We are living in an era when the very idea of public education is under attack, as are teachers’ unions and the teaching profession. Let’s be clear: these attacks and the power amassed behind them are unprecedented in American history. Sure, there have always been critics of public schools, of teachers, and of unions. But never before has there been a serious and sustained effort to defund public education, to turn public money over to unaccountable private hands, and to weaken and eliminate collective bargaining wherever it still exists. And this effort is not only well-coordinated but funded by billionaires who have grown wealthy in a free market and can’t see any need for regulation or unions or public schools.
In the past, Democratic administrations and Democratic members of Congress could be counted on to support public education and to fight privatization. In the past, Democrats supported unions, which they saw as a dependable and significant part of their base.
This is no longer the case. Congress is about to pass legislation to expand funding of charter schools, despite the fact that they get no better results than public schools and despite the scandalous misuse of public funds by charter operators in many states.
The Obama administration strongly supports privatization via charters; one condition of Race to the Top was that states had to increase the number of charters. The administration is no friend of teachers or of teacher unions. Secretary Duncan applauded the lamentable Vergara decision, as he has applauded privatization and evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students. There are never too many tests for this administration. Although the President recently talked about the importance of unions, he has done nothing to support them when they are under attack. Former members of his administration are leading the war against teachers and their unions. Think Rahm Emanuel, who apparently wants to be known as the mayor who privatized Chicago and broke the teachers’ union. Or think Robert Gibbs, the former White House press secretary who is now leading the public relations campaign against teachers’ due process rights.
The National Education Association is meeting now in Denver at its annual conference. The American Federation of Teachers holds its annual convention in Los Angeles in another week or so. Both must take seriously the threat to the survival of public education: not only privatization but austerity and over-testing. These are not different threats. They are connected. Austerity and over-testing set public schools up to fail. They are precursors to privatization. They are intended to make public schools weak and to destroy public confidence in democratically controlled schools. What is needed at this hour is a strong, militant response to these attacks on teachers, public schools, and–where they exist–unions.
For sure, unions have their faults. But they are the only collective voice that teachers have. Now is the time to use that voice. The battle for the future of public education is not over. Supporters of public education must rally and stand together and elect a President in 2016 who supports public schools. This is a time to get informed, to organize, to strategize, and to mobilize. If you are not angry, you have not been paying attention.
It is now obvious that Democrats and this administration represent the corporatists, not the people. Dems and Repubs are one and the same on too many vital issues. None of these legislators can be trusted. It is all about greed and money.
Thanks Diane for keeping these issues in the forefront, and for focusing on the corrupt and activist SCOTUS decisions like Harris v. Quinn. The goal of both parties is to destroy unions in the United States, making collective bargaining for fair wages, for safe work environments, for universal health care, for child labor laws, all a thing of the past.
All four dissenters in Harris v. Quinn were appointed by Democrat Presidents: Obama appointed two of them.
Diane, I admire you so. How do you keep going, even when you’ve been ill with pneumonia and surgery!? I am starting to lose heart. I just awarded a scholarship on behalf of my deceased mom (an elementary and sp ed teacher) to a lovely young lady going into teaching and I felt guilty. I said, “Congratulations”, but thought “Good luck”. I’ve spent 46 years in education, 34 in public schools and the last 12 in higher ed, mostly supervising student teachers here in NY and they were in such pain this last year with the edTPA, I wanted to cry. I speak up whenever I can, at Cmsr. King hearings and legislative town meetings. I have done a few presentations, one even to the local Tea Party (not usually my “cup of tea”), but it keeps getting crazier and crazier.
Any and all advice would be appreciated! Thank-you for all you do on behalf of our children.
NOPE, teachers and teacher’s unions have NO friends in this administration. But NEA sure rushed to endorse Obama for his second term. How did THAT work out for you, NEA?
but what’s the alternative? the repubs? LOL
Not necessarily, but NEA could have and should have demanded some changes in return for their endorsement. The end of RTTT for example, or getting rid of Arne Duncan.
It’s not Duncan. Obama is a big supporter of charters. Duncan is merely Obama’s mouthpiece.
Not only did they endorse Obama for a second term, they did that endorsement in 2011, sixteen months before the election.
I am in a meeting in Denver at this time and we are hearing from Executive NEA members and potential members. I do not see the type of person we need at this most critical time. Maybe I will be proven wrong. I hope so. Most teachers just want to teach and do not want to get involved in the politics and mud throwing! As a group, we are excellent at preaching to the choir, but our voice is seldom heard outside in the Real World. Maybe our only option is too create our own national media such as a TV/cable station and/or Online Newspaper.
I honestly don’t care for any of the NEA people I’ve met lately. They don’t inspire me, they don’t speak up to help the teaching profession. I’m not even happy with my state leadership at this moment. They should be out actively defending teachers and public schools, but instead they seem to be trying to suck up to the monied elite. Don’t want to make them mad…we should work together… Enough! This administration has shown how little it thinks of teachers and public education. NEA should be on the attack, bring up the issues with charters, showing how our underfunded schools are being asked to do more and more with less and less, form partnerships with parent groups and community groups (not the national PTA, thank you) across the country and make the politicians rue the day they pissed off teachers.
What K. Quinn said. That’s part of the reason I left NEA. That and the $3.00 a month surcharge for Common Core propaganda.
Maybe Barbara Madeloni’s interview with the EduShyster will give you hope! Barbara is the newly elected President of the Mass. Teachers Association, which is a local of the NEA.
“Madeloni: I think fighting is winning. In a union where members are truly engaged and active, we’re talking to one another about what’s happening, informing each other and making decisions about how we can fight back. The degree to which we’ve been told that our members are unwilling to be active is astonishing to me. If you alienate the membership by continually telling them that things are bad but they could be worse, so we’re going to get behind the bad thing, of course people aren’t going to be active. If we say to members—*We can be powerful. We can use our power. It’s going to be scary. It’s going to be hard. But history shows that we can do this,*—the reaction is completely different because you’re talking about things that really matter to them.”
http://edushyster.com/?p=5132
Exactly, exactly, exactly. And colleagues, we who are members of unions can work to set them on the right path. That begins by recognizing exactly what Diane so clearly explains right here. We cannot move forward unless we recognize the shape of the playing field, and the forces aligned against us.
As frustrating as the actions of our leaders sometimes can be, we who are lucky enough to be members of the AFT or NEA have a huge advantage over the unorganized teachers we soon could be among should the privatizers and union busters have their way. With all of us.
So we have to work inside our unions to change what needs to be changed inside them. To help them become the organizers and leaders of our side — of the side of the children and public education. Even when this means directly taking on those who used to seem to be our friends. Especially when it means that.
We have many many many potential allies. We have parents and students and all who believe in public education. And we have the power of our colleagues, armed with knowledge and experience no “expert” outsiders will ever have. And with the passion for our kids which we share with their parents.
We can do this. But only on the basis of an understanding of what it is we are fighting for, and who is fighting against us.
Immense gratitude to Diane Ravitch. Immense.
Well said Kipp. We members are the union and we must be the ones to make change from within as Kipp says. We have the power of our membership and we must use it wisely.
No, and neither do public schools and their students. Disgusting
Don’t know if you’ve seen this, but I think it’s a whole new (really aggressive) approach.
Tennessee will now actually replace existing public schools with charters from out of state. There’s not even the pretense of “choice” or “improving” existing public schools.
They’re simply replacing the public system with a privately-owned and operated system.
So how do they claim to be “agnostics” when they’re replacing existing public schools with brand new charter schools? There won’t be any rational basis to prefer the new charters over the old existing schools, because the new charter schools aren’t open yet.
I think they should drop the pretense. It’s deceptive. They’re not “ed reformers”. They’re people who promote and market charter schools. The public should know that when voting for or hiring an ed reformer.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-green-dot-expands-nationally-20140701-story.html?track=rss
Agreed, Diane. However, the rank and file have to hold the feet of union leadership to the fire. Public education, teachers and the unions have been falsely framed in the media, relentlessly for years, to very good effect with less than even an anemic response from the unions. Indeed, the leadership has “played ball” with those who are rigging the game and I have suspicion that Lenin was absolutely correct when he said:
“The functionaries of our political organizations and trade unions are corrupted — or rather tend to be corrupted — by the conditions of capitalism and betray a tendency to become bureaucrats, i.e., privileged persons divorced from the people and standing above the people.”
If we don’t coerce the leadership to remember what it means to be an activist union, an alien concept to all but the oldest teachers at this point, we are not going to win this war.
I agree with what you say but the cynic in me says that after the NEA convention this week in Denver and the AFT convention in LA in a couple of weeks nothing will change.
The NEA carefully controls who gets a voice and what ideas are allowed to be brought forward and there are plenty who will silence any dissenters and make sure their voices are never even raised on the floor. Remember how they handled the booing of Duncan? Gates? dissent against endorsing Obama?
Every email alert I get from the NEA is about passing legislation that has little to nothing to do with teaching, public schools, and protecting us from total destruction. You’ll be hard pressed to find an official statement or anything on the website that deals with reformy attacks.
The AFT is under the control of the Unity party and since they’ve all taken a loyalty oath to maintain that privilege they will also silence any critics and prevent dissent from being raised on the floor. It happened last year and the year before and the before that.
The response of the AFT was to create a lesson sharing website and to ignore all the reformy attacks altogether. Again, go to the website and good luck finding anything resembling leadership in how to deal with the day to day horror of teaching in a public school today.
Both unions supported, endorsed, or provided political cover for CCSS, VAM, Danielson & Marzano nonsense, and RTTT, publicly agreeing that due process was unfair and that “bad” teachers needed to be pushed out, trying to please their masters (and I don’t mean the rank and file).
Neither union is willing to risk fines and jail time to stand up for what is right. Both will die a slow, painful death of attrition.
I hope I’m very wrong. I hope that something and someone will arise to lead and give us hope. So far I don’t see it.
I will say that if we can steal Chicago’s and Massachusetts’ leadership then I take it all back. It will be interesting to see how much public acknowledgement these women will receive at the national conventions.
I am so saddened to see the party once so supportive of labor and unions fall deeper and deeper into the monied hands of those who wish to end any of the good deeds done over the past century by organized labor, which is all we are really talking about. Labor, organized.
Now they are firmly in the hands of Capital, organized.
A caveat though… Today I had a long talk with a former HS student and mentee, now AP in a Bronx High School who asked me for advice in dealing with teachers (especially the Union Rep) who embody all of the stereotypes those who rail against us scream about.
She is trying to do the right things (teacher written curricula, teacher collaboration and mentoring, project based learning,student mentoring, etc… and is being faced with …NO…way too often. So many people have been beaten down, they switch rather than fight, or simply do no more than the contract calls for.
We must work collaboratively, better, and harder at working with our own to change the behavior of those of us who give cause to those who attack us.
We SO need a second party. This one Corporatist Party just isn’t work out for the rest of us. Locally, in my state (New Mexico) we are getting progressives, who behave like Dems once did, elected to state government and many come from my local union, Albuquerque Teachers Federation. Of course we have a very popular Koch-funded governor. But the more legislators we send to the capitol from labor the harder it is to do us harm.
Posted this yesterday in response to the Harris ruling:
https://teacherbiz.wordpress.com/2014/06/30/teachers-now-more-than-ever-your-union-membership-matters/
Diane, remember when Rod Paige called the NEA a terrorist organization and Democrats rallied to defend the union and call for Paige’s resignation? I ask “what happened” in my post today at Salon http://bit.ly/1mhz785
Ah, you beat me to it. Congrats on the article. It really puts things into perspective. I’d like to see something on how money plays a role in all this. Where do well-healed “reformers” like Rahm Emanuel, Harold Ford, Jr., and the main funders of Democrats for Education Reform fit in?
They are all part of the technocratic neoliberal Ivy-league educated corporatist wing of the party. They believe themselves to be the smartest people in the room and love moving further and further to the right on every issue that traditionally defined the democratic party. They hate liberals and progressives as much as your average Fox viewing Tea Party member.
We are face with enormous political-economic problems, which Diane and the posters well explain. If unions are to survive the current onslaught from, seemingly, all directions, then there must be a massive organizing campaign to make the rank and file aware of the imminent threats to the very existence of public workers unions and what the very real implications of that loss are to each member, students, schools and communities,
Who, within the union leadership is willing to assume this burden? I shall not insult posters with reference to the current AFT and NEA leadership. There are pockets of hope. For example the ascendency of Karen Lewis to the head of the Chicago Teachers Union. There are stirrings in Newark and in Seattle. From these stirrings, we will see an a rebirth of organizing and political action.
It is time to call for a national organizing conference to articulate a strategy to rebuild teachers unions. AFT and NEA leadership has proved their lack of solidarity. There must be teachers across the country who are in communicate with each other.
If the current inertia is not overcome, then it is only a matter of time before teachers unions will be a figment of historical memory.
There’s a related article in Salon today. Jeff Bryant does a terrific job of analyzing the “new enemy” of teachers and public schools: http://www.salon.com/2014/07/01/worse_than_michelle_rhee_teachers_and_public_schools_have_a_shocking_new_enemy/
Lots of great insights into why Democrats have turned against teachers and why that’s a disaster in the making. Among his main points: economists now have a big influence on education policy, many Democrats have bought into the cult of efficiency, the so-called Left doesn’t understand the issues at all.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Eventually, the cult of efficiency spawned in economic think tanks persuaded advocates in the civil rights movement to join in “a motley alliance,” to use the words of University of Texas education professor Julian Vasquez-Heilig, to impose new teacher evaluation systems and a way of thinking about teachers as the chief engineers of students’ education destinies.
“This alliance has the support of the federal government and rich private foundations and venture capitalist that pay for the Vergara lawsuit and other efforts to attack teachers unions. Yet it has produced little if any progress in achieving education equity for children, despite the stated intent.
“What it is definitely producing, though, is an economic system geared toward treating teachers as replaceable parts in a manufacturing process in which their jobs become more expendable even as student achievement levels barely budge and the least served children in the system remain that way.”
I’m not a teacher or a union member (although I have been a union member and I am unapologetically pro-labor) and I think the story of the Obama Administration is bigger than anti-labor or anti-public schools.
They don’t defend any public services or entities. They seem to be really enamored of privatization, whether it’s abandoning the postal service or public schools or publicly-run Medicaid or public universities.
I’m shocked by it, because I don’t think President Obama ran on any of this, and it’s happening so fast under his watch (and sometimes direction) that I don’t think we’ll be able to reverse it.
We’re going to lose a big chunk of “public” and find it’s all gone “private”.
It’s so aggressive, too. They quite literally ordered that a Head Start program in Toledo be turned over to a for-profit provider. Marcy Kaptur was able to intervene but she was only able to negotiate a half-share of the program be returned to public control. Some for-profit outfit out of Pittsburgh is running the rest. They’re not “agnostics” on public v private. They prefer private.
There’s something really rapacious about all this.
I think about a city like Chicago and wonder how much property has gone from publicly-owned to privately-owned (but publicly-funded!). I wish someone would create a graphic representation of the actual tangible assets (facilities, etc.) changing hands from public to private. I think people would be shocked.
Please take heed! Teachers should not be under the illusion that without union protections, they will be paid livable incomes and receive benefits or pensions.
There are two models that are held dearly by corporate “reformers” which have been in place for some time, where teachers are largely non-unionized and terribly exploited. One model is the private sector PreK/child care programs, where most children ages 0-5 attend school and teachers are typically paid as hourly workers, around minimum wage, with no benefits or pensions.
The other model is higher education, where 70% of faculty are part time contingent workers, hired one term at a time, which could be anywhere from to a couple weeks to 16 weeks, depending on the school and program, with no benefits or pensions. When the pay is by class, schools fill up classes to maximum capacity. When the pay is per student, classes are smaller, but in both cases, the pay is low, unpredictable and teachers don’t know if they will get work from one term to the next. And they do not qualify for unemployment benefits if they are not assigned work.
I have spent my 45 year career working primarily in these two sectors of education, which are very profitable for “owners”. Despite all my college degrees, I have been personally fighting against becoming homeless now for the past three years and, as I reach retirement age this week, I realize this is a battle that I just cannot win.
Since I have no pension and have always been paid low wages –not enough money to get by on, let alone to save– the Social Security (SS) retirement benefit I will be paid is based on those low salaries and I will be expected to live on about $900 per month.
I could go live in a ghetto, because I can’t afford to continue living where I’ve been (renting) for the past 15 years, but I have no money to move. (Homeownership was never an option for me.) Anyway, that’s the kind of income that even poor people in the ghettos can’t survive on in my area.
The reality is that I’m in arrears on my rent due to a further decline in my already low income and a high increase in my rent. I have applied to many places but I’ve been unable to find additional work. SS won’t actually start paying me until mid-September, my job put limits on our income and wouldn’t give me work for July, and I don’t qualify for unemployment compensation. I won’t get paid my measly wage again until the end of August. My landlord will not wait to be paid, and anyway I won’t get paid enough money then to cover back rent. I have no more resources or anyone to turn to for help, and absolutely no one cares. So I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I will lose everything I own and be put out on the street and homeless before the fall. The only thing that could save my life now would be winning the lottery, but that is an intolerable hope.
The truth is that I could never afford to really stop working either, but SS has a limit on the amount of income I can earn. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. No one fully appreciates the “I’m living on a fixed income” cries, because the elderly are not revered in our society. No wonder the suicide rate for seniors is high.
As problematic as unions can be, not valuing the protections that unions provide workers is extremely short sighted.
Fight for your unions! Fight for your jobs! Fight for your schools! Fight for the children. Fight for yourselves, until you realize that you have no more will to fight in you anymore, like me.
I know it’s not much, but if will keep you in my thoughts and prayers. Keep posting.
Thank you, Worried. I appreciate your kindness, thoughts and prayers.
AFT is in the forefront of the privatizing movement. I have no hope.
At least the UFT spoke out against DFER back in 2010:
http://www.uft.org/feature-stories/who-are-democrats-education-reform
Maybe more AFT affiliates will stand up and start fighting back, like the Chicago Teachers Union did.
amen. this is exactly what is required. the only question is how to mobilize the rank and file and change the AFT NRA leadership.
It doesn’t help teachers when their national union leaders are in the back pockets of the ed reformers and don’t call out democrats for failing to support unions…..
At least Karen Lewis and Barbara Madeloni are willing to speak truth to power, in plain, unequivocal terms
Sadly it’s not just the union leaders. I’m afraid many of the delegates attending the big NEA Representative Assembly in Denver right now are focused more on getting drunk than getting militant. I know this is harsh, but I think it needs to be said. I’ll bet it’s a pitiful percentage of those at the RA who are reading this blog or otherwise arming themselves intellectually for the big war that is upon them. We need to sober up and get focused and start talking about infusing our members’ minds with a crash course in the successful labor movements of the early 20th century, and start planning visible street actions. Playing the inside game is not enough anymore.
You are correct they are in the back pockets. Last year, my district forced a pay cut upon its teachers. However, they allowed us to recover some of that money by completing online coursework that was Manzano based. This work involved answering a plethora of questions and watching an exorbitant amount of corporate based web videos. No lie, the work involved would take an intelligent individual at least 5 to 6 hours to complete. It also came with a nearly impossible deadline and time restrictions that were extremely unfeasible. In fact, you were only allowed to complete the work within a three hour window per day. Of course this was done on purpose to make sure that no teachers received any of the money that was stolen from them. I was one question away from completing the required work with an hour remaining until the deadline when the server coincidentally crashed (cough, cough). I was unable to log in for the remaining hour and thus I was denied part of the money which was flat out stolen from me. Coincidentally, the week after there were a few union reps in the teachers lounge trying to recruit new members. I spoke to one regarding my situation and she responded by saying “If you sign up right now we might be able to help you but I can’t guarantee a favorable outcome” What a joke! I emailed the superintendent directly and received a response from his secretary that basically read you are screwed and don’t email the superintendent anymore. Ask yourself how can the Union look out for you when they are so out of touch with the members they are supposed to represent? They receive two salaries and barely do any work at all while while we as educators are constantly dogged out year after year while an ever increasing amount of responsibilities are continuously forged upon us. The Union is full of individuals who have been let into the big boys club and they will never jeopardize their sweet gig in which they get paid handsomely for speaking up for what’s right and defending educators whom in many cases they view as serfs. Enough is enough! Drastic measures must be taken and it must start with the teachers. Quit the compromised entity parading around as a union and form your own. That way you eliminate the middle man and assure that your voices are really being heard and thus respected.
Diane, I’m so glad to see you support a more militant approach by the unions and their teachers. I hope you will do everything you can to convince Randi Weingarten and Dennis Van Roekel that it is time for real action and not slogans.
What policies, at a minimum, would make a presidential candidate acceptable wrt supporting public ed? In addition, what are the policies that would make the candidate ideal?
The President’s best friend, Marty Nesbitt, is in the charter business as is Penny Pritzker. Michelle’s brother was let go as basketball coach at the Lab Schools because the Union contract required an internal candidate to be considered first. The guy who replaced Craig filed a grievance and won. Craig’s replacement was a disaster. I think everybody around the Obamas were very upset about this because Craig was/is a great coach. Craig trained the Pritzker kids as their personal basketball coach.
Marty, Penny, and Michelle served on the same school board at Lab and faced a very powerful AFT local every three years in negotiations. Penny was appointed to the CPS Board and Marty and Penny began investing in the Noble Charter chain along with Bruce Rauner. Marty told me that teachers earn way too much money for what they do and do not deserve any respect because they are overpaid. The story here is that schools are a sure way to make a predictable buck. Everybody around Barack hates teacher unions. I was told by someone highly placed in the AFT that they have known this since day one.
“The President’s best friend, Marty Nesbitt, is in the charter business as is Penny Pritzker. Michelle’s brother was let go as basketball coach at the Lab Schools because the Union contract required an internal candidate to be considered first. The guy who replaced Craig filed a grievance and won. Craig’s replacement was a disaster. I think everybody around the Obamas were very upset about this because Craig was/is a great coach. Craig trained the Pritzker kids as their personal basketball coach.”
It’s freaking appalling how clubby and insular it is. Every public school in the country is affected by this small group of insiders and their personal opinions?
Wow. Tens of millions of kids are subject to the personal preferences of Penny Pritzker?
The keynoter for both conventions is Diane, in absentia.
I think this post hits the perfect note for leaders of both unions.
Diane earned much of her credibility by admitting she had been on a mistaken path. Courage, honest looking at that, moving on and now with 13,000,000 also listenting, thinking, supporting.
Are you there NEA and AFT leaders? You are being given a tutorial on what needs to be said NOW. Add the steps you will take to move toward a better place.
The AFT and NEA leaders are not only tone deaf, but they have cast their fate with the very groups that would destroy their constituencies. They are beyond redemption and only an upsurge of rank and file outrage, organization and political astuteness will rid us of th urren AFT and NEA leadership.
Laura,
“. . . now with 13,000,000 also listenting, thinking, supporting.”
No, there are not 13 million listening, thinking and supporting. That figure is of the number of hits to the site since its inception. Log on, log off, log on log off = two of those 13 million. You and I have probably accounted for tens of thousands of those hits.
That is not to diminish the growing numbers of new viewers but it is vital to be accurate in our postings.
Duane
When I talk to people in the union about Obama, the response is invariably, “He just gave a speech about this,” or, “Don’t forget what he said about that.” I’ve yet to hear a single union source speak about things either he or his BFFs actually did as an explanation for why we supported him term 2.
“What is needed at this hour is a strong, militant response to these attacks on teachers, public schools, and–where they exist–unions.”
I like that suggestion–especially the use of the word “militant”.
Fifty years ago blacks in Mississippi, in order to fight a racist Democratic Party sending an all-white delegation to the National Convention, organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Might it now be time to organize a National Freedom Democratic Party? Frankly, I don’t see what’s left to lose.
I don’t either.
When they abandon both labor and public schools, there’s not a whole lot of reasons for me to stick around.
I can’t imagine a country without publicly-run and owned schools. I think we’ll really, really regret losing them.
I can’t think of anything that has gone from privatized back to public. Once they’re gone, they’re gone for good.
“I can’t imagine a country without publicly-run and owned schools. I think we’ll really, really regret losing them.”
YES
YES
YES
Are you organizing it Jacman?
I would love for someone to predict the future of education like they did the housing market crash. If someone would just tell the truth, I wonder if teachers with 15 years or more stick around for the second half of their career?
Also, if I stay for the second round – and there is no second round…
Prediction of Ed Reform anyone? What will happen to REAL teachers?
Watching the CC on the local level made me furious. All of these public school people busting ass to put that program in, and there’s this constant DC/media chorus of how they suck and are “mediocre” and “self interested”.
It seemed like a really profound betrayal of people who entered into that huge task assuming “their leaders” were on their side.
They never let up, either. The anti-labor campaign started immediately after the last test subject finished their Common Core test.
I’ve seen from the beginning that this administration is the most anti-union admin since perhaps the Reagan administration. With regards to teachers specifically, there is no other president as hostile to us and our unions. Unfortunately, a big part of the blame for the collapse of the (teachers’) union movement comes directly from the teachers’ unions themselves. If they weren’t so blind to the harm being done by the party they feel most attached to they would have stood up to the creeping assaults. My own NEA affiliate’s president, PGCEA’s Ken Haines, even cut a video with our Superintendent promoting teacher evaluations based on student performance.
When union leadership collaborates with management in their attempt to crush teacher advocacy, we know we have more than just a Party problem.
It’s ^^^0^^^ time. NEA/AFT are WE going to engage?
Former Obama Administration staffer at the charter school conference:
“You should be very proud of the incredible progress this movement has made in just one generation.” Bruce Reed to crowd at #NCSC14
Have you ever once heard anything so positive uttered by anyone associated with the Obama Administration regarding public schools?
The bias is just incredible, and they’re all so deep in the bubble they don’t hear it.
I think it’s great they all leave that administration and immediately get a job in charter promotion. They never should have been employed in the public sector in the first place.
At least now we’re not paying them to undermine and denigrate our schools. Eli Broad is.
One of the most frightening aspect of the last ten years is not how labor has pummeled nearly to death, but how people aren’t even “employees” anymore.
They don’t even have that thin reed of legal protections (and it was pretty damn thin, I’ll tell you because no one is enforcing these laws).
It’s contract labor, they’re lowest of the low on the worker scale, and it was blue collar, but it’s now managers:
“With the announcement Monday that it has completed its acquisition of Seaton Corp., Tacoma-based TrueBlue has become the nation’s largest industrial staffing provider.
“It puts us over $2 billion,” said Stacey Burke, vice president of corporate communications.
With the acquisition, 2013 pro forma revenue for the company totals $2.3 billion, according to a release.
The Seaton acquisition allows TrueBlue – traditionally a provider of short-term, blue-collar personnel – to move into other staffing areas. The company can now provide a higher level “outsourced workforce management” and can offer recruits for “contingent” positions that might one day lead to permanent employment.
The company can also offer to provide a larger volume of recruits for a job, and will offer onsite workforce management to clients.
With the Seaton acquisition, TruBlue now operates new brands including PeopleScout, StudentScout, Staff Management – SMX and HRX.
“We can now offer a broader range of specialized solutions to help clients better manage their workforce,” stated TrueBlue CEO Steve Cooper in the release.”
So when all those managers and college educated people were cheering the demise of labor unions and the race to the bottom on wages and legal protections, did they realize the next tier to go was THEM? These are temps that are managers.
“That might one day lead to permanent employment”.
Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/06/30/3268725/trueblue-of-tacoma-finalizes-acquisition.html?sp=/99/261/#storylink=cpy
This post is alarming, manager positions filled by temps? In what fields? But maybe not such a surprise. In the 23 years taught, I have worked for two or three talented administrators – the rest – as my Brooklyn granddad would have said, “rimless cyphers.”
Exactly, and this is not just the future for education; it is already here, firmly entrenched and growing. I’m a teacher and in three out of the four jobs that I’ve had over the past 8 years, I was hired as an independent contractor. One job was at a school district and two jobs were teaching at colleges. The jobs were overlapping, because I couldn’t afford to survive on just one job.
Due to declining enrollment, I recently lost my first job at a college, where I’ve worked for 6 years. They cut our pay several times over that period of time and they made ALL faculty independent contractors. Actually, since independent contractors are not employees, that means they have just not rehired me (since March). I haven’t been able to find other work, so I have just one job left and our pay was cut there too, so I’m about to become homeless.
The answer is no. Neither party can be trusted anymore supporting the public sector.
Neoliberalism is a cancer that must be removed or it will kill this country, just as it has ruined other countries.
The only national candidate I heard who supported teachers was Hillary Clinton. She explained at one point that teaching was based on colleagues working together, not in competition, and for that reason, merit pay was not appropriate. Is she or Elizabeth Warren a candidate we can hope for?
No, the Clintons have close connections with Eli Broad. (Look at all five slides.) http://tinyurl.com/n3rbzjj
Forget Hillary. She and Bill are neoliberals, and he is responsible for the Democrats taking the hard turn to the right, so they support privatization (and she worked on the board of the Walton Foundation).
Unless Elizabeth Warren has dramatically changed her stance on education, she’s a NO, too, because she said she supported school VOUCHERS in her 2004 book “The Two Income Trap”.
I am anti Hillary too. Is there any candidate out there for me to support?
The most progressive potential 2016 candidates for president are Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. However, I think both need to be pressed to clarify their positions on K12 education, because publicly they have focused on affordable college and access to Early Childhood Education.
In my opinion, putting any of our eggs in the basket of any politician/candidate is suicidal. No matter who is in any of the offices, we cannot expect good legislation/court rulings unless we stay vigilant and independent and mobilized, working with our allies for the things we know are right. Depending on candidates and politicians (as our union leaders keep doing) weakens us. I believe the presidential race for 2016 will present huge obstacles for our continued work to build our never-more-necessary movement. Eternal vigilance — and independence from all the candidates — needed now more than ever.
Kipp, right. Make the 2016 candidates court the teacher vote, not take it for granted.
I disagree. We need to create our own caucus, the New Freedom Democratic Party, build for delegates to the Democratic National Convention starting now, and put forward our own candidate. Karen Lewis would be a great candidate. We have to show these pols that we are serious, and that they will not get our political power otherwise.
Clinton is no friend to public education. The Clintons are the Democratic party’s neoliberals cloaked in populism that hides their dehumanizing market driven solutions for every problem.
Hillary did state during her 2008 campaign that if she was elected she would end NCLB.
Didn’t Obama say something similar? Hillary probably would have just given us another form of RttT aimed at privatizing public education. That’s what neoliberals do. They are on the side of big business. We can thank Bill Clinton for NAFTA and the outsourcing of so many jobs to workers in foreign countries for slave wages. Neoliberals used to just be Republicans. Bill created the “New Democrats,” who are right of center and have been doing the same dirty work for corporations as the GOP.
Mark Schauer, candidate for Michigan governor, openly and proudly supports public education which is practically a radical act at this point 🙂
Anyway, one couldn’t do much worse than Governor Snyder so Schauer seems like s a safe bet. He’s competitive too. He may beat Mr. Privatization. Like a lot of ed reform governors, Mr. Snyder is not very well-liked in his own state. Is there an ed reform governor who is actually popular with voters? I can’t think of one.
In the post you mention that “Congress is about to pass legislation to expand funding of charter schools”. Can someone post the particulars so we can contact our representatives?
(Through a link on this blog, I was able to contact my state representatives and let them know my opposition to InBloom.)
Thanks!
People are still asking such questions? Really? http://www.scribd.com/doc/106337306/THE-CHICAGO-PUBLIC-SCHOOLS-ALLERGIC-TO-ACTIVISM
Luis, of course they are. People are bombarded daily/hourly with “reminders” that our hopes should be placed in politicians. It’s the message almost all of our institutions are built to ingrain in all of us — to forget about organizing our own power, for goodness sake, and let the “good” politicians take care of things. If that were not the case — if people in this country were not so overwhelmingly deluged and thus victims of this nonsense — we’d not be having the battles we are today. We need to work to change this, especially inside our unions. Not an easy battle, but a necessary one.
kippdawson,Exactly! Organization and LONG-term planning is missing in our union strategy.
Listen to this Professor from Notre Dame talk about the history of neoliberalism. One of his major arguments is that a group of neo-liberal economists in the 1930’s began organizing to advance their ideas of markets across business, politics and culture. At the time they were considered crazy. They were extremely organized.
This group of thinkers were the originators of think tanks as a means of changing the way we think about markets and govt. regulated economies.
The unions and the left have no such long range strategy to change neo-liberal culture and the Democratic party has fully embraced it as their philosophy.
http://majority.fm/2014/06/26/626-philip-mirowski-how-neoliberalism-survived-the-financial-meltdown/
Hope has two daughters, Anger and Courage. And if there were a 3rd, her name would be Activism. Get Up Stand Up. Don’t Give Up The Fight.
Diane, I’m sorry this is so long, but I just needed to get some of the local (Chicago) history about Barack Obama into part of the record, so thanks for asking whether the teacher unions have any friends left in the administration.
No!
That’s the short answer.
But as a historian, Diane, I hope you’ll appreciate the details of how the Chicago Teachers Union put Barack Obama in the United States Senate and thereby gave him the launching pad to the rest of his career. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll share.
Barack Obama became the Democratic Party’s nominee for the Senate seat because the Chicago Teachers Union under the leadership at that time of Deborah Lynch stood firm against a local favorite (Tom Hynes) and pushed for Barack Obama, then an almost unknown State Senator who had just gerrymandered his South Side district so it would run south to north (to include the Gold Coast) rather than east to west (stretching through the Black Community). Little did we realize that Barack Obama was telegraphing his subsequent opportunism with that move. Instead of the thousands of poor Black people in place like Englewood, he was suddenly Illinois Senator representing a few Black people (mostly in Hyde Park) and then the wealthiest people in Chicago (including his Sugar Mommy, billionaire Penny Pritzker).
But without out support, Barack Obama would never have been a United States Senator to give that immortal speech to the Democratic Convention. And he was in the Senate because the leaders and most of the members of the Chicago Teachers Union put him there by giving him the nomination in a tough fight against the Ward Committeemen, who wanted Hynes. No Pritzker could have done that for the guy who used to walk around the union offices (where I worked as “Director of Security and Safety” during those years) telling us “Call me Barack” and sharing one of the weakest handshakes in history. (That’s another story for another time, but the first time we shook hands I was really surprised because most politicians don’t have such weak hands; even if they have never worked with their hands — and Obama has never been a worker — they get stronger hands by shaking hands with thousands of us…).
It was not easy supporting Obama in those days.
I remember sitting in front of a Christmas Tree at a major union holiday party and being cornered by a drunken friend, a teacher who had also been long active in ward politics in the 43rd Ward (I live in the 45th; Chicagoans know their geo-locations primarily by ward, parish, and “side”… tertiarily by “community”) screaming at me so that he attracted attention.
Basically, he was insisting that we were giving away a Senate seat by forcing Barack Obama on Illinois. Nobody, my friend said (and we remained friends) outside of Chicago will vote for a guy whose name is “Osama” and who is Black.
My answer to that had been practiced by then.
“I’ve heard this guy speak. He will go all the way down to Cairo and Carbondale [Illinois towns south of the Mason Dixon line] and charm those ladies to the point where they will bake him pies, then go home and dust off the KKK robes their fathers wore back in the day…”
And that’s precisely what happened.
Barack Obama practiced that “guy with a strange name and funny-looking ears…” speech on teachers and other friendly audiences for months. It worked. So did the “I’m not against all wars, just bad wars and the wrong wars…” speech he used to gut the candidacy of Hillary Clinton by early 2008. My wife and mother-in-law heard that speech in Chicago’s Federal Plaza and we helped it go viral before things could “go viral” in the sense we use it today. By that summer, when Yearly Kos was in Chicago, Obama was pulling ahead of the pack, despite the slick operation Hillary had.
By the summer of 2008, all of the dishonesty of Barack Obama and his “team” was already in place. For me, there are two memorable points.
In july 2008, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) met in Chicago at Navy Pier. We were out of power then. Debbie Lynch’s PACT caucus had been defeated by Marilyn Stewart’s “New United Progressive Caucus” in 2004 and re-elected in 2007. Lynch by 2008 was finished. I was out of work, editing Substance, and part of the group that was building CORE (which was to win union power in the CTU two years later).
I covered the AFT convention in July 2008 for Substance. Hillary Clinton announced that she would speak to the convention, but Barack Obama told the convention planners that he had a “conflict…” Sorry, but he just couldn’t be with us, so he would Skype in (which he did). His claim was that he wouldn’t be in town, blah blah blah.
He was lying. The night before he was supposed to speak by Skype, I was at the Hyatt Regency Hotel and noticed some young people silently holding small signs that said OBAMA and pointing when asked. I followed the trail into a lower area and was blocked by a bunch of young people manning tables. “Is Barack Obama here?” I asked and was told “Yes” but that it was “by invitation only.”
I tried to get into the room where he was, but was threatened with arrest because it was a “private” thing. Not having backup, I didn’t try to barge in as press. But I wanted to see him myself so I could report that he had been at the convention hotel at a time when he had told the AFT leadership “Sorry…”
The trick was to follow the money. The people going in to the Obama event were very VERY well dressed. So… I waited at the exit from the hotel parking lot surrounded by some of Chicago’s wealthiest people, all of whom had to wait for their cars. Secret service were blocking everyone and the hotel staff were not getting cars for anyone. Then the Obama convoy pulled out (I counted three of those SUVs…) and the middle car stopped and the candidate rolled down the window, thanks the people who were waiting, and sped away. So I had seen Obama at the hotel the night before he would be “too busy” to speak directly to the union’s 3,000 delegates.
The next morning, I went to the press room and asked what the AFT leadership had said when they learned that Obama had lied to them about not being in town. At first, I got one of those “What are you talking about?” thingies. Finally, a guy I knew pulled me aside and said that he had been with Ed McElvoy (then AFT president) when Ed talked with Obama on the telephone about the snub. The call, according to my source, ended abruptly, McElvoy expressing his anger with the Obama deception in vivid language.
Second came in The New York Times later that summer.
The Times ran a page one story about how the Obama thing was built. It include a lot of local Chicago stuff (leaving out the gerrymandering of the Obama State Senate district out of Black Chicago, among other things) — but left out the work the Chicago Teachers Union had done to get Obama into the United States Senate.
Instead, to read the official version from All The News That’s Fit to Print, it was a bunch of old “movement” people from the defunct “New left” that had helped strategize the Obama campaign locally. The Chicago Teachers Union was not even mentioned!
One of those who had fought the hardest during the time we were pushing to get the nomination for our friend the state senator had been Howard Heath, who was Vice President of the Chicago Teachers Union in the early 2000s and also the lead union lobbyist in Springfield, the state capitol. Howard knew “Barack” very well in those days, when our future president played lots of basketball and select poker games as part of his networking.
It was Howard who caught the most heat during the months we were fighting to get the nomination for “Barack.”
After the Arne Duncan appointment in December 2008, we knew what was going to unfold. I asked Howard later whether he had heard from Barack and Michelle, both buddies once upon a time, since they became international rock stars. Of course not.
On my refrigerator, we have a photograph I took at a LEAD (Legislators Educators Appreciation Dinner) of Barack Obama and my wife Sharon and young son Sam back then. We leave it up and now and then people will be looking over all the Little League and friends and school and family pictures and exclaim…
Is that Sharon and Sam with the President?!
Yes. I don’t have a photograph of myself with him because I was always taking the photographs, not posing in them.
The guy is a hypocrite and worse in more ways than most of us know now.
Like many people who were used by Barack Obama in his ruthless climb to the “top,” the American Federation of Teachers and the Chicago Teachers Union can continue to remember the facts. History has a way of catching up with various lies and liars.
Thanks George! Most interesting comment I have read in ages!
George, thanks for this fascinating inside look at Obama. How I wish I’d known this stuff 7 years ago! I took so much (now, I see, deserved) flack for supporting Obama here in a very, very red district. I actually convinced many teachers to vote for him despite their being lifelong republicans. What a fool I proved to be!
You are welcome. During the summer of 1968, I reread “Dreams from my Father” and read “The Audacity of Hope.” Dreams from my Father takes on a very different slant when you ask a few basic questions, such as how the author got Columbia and Harvard. I had friends in high school who would have died to go to a “good” college, but instead died because they went into the Army (or Marines) and then Vietnam, hoping to get the “G.I. Bill” afterwards. Barack doesn’t discuss who Sugar Daddied him through all those hurdles. And then, “Audacity…” If you read that carefully, you knew precisely what he was going to do, right down the the privatization and union busting. Finally, Arne Duncan. When they came to Chicago in December 2008 to grab that front page story in The New York Times (Barack and Arne sitting surrounded by smiling African American children in one of the city’s most notorious “turnaround” schools), we were in for a couple of years of New York Times hagiography under the byline of Sam Dillon.
Live and learn.
George N. Schmidt, I’m not a fan of Obama’s dissembling nor am I disputing your account of his path to betrayal of teachers. But your dates don’t line up. ‘Dreams of My Father ‘was published in 1995. Also, Obama was 7 yrs old in 1968 and far too young to every have been eligible to go to Vietnam. How is this related to the context of Obama’s political career?
Thank you, George. Valuable info/insights. One word: no politicians/candidates are worth our stopping our independent organizing for, or putting our hopes in. One quick way to derail our unions and our movements for social justice is to look to politicians/”leaders” to save us. That very approach is one of the reasons our unions are so weak today — and something we need to turn around, IMO.
Reminds me of Brutus’ worries about Caesar:
He would be crown’d:
How that might change his nature, there’s the question.
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder;
And that craves wary walking. Crown him?–that;–
And then, I grant, we put a sting in him,
That at his will he may do danger with.
The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins
Remorse from power: and, to speak truth of Caesar,
I have not known when his affections sway’d
More than his reason. But ’tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round.
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend
Man, you can so tell when teachers inhabit a space! ❤️
I will restate something I posted here much earlier. In 2009 after Obama became president I started to see ads with virtually every page accessed online in the NY Times headlined “KeepGreatTeachers.Org”. After seeing these anti-union ads for months I decided to see if I could find out who was behind these ads. The ads were placed by a public relations firm, SKDKnickerbocker, headed by Anita Dunne. Anita Dunne was Obama’s communications director for his 2008 campaign. Her husband (Bauer) was at that time Chief White House Counsel and Obama’s personal legal assistant. The phone number to call the phantom KeepGreatTeachers.Org was actually the number for SKDKnickerbocker. The assault on teachers began immediately upon Obama’s assumption of office. Obama has been duplicitous on so many fronts that I can’t recall a more duplicitous politician.
No surprise. I knew this guy was just another corrupt pol back in 2007. It took all of the effort I could muster to vote for him over McCain. I didn’t make that mistake again in 2012; I voted third party.
Thanks, George Schmidt. Your post offers real insight. Initially, I, too, was one of the duped. In the early days of the Obama presidency, many felt the president was not paying attention to educational issues and was simply clueless. I always thought the bait and switch with Linda Darling Hammond and Arne Duncan was suspect. From what you write, Obama was a manipulative, ruthless operator from the beginning. He really played teachers, and labor unions in general, for fools. We do need to get control of our own unions and associations, and not depend on politicians or parties. What a mess!
If you haven’t been listening up until now, let me repeat…This is the time for citizens of Illinois to openly resist the way in which the state’s politicians (without moral conscience) have now chosen to “regulate public morals and welfare.” This is the time to protest against the liars and thieves who have manufactured a financial crisis; to protest against the liars and thieves who have perpetuated a financial predicament through irresponsibility, mismanagement and corruption; to protest against the liars and thieves who have ignored moral responsibility and refused lawful remedy for the financial problems they have created. They have stolen part of the pension you have earned. They will continue to steal more of your pension in the future.
from The Contract Clause and the State of Illinois’ “reserved sovereign powers” in Senate Bill 1 (June 12, 2014)
…It is up to us to secure what we have earned by opposing the wealthy influences of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, the Civic Federation, Illinois Policy Institute and their unethical legislators. We must defend our dignity with stubborn resolve. Our primary task is to enlist every teacher and every other public employee in a unification of wills to protect our “alienable” rights and benefits that we deem fair and equitable because they are earned, incentive payments for our life’s labor. This undertaking perhaps forestalls our pro-active and continual engagement with some of the bankrollers’ marionettes in the Illinois General Assembly.
Indeed, our fortitude and knowledge give us power, and this power must motivate us to action. Our collective financial fate is challenged and will continue to be in the future. We are intrinsically bound to one another in this regard. As Martin Luther King eloquently stated, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Let us heed King’s message of “direct action,” unify our efforts to confront wealthy interests and unethical legislation, and “arouse the conscience of not only our colleagues but our communities” by proving that our right to a defined-benefit pension is not to be “diminished or impaired” because it is the solution and template for the preservation of justice and dignity of all workers in Illinois.
A demanding call for engagement will intensify for us in the future. We cannot remain on the sidelines. “Indifference is not an option,” even though “It is so much easier to look away… so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes” (Elie Wiesel). With concerted determination and indomitable courage, let’s meet these challenges before us. “What is required of us is a new… responsibility…; that we have duties to ourselves [and to others]; that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of character, than giving our all to a difficult task” (Barack Obama). Truly, “We Are One,” but only if we demonstrate a willingness to organize and to act upon principles that we believe are so valuable that to do nothing would be an injustice.
from An Open Letter to All Teachers in Illinois (May 30, 2011)
The 1% is our King George III. Revolution was the only answer then. Whats the answer now?
This blog along with the BATS blog should put endless pressure on Weingarten & Van Roekel for their total lack of action on those attacking teachers and public education in general. How about starting with a one day strike for starters across the nation. That would get parent’s attention. Parents are beginning to understand what’s happening but an action such as a strike I believe would accelerate their understanding of what the “reformers” are doing to public education seeking to enrich themselves on the public dime.
Reblogged this on Eslkevin's Blog and commented:
Dianne should run for president.
As a conservative teacher I had numerous fights with colleagues …..about OBAMA….and look at the mess he has us in. Named the worst President of all time. Thanks liberals….thanks to my union who pushed to vote for him and Cuomo..and the ‘COMMON CORE” cronies…thanks, but my VOTE COPE money will no longer go to candidates that NYSUT pushes….I will put my vote and my money to those candidates to hold to my values.