A regular reader, Laura H. Chapmam, curriculum consultant in the arts, asks: Who speaks for teachers? And, who is paid to appear to speak for teachers?
Chapman writes:
A collective teacher voice has depended on unions. The billionaires are recruiting teachers who are not friendly to unions, with the blessing of PR firms that USDE put in charge of helping states and districts comply with RttT requirements, including pay-for-performance.
The PR initiative, funded at $43 million, is dubbed the Reform Support Network (RSN). A 2012 publication from the PR writers working for RSN suggested that districts enlist teacher SWAT teams to head off criticism of the draconian federal requirements, in addition, a recent publication (May, 2014) offers states and districts over 35 other “messaging” strategies.
One of the “other” strategies is enlisting “teacher voice groups.” A “teacher voice group” is RSNs name for a non-union advocacy collective that depends on funding from private foundations favoring pay-for-performance.
Five voice groups are mentioned by name.
All have received major funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: Teach Plus ($9.5 million), Center for Teacher Quality ($6.3 million), Hope Street Group ($4.7 million), Educators for Excellence ($3.9 million), and Teachers United ($942, 000). Other foundations are supporting these groups.
For example, Teach Plus receives “partner” grants from eight other foundations (including the Broad, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Joyce) and several major investment firms.
These groups are building out, state-by-state, in an effort to control conversations about “what teachers want. They are amplifiers of the wishes of the billionaires who fund them.
One of the major subcontracts for the USDE marketing campaign for $6.3 million, went to Education First. The founding partner is Jennifer Vranek, a former advocacy expert with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She and others working for Education First helped a number of states apply for the RttT competition. They have fashioned PR campaigns for the Common Core State Standards in many states. The firm’s website includes a sample of its communication and advocacy services: “Outreach and public-engagement strategies and activities; strategic communications planning; reports, white papers and articles designed to synthesize, explain and persuade; development of communications tools, including marketing materials, web copy, press releases, and social media content.”
All this is just more evidence that the question is not just about who speaks for teachers, but who pays teachers to be spokespersons for union-hating billionaires, and why do these teachers have so little respect for due-process rights, including contracts that are not entirely dependent on the pathology of testing promoted in federal and state policies?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Obama Administration Labor Dept doesn’t mention labor unions on Labor Day:
http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/opa/OPA20141638.htm
Unfashionable, I guess.
They’re promising to update regulations for the “21st century workplace”, which I guess means more gentle suggestions to employers to perhaps pretty please stop violating existing labor law, if it’s not an inconvenience and it doesn’t make anyone who is at all powerful uncomfortable or even sad with hurt feelings 🙂
Best practices! Nothing that is actually enforceable! Public-private partnerships, with an emphasis on the PRIVATE!
When did regulators go from enforcing the law to offering advice to workers on how better to serve their employer? Did they actually change that job description? Now they’re like “CEO of worker improvement” or something.
Gates funded both teacher unions to promote the common core but both are not able to sell it on full power. Weingarten and Roekel were only able to prevent growing teacher opposition to CCSS from consolidating into a movement that might sweep AFT/NEA into a fighting stance. Because the union leaders aren’t able to sell CCSS to their own members, they are falling back to plan B, which is to stifle organized opposition by teachers to it. This means that Gates and his fellow billionaires must create fake teacher org’s to stand in for the actual teacher union leaders; the fake teacher org’s have to provide a bogus “voice of teachers” to cover that spot in the selling of CCSS/PARCC to the nation. Internal opposition to CCSS has limited how far Weingarten and Roekel were able to go in marketing Gates’s plans.
We are the Lorax. We speak for the teachers.
No different than the USDOE, really. Yet another outlet promoting testing and charter schools:
“Peter Cunningham, the former communications guru for U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, is leading the organization, which is backed with initial grants totaling $12 million from the Broad Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Walton Family Foundation and an anonymous donor.
It will focus on three areas: K-12 academic standards, high-quality charter schools, and how best to hold teachers and schools accountable for educating students.”
If you’re wondering why public schools have fared so poorly under the Obama Administration, it isn’t real hard to figure out. Look at who worked for them, and where they work now. It’s probably impolite to mention this revolving door between the billionaire foundations and the USDOE right? Very rude.
This is great:
“Bruce Reed, president of the Broad Foundation, said the idea for Education Post originated with his organization but that other philanthropic groups had recognized the need years ago.
“We had a shared disappointment in the tenor of the debate,” said Reed, a former chief of staff to Vice President Biden and former chief executive of the Democratic Leadership Council.”
Is there anyone now or previously on the public payroll in the Obama Administration who actually supports public schools? Wow. With this kind of access, our schools don’t stand a chance. What a joke DC is. They consider a broad range of options, everything from the Broad Family to the Walton Family! It’s the same 150 people, talking to each other.
I love this, too:
“It will focus on three areas: K-12 academic standards, high-quality charter schools”
Only “high quality” charter schools may be mentioned. Better not to advertise the, um, LOW quality charter schools, I guess. They better not venture into the wilds of FL, PA, OH or MI. Some inconvenient facts in those states.
Science, “data” and also critical thinking! Just positive “news” on charters. No icky negative facts.
Why can we discuss low quality public schools endlessly but not low quality charter schools? Why is discussing low quality public schools brave and bold and discussing low quality charter schools impolite and divisive? Maybe an essay prompt for the Common Core? We’re encouraging “critical thinking”, right? Or saying that a lot, anyway.
The only people to speak for teachers are teachers and the public. As mentioned in the article unions are supposed to represent and therefore speak for teachers. Where the vast majority of treacher unions miss the boat is in their failure to do outreach on a mass scale to the public. My union, United Teacher’s of Los Angles, is a sad example of this. Spending every weekend out in the communities we teach in, leafletting the public about the tyranny of Superintendent “Boss” Deasy, or bringing to light the fact that Jefferson High School students spent almost a month without proper class schedules, or even the fact that classes have enrollments of 48 to 53 students, is the only thing that will give us the power to take back our schools.