One of the central narratives of the faux “reform” movement is that poverty is just an excuse for bad teachers. In my book “Reign of Error,” I documented many reformers claiming that poverty can be overcome by high expectations and great teachers. The fact that test scores reflect family income, they say, demonstrates that poor kids are not getting great teachers.
But social science research has demonstrated for decades that poverty hurts children and families. It means less access to medical care, good nutrition, and good housing. It means that families lack economic security, a decent home, and the many advantages that middle-income and upper-income families take for granted.
Now, new studies of brain development are showing that poverty has even deeper effects on children’s health and well-being than previously suspected. The effects of living without the basic necessities of life can damage children’s life prospects. In this age of affluence and austerity, it seems wildly radical to say it, but I will: education will improve if we reduce poverty. Poverty will decrease if the federal government creates real jobs. Real jobs will be created if the federal government invests in rebuilding our nation’s crumbling infrastructure.
The problems of our society should be addressed by action. Demonizing teachers does not help children or improve education.
To learn more, read Bob Herbert’s powerful book, Losing Our Way.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
There is nothing new here, except the full-court press of oligarchs to deny what was common knowledge only a short while ago. To someone my age, it’s quite impressive to see the success of sustained, national (even international) propoganda to suppress social truths that were commonplace in America before 1980.
And Democrats beware: your deal with the devil some thirty years ago–Democratic Leadership Conference folks–will come back to haunt Hilary or anyone else who leads the Dems into the 2016 elections. The truths of the New Deal and Great Society have been suppressed, not eliminated. The story of education “reform” is just another instance of the same development: the convergence of the political parties to gut New Deal and Great Society programs brought on by cowardice of Democrats and the success of corporate oligarchs.
At least in the education story, we have parents rising up to protect their kids from being denied an education. Social security is under attack–thank God older folks vote; Medicare is under attack, and this attack is more successful; public education is under attack–will the “Moms Revolution” succeed? We shall see.
Add this to your list, Steve.
Michelle Rhee just manufactured, with her buddy oligarchs (this is similar to the Vergara case manufactured over a period of years by Broad and Welch, and also the Quinn case), this lawsuit to further harass our public school system and our teacher’s unions, in order to enlarge her/their own charter school wealth.
Rhee and her husband, Mr. Rhee-Johnson, mayor of Sacramento (who has faced morals charges fairly recently for trying to have sex with an under age girl), own at least 23 such charters and hunger for many more. Even though she fell out of favor with some of the billionaires who could no longer rationalize her crazed behavior as with “never argue with an angry Korean woman” and her lies about her successes, she nevertheless still wields power based on her ostensible racket of StudentsFirst wherein she raised millions to donate to education Right wingers.
Read below….
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Another lawsuit challenges teachers unions’ dues
By John Fensterwald, EdSource Today, April 7
A second group of California teachers has filed a lawsuit that’s a cousin to Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which is challenging the right of public employees’ unions to collect mandatory dues.
Read more.
Here is the complete text of the article on the Rhee StudentsFirst lawsuit filed against the teacher’s unions today.
EdSource
Highlighting Strategies for Student Success
Another lawsuit challenges teachers unions’ dues
Apr 6, 2015 | By John Fensterwald | 4 Comments
A second group of California teachers has filed a lawsuit that’s a cousin to Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which is challenging the right of public employees’ unions to collect mandatory dues.
The latest lawsuit, Bain v. California Teachers Association, was filed Friday by the Sacramento-based advocacy organization StudentsFirst on behalf of four public school teachers suing the state’s two teachers unions and their national affiliates. In the lawsuit, the teachers focus only on the 35 to 40 percent of their dues payments that are used for political purposes, including donations to candidates and lobbying for legislation in Sacramento.
Although paying this portion is optional, the teachers charge that the unions punish those who choose not to pay it by kicking them out of the union and denying them additional economic benefits, such as better disability and life insurance policies. The unions provide those benefits only to members. This coercion, the teachers argue, violates their constitutional right to free speech. About one in 10 teachers in California have opted out of paying the portion of dues supporting politicking and lobbying.
“Across California, public school teachers are being forced to choose between important employment benefits like paid maternity leave and their own political values,” plaintiff Bhavini Bhakta, a teacher at the Arcadia Unified School District, said in a press release. “It’s unfair. I appreciate my union and want to stay a member. But I don’t want to be forced to fund political activities that contradict my core beliefs about education.”
Along with the California Teachers Association, other defendants in the lawsuit are CTA’s parent union, the National Education Association, the California Federation of Teachers and its parent union, the American Federation of Teachers. Both national unions are funded with a portion of teachers’ dues.
In a statement on Monday, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten accused StudentsFirst of hypocrisy by trying to restrict the unions’ capacity to engage in the political process at the same time that it has worked “to stifle the voices of teachers, and strip them of collective bargaining and other rights and tools to do their jobs.”
“Sadly, this lawsuit is attempting to use the First Amendment to stifle speech, not enhance it,” Weingarten said.
A CTA spokesman said Monday it had not yet been served by the lawsuit and would have no immediate comment.
Both the CTA and CFT are obligated to negotiate contracts dealing with pay, benefits and working conditions on behalf of union and non-union teachers. And, while no longer union members, the four plaintiffs in the case are required under California law to pay what’s called an agency fee, which is the non-political 60 to 65 percent portion of union dues covering bargaining-related expenses.
The lawsuit says that the unions provide supplemental benefits exclusively for union teachers to entice teachers to pay the portion of dues covering political activities. These benefits include better pay during maternity leave and free representation in disputes with the pension fund CalSTRS over retirement benefits and in discipline and dismissal actions that districts initiate.
“This legal representation makes it substantially more difficult for a school district to take adverse employment actions against a union member teacher than a non-member teacher,” the lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, stated. “This lawsuit seeks to remedy this extreme injustice to California’s educators, so that teachers can enjoy the same First Amendment rights as other Americans without being punished for exercising them.”
Along with Bhakta, the other plaintiffs in Bain v. CTA are April Bain and Kiechelle Russell, two teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and Clare Sobetski, a union representative at Richmond High in the West Contra Costa Unified School District.
StudentsFirst, a national organization founded by former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, supports charter schools and changing teacher employment laws. It’s being represented by the same team of high-powered attorneys from the Los Angeles law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher that won a big victory last year in Vergara v. the State of California. In that case, a state District Court judge overturned five state laws governing teacher layoffs, tenure and dismissals as unconstitutional. The case is now on appeal. Another organization, Students Matter, funded by Silicon Valley high-tech entrepreneur David Welch, brought that lawsuit; StudentsFirst has praised the ruling.
Bain v. CTA is narrower in focus than Friedrichs v. CTA et al. The Friedrichs lawsuit, filed two years ago, is challenging teachers’ obligation to pay public-sector unions to represent them. It challenges a landmark 1977 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld state laws that compel public-sector workers to pay agency fees that underwrite unions’ collective bargaining costs. Two dozen states, including California, have passed compulsory dues laws. If the 10 non-union California teachers represented in the Friedrichs suit win their case, then the CTA and CFT would lose the authority to automatically deduct hundreds of millions of dollars a year in dues from the paychecks of both members and non-members.
Based on the experience of states with “right-to-work” laws that ban compulsory union dues, the unions most likely would see a decline in their revenues and their influence. A Washington, D.C., libertarian nonprofit law firm, The Center for Individual Rights, which brought the Friedrichs lawsuit, is waiting to hear whether the U.S. Supreme Court will take the case for its fall 2015 session.
Bain v. CTA raises a different issue and would move forward regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision on Friedrichs, said Joshua Lipshutz, an attorney in the case.
John Fensterwald covers education policy. Email him or Follow him on Twitter. Sign up here for a no-cost online subscription to EdSource Today for reports from the largest education reporting team in California.
Filed under: Pay and Tenure
Dear Diane, I have traveled the world and seen poverty in many places. I have traveled the U.S. and seen poverty in many places. I wrote a story for Life Mag in the 80s called “Children of Poverty” that won a Robert F. Kennedy foundation award. I have also been in dozens (probably hundreds) of schools populated by very poor kids and served on the Board of Education of a small school district where more than 60% of the kids are FR. I count myself a “reformer,” but I would be the last person on earth to say that poverty doesn’t matter. Of course, it matters. But I have met many successful people who grew up poor. And I have visited many schools where 80-90% of the kids are poor and where most of them are getting educated. I know of no reformer who thinks poverty doesn’t matter and who wouldn’t applaud the kind of wraparound services pioneered by Geoffrey Canada. But they are educators, not economists, and they are constantly seeking to improve the education they deliver to children, all children, rich and poor. We have successes in this regard in every sector, public and private, with many brave and dedicated teachers and administrators helping kids of all shapes and sizes, all emotional and psychological dimensions, kids who must walk a gauntlet of violence to get school — and these educators take them, as they are, and provide a refuge from that chaos. And they educate them! They do. They do. They really do. It can be done. thanks. peter m.
I agree that it can be done but not with the current rules and testing expectations. It takes TEACHERS AND EDUCATORS not politician and hedge fund manager to improve education.
Can the State practice an activity that may have no net immediate economic benefit; must all things equate to dollars (though make no “sense”)? Free-market capitalists will claim and demand a “fair-return” on the investment of all public monies, and agreed, we hope there is a future economic return upon our investments of public schooling. Those promoting the “Siren’s call” of privatization believe the returns should be immediate, and flow into a specific company (not just promote the social good, as a socialistic model practices).
Whether a student is educated by a public school, or for-profit charter company, the eventual future return of their educational (their eventual role and function in the economy and GDP) will always be time-delayed.
The public and social good of society is always best thought-out, planned and implemented by those who have no immediate goal of making economic profits/gains/market-advantages; by those free to think idealistically, without the shackles of a “I must make a profit” paradigm and attitude.
Yes, Peter, that’s what educators do. No one has ever said that poor kids can’t learn (except you rephormsters). But should educators who teach children living in poverty be expected to teach those kids at the same level as kids living with all the benefits of affluence? Should a teacher whose kindergarteners don’t know the alphabet be compared to a teacher whose kids have been read to and sung to every day of their lives? Should a teacher whose kids don’t have adequate food or a safe place to stay be expected to make the same (or better) gains with those kids as a teacher whose kids come to school well fed and rested? Because that’s what testing and VAM and “accountability” do, all of which you are in favor of.
The formula for best opportunities in school districts that serve low SES populations is no secret. The question is why won’t Obama, Duncan, or Cuomo put their money where their mouths are?
1) Mandatory high quality Pre-K programs
2) Highly qualified teachers and administrators
3) Small class sizes (12 – 15)
4) Strict attendance policies/truant officers
5) Content rich curricula
6) Multiple pathways for success
7) Autonomy (trust) for teachers
8) Threat free work environments for all
I might disagree with a few of these, but what’s interesting is that they largely match the list of keys to success for the Gates initiative on small high schools (obviously not Pre-K). And even more interesting is that NYC was the only Gates small schools grant recipient where the program really worked. As I read the research, the major difference between NYC and the several dozen other locations where it was tried was the instruction/academic item: NYC’s small schools demanded passing of the Regents exams; other places did not have that clear blue line. In other words, you can probably get away without some of these items; but not #5.
“And even more interesting is that NYC was the only Gates small schools grant recipient where the program really worked.”
Worked to do what? Raise test scores?
#7 & #8 will be the tough ones for the control freaks to grant. Controlling every detail is the only way many of them know how to function.
NOTE to “reformers”: keep your hands out of the public-money jar. Many of the poor are so because of unjust wages (underpaid) and unjust/fraudulent/deceitful profits to company execs and stockholders (overpaid). Read James 5: 1-10.
So, the reformers will make many poor by unjust business practices, and then want to make public schools look bad (by unjust testing practices), so that they can push their “privatization agenda”, so that the reformers can now make even more profit “on the backs of the poor” by diverting public funds into their for-profit charters schools and corps.
So, the “free marketers” will claim that a long series of injustices will lead to the outcome of a more “just and equitable” educational system? Really? Well if one’s love of money
leads them to define “justice” as more-profit-to-my-company, then maybe Marx really did see the light, in the darkness of unregulated “free” market capitalism (only as free as the degree of enslavement controlling it by the “haves”)
Poverty is a formidable opponent, and its consequences can span generations. The privileged people that run this country have no understanding of this. Instead, they think they can ignore the truth and run a “no excuses” campaign to threaten teachers to stamp out the impact of poverty. All they have done is destroy careers and destabilize the lives of the children whose families are already on a slippery slope. Shame on our leaders for their arrogance and ignorance!
An excellent book which contrasts nations which have far more economic equality than ours and how that better equality was responsible for much better outcomes in every area, including education, is The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone (previous subtitle: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger) by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.
This is an excellent book.
I, Swedish teacher and living in Sweden, agree on what you say. We have similar problems here and in suburb areas with schools showing very poor results, we often also have fairly poor teachers. But I suppose poverty looks a bit different in the US than it does here. In Sweden nobody lacks the daily life needs.
The latest LAUSD figures show that there are 13,794 students, K – 12, living on the streets, homeless. This means they eat only occasionally, mainly at school, and they sleep on concrete sidewalks, and generally bath in the restrooms of fast food restaurants.
About 80% of the students in Los Angeles live at or below the poverty level. Yes, I think the Scandanavian countries have far less true poverty…and children who, as you say, do not lack for tne daily life needs. This is not the case in the US.
poverty has actually increased over the time… http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/13/whos-poor-in-america-50-years-into-the-war-on-poverty-a-data-portrait/
“One of the central narratives of the faux ‘reform’ movement is that poverty is just an excuse for bad teachers.”
This is what I want to do. I want to force—using any method possible—the leaders of the corporate education reform movement to teach for five years full time with no sick days allowed in classrooms with children who live in poverty at rates above 75%.
Enough said. Since I taught children at those poverty rates for thirty years, I know what the faux reformers would learn. And if they didn’t learn anything, I’m convinced they would come out the other end broken and with a severe case of burn out and PTSD—another so-called “bad” bunch of teachers who were so damaged from the experience, they couldn’t function in the classroom.
But in my imagined scenario, those faux reformers wouldn’t be allowed to fail as teachers, and if they did, it would mean losing all their wealth and benefits until they too ended up living in poverty next door to the students, who live in poverty, that they failed.
That is laughable…they wouldn’t last 5 days let alone 5 years. Some probably won’t make it through the first day.
But under my reform management, it wouldn’t matter if they survived even the first day, because the next day a squad of armed Marines would arrive at their home, drag them out of bed at probably 5 AM—that’s when I was usually getting up to make it to school an hour or more before my first class—and under armed guard, they would be escorted back to the classroom to teach another day and this would repeat for five-full years before they were allowed to be free from that routine.
If they got sick, doctors would pump them full of drugs and they would have to teach anyway. I taught sick many times taking antihistamines to dry me out and also take away a lot of my energy, because staying home meant letting my classroom fall apart and made my job more difficult when I returned after a sub day. I hated sub days with a passion because it was playing Russian Roulette. There was no way to tell ahead of time if the sub would be great or horrible.
Even when I lost my voice, and that happened at least once annually, I still taught. Even the time I broke my right arm in a karate class and couldn’t write, I went to teach anyway and used a pocket recorder to make notes to myself as I struggled to write on the board with my left hand. What was really strange is those days when I had no voice, my kids, even the most difficult ones to work with, behaved much better and paid closer attention to all the stuff I wrote on the black board until I was writing on white boards.
I’d make sure that Bill Gates, Eli Broad and the Walton family was on that list along with the nine Hedge Funders. I’d also have my Marines drag people like Michelle Rhee in by the hair if that’s what it took.
The only way they could get free of that routine would be to get on their knees and beg for a firing squad—and some of them would probably end up doing just that eventually.
Oh, and I would be in charge of where they would teach.
I like the way you think. For the first twenty years of my career, I hardly missed a day and like you, it was easier for me to be there sick then trust the situation to a glorified babysitter. It was more work to be absent then fight through being sick.
I have some nominees:
Little Ricky Perry, former Texas Governor
Dan Patrick Lieutenant Governor of Texas
Jeb Bush former Florida Governor
What about Cuomo?
Yes and Arne Duncan
I want to send Arne Duncan to teach in a school in territory in the Middle East controlled by ISIS—-fly over and parachute him in to the ISIS headquarters.
Poverty in and of itself doesn’t drive poor cognition and brain development, but the intervening effects of toxic stress which are co-morbid (and highly correlated) with poverty does. It is said that the advantage that charter schools have even with a lottery system, is that you have parents who are involved enough at minimum to have taken the step to apply. But that only gets to part of it. It’s one thing to be raised in a somewhat stable family situation, but have a family on public assistance, it’s another to live in a family experiencing domestic violence, homelessness, removal into the foster care system, substance abuse, parental mental illness, and incarceration. While I suspect that “high-performing” charter schools are full of the former, our public schools and charter schools who are less sophisticated at screening out pupils are filled with the latter. And I suspect that if we look at the family situations of those youth who do get counseled out of charter schools, we would see a lot of loving well-meaning parents who are dealing with many of the causes of toxic stress that I mentioned. Were charter schools transparent about that fact – and I would argue that these well-adjusted, resilient youth are well served by the high stakes, high expectations environments when compared to the current alternatives – we would be having a different much more honest conversation about the role of educational boot camps.
your first sentence is BS…. poverty – poor nutrition, poor living environments, lack of good sleep does certainly affect cognition and brain development…. overlay that with toxic stress and poor kids start life behind the 8-ball and are destined always to be playing catch-up, compared to their affluent peers…