most dubious of policies? And since anyone who disagrees with these policies is effectively barred by this “pledge”, there’s no one within the group to argue any opposing view.
That’s how a cult works.
That’s why you get those bogus astroturf circuses outside school board meetings, or at the mic within board meetings or within town halls.
Jack, well said. I have two thoughts.
First, I have been on numerous committees, both as a parent and as a teacher. It has been very rare that my voice and ideas have made an impact. Most of the time the decisions have been a done deal. Or our reports, which we have spent hours or even days preparing, are put in a pile with the others and filed away. I have been able to do something positive so rarely, I can remember each time.
Once I was attending an all day in service and the teachers were complaining that they didn’t have the equipment they needed – overhead projectors and tape players with head phones for their listening stations (this was 15 years ago). The reading teacher shared with the group that she had title funds for software, but the orders were due that day. Instead of completing the inservice, I got permission to spend those funds. I called downtown and was given clearance to buy hardware and supplies instead of software and to send the order form to them the following day. I had enough money to meet the teachers needs. It was a productive afternoon and I had made a difference. A rare opportunity.
Second, our union is strong. The BTF is led by Phil Rumore, now in his 70s, who fights and litigates and doesn’t settle. That’s why the Buffalo teachers don’t have a contract. That’s why the Buffalo teachers refused to sign the APPR agreement until the state made concessions. That’s why the BTF is at war with King (and he is fighting back). That’s why Rumore is hated by so many, including the Buffalo News. And the union members back him up. He gives me hope. He keeps the district from walking all over the teachers – but he can only do so much. Sometimes we have to bide our time. Sometimes our gestures can only be symbolic. Sometimes a finger in the dam is not enough to stop the torrent.
I entered teaching in 1957, taught in the segregated South, had to sign a Joseph McCarthy-inspired loyalty oath in order to teach. It included two legal size pages, each with two-columns listing “subversive” organizations. Had I ever been a member of any of these, I would have been branded a communist sympathizer and excluded from teaching. In the South, there were no unions to question this “presumed guilty” mentality and the witch hunts of that era, nor was there a forum for teachers to question the entrenched and unjust “separate but equal” doctrine of the day. Needless to say, I am older and wiser and believe that strong unions, if they are not corrupted by under-the-table deals and a single focus on money, are essential for this era. Great to see a new generation seeing some of the virtues of unions.