Who is paying for and supporting the lawsuit claiming that due process for teachers harms the civil rights of students?
Until now, all we knew was that the case was bankrolled by a Silicon Valley entrepreneur named David Welch.
That much is true, but Welch also has an advisory board that includes Russlyn Ali, who served as an assistant secretary to Arne Duncan, now working for the supposedly liberal Education Trust; and even more disturbing, Ted Mitchell of NewSchools Venture Fund, who was nominated by President Obama to be the #2 official in the U.S. Department of Education. Also on the board is Ben Austin of Parent Revolution.
The anti-due process group, anti-union group is running a well-honed PR campaign. The California Teachers Association has decided not to compete in the PR war.
” Remarkably, this one-sided communications war has been initiated by a single person – Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch, the founder of the nonprofit organization Students Matter, which brought the suit – and provides a case study of what impact a single individual can have if he has the resources, or access to them, to take action based on his beliefs.
“California Teachers Association President Dean Vogel says his organization, representing more than 300,000 teachers, has no intention of trying to counteract what he described as a campaign funded by the bottomless pockets of the “billionaires boys club….”
“The organization is a relative newcomer to the California education policy landscape. The organization has no staff on its payroll, or even its own office. Instead it is run out of its communications firm’s office in Los Angeles. Its sole purpose, as described on its website, is “sponsoring impact litigation to promote access to quality public education. Welch’s net worth is unknown, although public reports assert that he receives more than $2 million in annual compensation from the Infinera Corporation, which he founded.
“For weeks leading to the opening of the trial on Jan. 27, media outlets have received a stream of emails and announcements about the pending proceedings.
“An email sent out on the weekend before the trial opened provided possible tweets – complete with scripts, hashtags and Twitter handles – with a half dozen to draw from. Here’s one: Let’s get back to basics, starting with a great teacher in every classroom! I support @Students_Matter #VergaraTrial
“Students Matter called a news conference a few days before the trial opened, and on opening day yet another news conference was held during the lunch break with all nine students who are listed in the suit as plaintiffs in the case, along with Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy who has testified on their behalf.
“On the morning the trial opened, Students Matter emails sent at 5 a.m. by the communications firms landed in media outlets’ inboxes. Before 8 a.m. that day a news release appeared on Yahoo News with the headline “California Students Get Their Day in Court: Groundbreaking Education Equality Trial Begins Today.”
Win or lose, the goal of the campaign seems to be to smear the union and teachers.
Is it surprising that a soon-to-be-confirmed high-level official in the Obama administration is part of the anti-teacher team?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Speaking of California, anyone want to venture a guess there is little “noise” coming from there on Common Core?
Because Silicon Valley and Hollywood control this state. Even the Catholic schools in CA have agreed to follow CC.
Barry O: shame on you
I am not the least bit surprised. I have known for the past 5 years that the Obama administration is the enemy of public school teachers and our unions. I hope that knowledge is becoming more widespread at this point although it is too late to take back the endorsements engineered by Weingarten and Van Roekel. They have much to answer for to the rank and file.
I refused to support him on this issue alone.
The agendas and arguments in this case are pretty straightforward. Teachers are considerably more credible advocates for low-income children than the Students Matter team: http://34justice.com/2014/01/28/vergara-v-california-the-agendas-the-facts-and-recommendations-for-california-law/.
Look at this coverage by PBS! Argh! http://video.pbs.org/video/2365173174/
A thoroughly disgusting interview with Deasey. This PBS broadcast is out of Orange Count,y not L.A. The anchor is very biased against the teachers union. The teachers are the union. The vast majority of us want union representation. Those who don’t want to be union members should refuse to take any raise UTLA negotiates and not seek union representation when they are unfairly accused of something. Of course they’re usually the ones who think it’ll never happen to them. As with any Broad Institute alumnus he abhors unions and plays a very good game of “divide and conquer”.
“Those who don’t want to be union members should refuse to take any raise UTLA negotiates and not seek union representation when they are unfairly accused of something.”
Exactly… like certain people who hate cops… until they need one, and suddenly they run to Daddy and beg for help.
In regards to divide and conquer, Mr. Deasy has met with Alex Caputo-Pearl and his Union Power slate in an unofficial capacity. Given Mr. Deasy’s well-known penchant for closed door deal making, what was discussed? Has the Union Power slate already made a deal with Deasy? This bodes ill for teachers especially those of us targeted for dismissal based upon false charges. Other irregularities indicate that the fix is definitely in so pay attention. There will be fire works but teachers will feel the effects of the bombs.
We must let our senators know we don’t want Ted Mitchell to be confirmed. He is a “deformer” from way back.
Someone should start the petition. Anyone out there a savvy petitioner?
Wow. Do they really hate us, or is it all to make a buck?
It like the Mob when they whack you, Michael: nothing personal, just business.
No Michael, they do not hate us. They only have disdain for educators and are convinced that a free market approach to running school districts not only will enrich their bottom line, but that they can use business models to produce the product of better students to fill the jobs they offer.
But get real folks…these plutocrats and Ayn Rand ideologues are in no way interested in inner city students, or students of any ilk….nor their effective or poor teachers. All they are interested in is to break the back of teachers’ unions which they see as the weakest unions in the country and thus the easiest to attack in the courts. Once they, and ALEC, can do away with teachers unions, remember this Vergara v. California Teachers Union, they will have the template to eradicate all American unions. Watch how this turns into a SCOTUS case…and then Alioto, Scalia, Rogers, Thomas, and Kennedy can proclaim as the prior court did with Citizens United, that unions are no longer allowed to represent workers in the United States.
This is far bigger that firing ineffectual teachers to protect the civil rights of students. Ted Olsen has his frying pan on high so as to burn out the union movement. The collective they have gathered while putting Welch in front, represents all the usual suspects…Waltons, Broad, Anshutz, Perrenchio, Petersen, Bloomberg…and others who all have the same agenda…kill all unions.
Ellen Lubic
I’m worried about them taking over vo-tech schools. Skilled trades are one of the few middle class jobs left in this country, and if the virulently anti-labor ed reform crowd get a hold of that training, they’ll all be making $10.10 an hour.
We already have a vo-tech charter in Ohio that is backed by an anti-labor group. They don’t even pretend to be “educators”. They exist to kill labor unions. It’s construction trades. They’re training cheap labor in the few remaining states that still have a union presence.
I really, really don’t want them moving into vocational ed. It’ll be race to the bottom in skilled trades, too.
Understand your point Chiara…However, vocational education is vital for a multitude of students. Electricians, plumbers, mechanics, nurses, etc., have the ability to earn a real living wage, often taking home more income than teachers, generally with far less responsibility and far less aggravation.
In California, our community colleges have had excellent voc ed programs, particularly in tech and medical areas, and early childhood ed, but much of this funding has been cut, and these two year colleges which used to be affordable for most, are now charging far more per unit with fewer classes available. The situation now is that transfer and other students too often cannot get an AA in two years, and are now taking more years to fulfill requirements. Obama promised repeatedly to alleviate this, but again, show us the money.
Ellen
To clarify, the case is Vergara v. California…and I was using poetic license to make the point of the attack on unions. Actually CTA is joined with the defense
Ellen.
“Welch did not respond to requests for an interview, but on the KQED Radio program on Forum last Friday, Ted Boutros, the plaintiffs’ co-counsel who has been a prominent figure in the lawsuit’s media campaign, said Welch “should be commended” for bringing the suit along with “some of the innovations from Silicon Valley” to the state’s public school system.
“People like David Welch and others who are trying to change the system, and go up against the powerful forces like the unions, are just trying to help students here,” he said “That is what this is about …This is not an attempt to take over the public schools and privatize them.”
Is there anyone on the planet still dumb enough to believe this claptrap about the sainted, powerless ed reformers up against the evil, all powerful unions?
Let’s see. The US Secretary of Education backs this lawsuit, along the with the US President who hired him, a former assistant secretary of education, a soon-to-be assistant secretary, two privatization lobbyists (one of whom worked for the Clinton administration) and a billionaire.
With all that, they are STILL spouting this nonsense about how courageous they are fighting “powerful forces like unions”.
The courage of these noble billionaires and revolving-door government hires going toe to toe against middle class teachers! It’s inspiring, it really is.
Chiara,
Ted Mitchell was nominated to be Undersecretary of Education, the #2 job in DOE. Higher up than asst sect
Thanks.
This is the newest Obama-Duncan hire:
“Jeff Bryant, a senior fellow with the Campaign for America’s Future, says it seems likely that Mitichell will “advocate for more federal promotion of online learning, ‘blended’ models of instruction, ‘adaptive learning’ systems, and public-private partnerships involving education technology.”
Hopefully he can join with the former NY chancellor and the former NJ education commissioner and the rest of the ed reform revolving door crowd to peddle over-priced tablets loaded up with commercial, cheap junk to students.
Total junk. It will be nice to see Obama take the goodbye trip on Air Force One in 2016. I really can’t stand how absolutely out of touch this man is with education. What a gigantic disappointment. Why would an end to tenure put “a great teacher in every classroom?” so dumb. I don’t know why teachers even show up for work any more.
“. . . an end to tenure. . . ”
AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!
K12 teachers DO NOT HAVE TENURE, some have Due Process Rights. There is a huge Grand Canyonesque gulf between the two concepts.
Please refrain from helping the edudeformers by not using the “T” word.
The notion that some teachers deserve more or less “Due Process Rights” is a joke.
What I don’t understand is why this lawsuit wasn’t thrown out right away. I don’t think it would have stood a chance of going to trial even a few years ago.
This is all part of the larger campaign to suppress teacher salaries. Bill Gates took the lead by arguing for larger class sizes and claiming that teacher experience and advanced degrees are meaningless and shouldn’t influence teacher pay.
The basic idea is to reduce the cost of education and thereby reduce taxes. Many of the popular “reforms” are directly at the corporate bottom line.
It turns out that tech moguls have been colluding to suppress their employees’ wages in order to enrich themselves. Like the “ed reformers,” they pay lip service to free market principles while they use their clout to rig the market.
This article reports on a class action suit brought by high tech workers against some Silicon Valley giants: http://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valleys-most-celebrated-ceos-conspired-to-drive-down-100000-tech-engineers-wages
The pattern of super rich people doing everything they can to reduce their own costs by suppressing the wages of others is unmistakable. It’s happening all over. This might be part of a deflationary cycle in the overall economy, or it might just be plain, unadulterated greed. To find out which it is, Google Eric Schmidt and check out some of his interviews. (By the way, Schmidt recommends world-class real estate as a good investment opportunity right now. He and his friends are buying land, big city condos, resort properties, etc.)
At some point these billionaire power mongers will have to be reined in. The problem is they’re really good at buying influence. A supposedly noble enterprise like National Public Radio is brought you by none other than the Waltons, George Lucas (also implicated in the story), the Joyce Foundation, and many others unfriendly to public education (including Eric Schmidt himself).
You make excellent points Randall. By killing off the teachers’ unions and doing away with due process and any collective bargaining, teachers salaries are doomed. Implanting then of TFA kids at poverty level wages will be a final coffin nail for the profession of education.
Ellen Lubic
The oligarchs and their sycophants and toadies will not rest until they have absolute, unilateral authority to make whatever decisions they wish to make about the lives of others.
And who is arguing that an attack on public school teachers is an attack on public school students therefore making those who attack teachers as “those attacking Civil Rights of students”… How about those who have no credentials in education being allowed to make pseudo education policy. Why are they not responsible for infringing on the Civil Rights of a nation of students attending public school? Why are they not put to the mat over reinvigorating segregationist causing policy? Ignoring poverty? Teachers have been shouting loudly and clearly for a long time against this heinous imbalance of democracy. So why are the powers that be not heeding to the WILL OF THE PEOPLE? Perhaps the education fight lies in proverbially “cutting off the head of the monster” … reversing some very dangerous precedent-setting policy over campaign finance which basically has allowed the corporate world to upset the very checks and balances of democracy by tying campaign funding to big business! Politicians need to be beholden to PEOPLE not a minority of business people controlling corporations.
So maybe someone can help me with this, because I’m not an educator.
The ed reformer refrain is that class size doesn’t matter and they’re replacing teachers with screens in Detroit and elsewhere.
This is a Arne Duncan in the WaPo promoting a DC charter school that has huge federal funding and brings in tutors:
“That one-on-one and small-group attention makes a big difference, Garner said, especially when class sizes are larger than one teacher can manage alone. “Having that extra body just really, really helps,” she said.
City Year volunteers have worked at Stanton for the past six years, but this year, the organization was able to increase the number of members by at least 50 percent, to 18, with a grant from the U.S. Education Department and the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency that oversees AmeriCorps.”
I know the tutors aren’t teachers, but isn’t this just “small class sizes” by another route? One that doesn’t include hiring extra teachers?
I thought they just told us class size doesn’t matter? All they’re doing is taking the kids who need extra help out for tutoring thus leaving a smaller class size for everyone else.
Does anything these people say make sense on even the most basic level? It’s literally just words. It has no ordinary meaning 🙂
So we need to stop sitting around dissecting the insanity of these actions and activate our own program to defend public education. It’s not surprising just disappointing that Obama is anti-public ed but we have to go on and do our own thing whatever that will be. Sunshining the backers of these anti-teacher laws will help. Maybe when parents realize that big, corporate, privateers are not interested in the education of their children as much as their teacher, they will refuse to participate in these programs and actions. The greatest threat to our students is not the teacher but the utilization of the students by these corporations to make money for them, not the public.
Welch – another so called “expert” in education who knows what’s needed in education. Look into his background and credentials – engineering, business; no expertise in education beyond his having attended school and having children. Just another example of someone with money and position who forces his ideas on others.
I am both a parent and a veteran public school teacher and a public school graduate.
I have witnessed the problem this case targets. For years I have seen classrooms without a permanent teacher rotate sub after sub after sub. I have seen classes divided between the other classrooms for days and days. I have seen classrooms where teachers were out for months year after year after year.
In some schools districts are hiring people without training to be teachers.
My conclusion is that the needs of the adults, the unions and politicos supercede the needs of the students.
Students need to be protected, their rights need to be concretely addressed.
Currently their needs are minimized.