Ninety-three percent of charters are non-union. This is part of their business plan. Teachers work long hours and turn over frequently. This keeps costs low.
Sometimes charter teachers try to form a union. The management fights them, as big business did decades ago.
Hella Winston reports that charter management fights unions by intimidating teachers, even calling in cops. Teachers have no rights.
Why do they want a union?
“Alliance educators began their push to unionize in large measure, Mernick says, because they were concerned their employer was not “actualizing its core values,” including the establishment of smaller classes and a personalized learning environment for its students, most of whom are poor and Latino or black. Mernick says that teachers who have signed on to the union effort want more input into decisions regarding curriculum and pedagogy. They’re also questioning how the school assesses their performance and discloses how it spends its funds. Making changes in these areas, Mernick believes, will help Alliance retain the kinds of qualified teachers it prides itself on hiring….
”
Of the non-Alliance schools, there were 11 where administrators held captive-audience meetings—one-on-one or group meetings called by management and held on company time and property, in which management is legally permitted to share anti-union opinions; 12 where teachers brought charges of retaliatory action or threats against teachers involved in organizing; and eight schools where administrators made jurisdictional or legal challenges intended to impede unionization. Schools in the Alliance network had incidents of all three, as well.
Captive-audience meetings are one of the most common experiences teachers reported. These meetings—long opposed by labor advocates, who argue that they give bosses undue power to pressure and coerce employees, who have no legal right to hold their own such meetings—are typically called by management in the period after teachers go public with a desire to unionize and before a formal union vote.”
“Two years ago, Superintendent William Hite allowed parents at two North Philadelphia schools to vote on whether to allow a charter company of the district’s choosing to take control of the schools. Parents at both schools voted overwhelmingly to remain public. Thus, in 2015, parents and students at three more district schools were given no vote, but simply informed that their schools were to be placed in the Renaissance program. The choice had been made for them.”
The goal of “choice” is to give parents no choice at all.
On September 28, Eva Moskowitz closed her Success Academy charter schools for the day so her students, teachers, and families could attend a political rally. Alan Singer wonders why this is permitted? The students, the staff, and families are used as pawns to advance Moskowitz’s political goals. Certainly, the children don’t need more charters. They already attend one. They can’t attend two or three. Eva is using them for her own benefit.
Who pays the bills? Families for Excellent schools. They are not the families of the students. They are billionaires and hedge fund managers whose excellent schools are private and have a tuition of $50,000 or more. You surely won’t see them hanging out with the children at these political rallies.
Face it: the kids are pawns being cynically used to advance adult interests.
He knows that their growth is a result of political connections. Nothing they do is innovative. They duplicate existing administrations. They add nothing of value.
He concludes they are a scourge and a failed experiment. Their time has come and gone.
Kevin Kumashiro is a professor of Asian-American Studies and a scholar of American education. You must read his book “Bad Teacher,” in which he dissects the corporate reform movement.
This important article–“When Billionaires Become Educational Experts”–describes the right wing foundations and business groups that are financing the war on public schools and their teachers. It will make you eager to read his book.
You may wonder why I am posting so often about the charter question in Massachusetts. Simple. If out-of-state billionaires can persuade the voters of the top-performing state in the nation to authorize a competing, privately managed system, they can do it anywhere. This issue–Question 2–is a line in the sand that will determine whether privatization of public education can be stopped.
We know that the billionaires and hedge fund managers are pouring an unprecedented $20 million or more into the campaign to lift the cap on charters in Boston. If Question 2 passes, Massachusetts could add 12 new charter schools forever. At some point, there would be no more public schools. Unaccountable corporate chains would take over local public schools. Massachusetts has the best public school system in the nation. It needs better public schools in every neighborhood, not disruption and turmoil.
Our reader and commentator Jack Covey has followed the debates about Question 2 and shares his observations here:
He writes:
I”m watching the latest Question 2 debate, and the pro-Charter guy Mark just made some hare-brained claim that the teachers union’s motives in opposing Question 2 are racist, or — at the very least — their motives are rooted in the fact that the union leadership is white, and their white-ness is driving them, subconsciously or whatever, to oppose Question 2 … again to the detriment to students and families of color.
Go here:
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MARK, THE PRO-CHARTER GUY: “We have our strongest opposition from the teachers unions across the state, whose leadership is primarily white… our goal, and whom we are trying to serve, are those black and brown parents and young parents who are trying desperately to get alternatives for their children.”
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Yeah, right, that’s your “goal” … unlike those crypto-racist teachers in teacher unions who only care about themselves, even if that screws the education of black kids. This is in spite of the fact that those unionized teachers are the ones teaching kids of all races and classes — including blacks —- for seven or more hours each day.
Naaah, only billionaire-backed charter folks care about black and brown kids.
So if Barbara Madeloni and other Massachusetts teachers union leaders were as black as Karen Lewis, Mark, the Pro-charter guy, wouldn’t attempting this line of argument? No, then he’d probably characterize those hypothetical black Massachusetts labor leaders as an Uncle Tom sell-outs, who value big union officer salaries more than she does helping out her fellow blacks.
What utter nonsense!
Thank God African-American anti-charter Tito Jackson was there to immediately counter this asinine attempt to frame this as a race issue, and inflame racial tensions.
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( 35:27 – )
“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCsZZ-J7mcU
( 35:27 – )
TITO JACKSON: “Mark, the leadership of the teachers unions is primarily white, but SO IS the leadership of most charter school in the city of Boston, and so I think that THAT is a critical component.”
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Y
Tito then changes topic, then proceeds to debunk the vaunted charter school wait list numbers.
DEBUNKING THE WAITLIST
Think about it. If here were 30,000 – 40,000 people furious at being wait-listed and denied entry to a charter school, because there wasn’t enough of such schools, wouldn’t that mean these parents would have formed an army of volunteer campaign workers swarming the state pushing for passage of Question 2— knocking on doors, phone-banking, marching down streets, etc.? They wouldn’t need $20 million of out-of-state billionaire money. The volunteer component would be enough to win the day.
No, there’s nothing of the kind going on in Massachusetts. The pro-Question-2 stuff is all big money commercials, mailers, and robo-calls, not live calls from live volunteer workers, or live canvassers knocking on doors.
Anyway, back to what Tito could have said to Mark regarding the overwhelming whiteness of Massachusetts charter leaders, as well as those leaders not living in the neighborhoods where their charter schools are located.
Here’s what Tito could have said, but was said by someone else at the other debate.
In the other debate, the FEMALE MODERATOR, in a question to Charter Lady Marty Walz, goes into detail about THE TOTAL ABSENCE OF ANY BLACKS, OR ANY LOCAL PARENTS OR CITIZENS IN ANY POSITION TO EXERCISE ANY DECISION-MAKING POWER OVER THESE CHARTER SCHOOLS.
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(34:30 – )
(34:30 – )
FEMALE MODERATOR: “Representative Walz, for some who oppose Question 2, one of the issues that it comes down to is this, and I’m going to paraphrase Carol Burris, she’s a former New York high school, and she says
” ‘The democratic governance of our public schools is a American tradition worth saving.’
U
” … and then the Annenberg institute for school reform at Brown University earlier this year released a study, and they analyzed EVERY board for EVERY charter school in the state of Massachusetts. and they found that ..
“31% of trustees (school board members) statewide are affiliated with the financial services or corporate sector. Only 14% were parents.
“60% of the charter boards had NO parent representation on their boards WHATSOEVER.
“Those that DID were largely confined to charter schools that served MOSTLY WHITE students.
“Here’s an example: City on a Hill (Charter) Schools in Roxbury — again, this is according to the Annenberg Institute Report — has schools in Roxbury and New Bedford, (has a) 14-member board, trustees for all three of those schools.
“ONLY ONE member of the board lives in New Bedford. Three live in Boston, but NONE in Roxgury. The rest live in (upscale communities) Brookline, Cambridge, Cohasset, and Hingham.
“So they (at Annenberg) ask:
” ‘How can those charter schools be considered locally controlled and locally accountable?’ ”
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Charter Lady Walz responds by claiming — and winning applause from the charter folks stacked in the audience — that local control through school boards has “wholly failed’ to produce quality schools and educate children, and need to be wiped out.
Those in the audience are cheering the end of democracy? Really?
Wait. Isn’t Massachusetts the highest achieving state in the U.S.? Really? She says that democratically-governed schools with elected school boards in Massachusetts have “wholly failed” students? Really?
At another point in the debate, Charter Lady claims their group is about improving all types of schools, but here she is recommending replacing all of traditonal public schools with privately-managed charter schools. So which is it?
The Moderator interrupts by insisting that Charter Lady answer the question about accountability, and Charter Lady brings up the only method needed — the Death Penalty AND THAT’S IT…. but no accountability to parents and citizens, while those schools are actually open, and ZERO OPPORTUNITY OR MECHANISM for those parents and citizens to enjoy any kind of decision-making power over shose schools while they are in operation.
And we need to watch John Oliver again to find out how well that works out:
The Supreme Court ruled in 1974 (Bradley v. Milliken) that a court could not order desegregation across district lines. The case referred to Detroit, which was highly segregated. That put an end to the possibility of metropolitan districts like the one already established in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC. The children of Detroit were doomed to remain in segregated, underfunded schools in an increasingly impoverished district.
[ALERT: I was just informed that Edbuild is funded by reformers who want to destroy our public schools. Keep that in mind as you read—DR]
“A few blocks away from Bernita Bradley’s house, the Detroit Public School district ends and the Grosse Pointe Public School System begins. The border is invisible, but with a 12-year-old daughter enrolled in DPS, the reminders for Bradley are impossible to ignore. Every student seems to have a Macbook. There’s the annual Grosse Pointe toy drive, which distributes free bicycles to kids who need them. And there are the parks with shiny new playground equipment, where parents routinely ask Bradley, “Do you live around here?”
“Ours are torn down and dilapidated,” Bradley says. “Just seeing theirs makes me feel bad.“
“According to a new report and interactive map by the education think tank EdBuild, the district border that Bradley navigates as a parent and an activist (she helped launch Enroll Detroit, which distributes information about school enrollment requirements to families) is the most income-segregating in the nation. The median property value in DPS is $45,100, versus $220,100 in suburban Grosse Pointe, and roughly half of the city student population lives in poverty, compared to one out of every 15 students across the district line—a difference of 42 percentage points. Local per-pupil public revenue is about the same, at around $4,650 per student, but that’s because Detroit now taxes properties at a rate of 8.7 percent each year to pay for its schools. This is 47 percent higher than the rate paid in Grosse Pointe, “where, it goes without saying, there are most likely no vermin carcasses under the desks,” says Rebecca Sibilia, the founder and CEO of EdBuild, in an email to CityLab.
“EdBuild’s report ranked the country’s top 50 segregating school-district borders. More than 60 percent of these borders are in Rust Belt cities in upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, eastern Wisconsin, and Illinois, which have suffered from patterns of disinvestment similar to those in Detroit. As the city underwent decades of depopulation, hundreds of Detroit’s public schools closed, leaving properties abandoned and blighted. DPS now struggles with a budget deficit of nearly $300 million, along with frequent teacher shortages and staff walk-outs. Research shows that students coming from profound disadvantage need even more resources from schools than their wealthier peers to achieve equal outcomes—yet DPS cannot meet those needs, even with additional state funding.”
This post is a scholarly analysis of the funding of Common Core: Who put up the money, who benefitted. The paper (which can be downloaded here) was written by three scholars at Pennsylvania State University: Mindy L. Kornhaber, Nikolaus J. Barkauskas, and Kelly M. Griffith.
They track where the money came from and where it was spent.
The biggest problem for the Common Core standards was that they were released based on a hope, not on evidence or experience. They were never tested in advance, so no one could say with assurance how they would affect students, the achievement gaps, teachers, classrooms.
Their closing paragraph is chilling:
An analogy to the Gold Rush may be useful here: The claim stakers are the federal government and philanthropies that have staked out the Common Core for public policy. To work that stake, they incentivize states and school districts to mine the Common Core and get higher measured achievement. To do so, the miners need equipment. The vendors who sell the equipment profit in the short term, even if their tools rarely enable the miners to get the sought-after results. In essence, those who set directions for the Common Core and those who provided resources for its implementation have benefitted, even as potential benefits to schools, educators, and students are elusive, and the entire claim may ultimately be empty.
Nicholas Tampio, a professor of political science at Fordham University in New York, published an essay about national standards in the peer-reviewed “Journal of Politics,” one of the top journals in the field. It should be part of our national discussion about the dominant policy paradigm of the past 35 years: policy makers assumed without question that the way to improve education is to set standards, train teachers to teach the standards, teach the standards, test the standards, then start over?
Tampio says this paradigm is wrong.
He writes:
“This article intervenes in the debate about whether democracies should adopt national education standards. For many democrats, national education standards may promote economic growth, social justice, and a common set of interests. In this article, I reconstruct John Dewey’s warning against oligarchs using standardization to control the schools as well as his argument that democracy requires student, teacher, and community autonomy. The article argues that the Common Core State Standards Initiative has been a top-down policy that aims to prepare children for the economy rather than democracy, and for the foreseeable future, economic elites will tend to dominate efforts to create national education standards. In the conclusion, I make a pragmatic argument for local education control and address objections such as that democracies need national educational standards to ensure racial equity.”
I decided to take a trip out west to visit the national parks. I planned to start the tour of the parks in Las Vegas, so contacted the teacher-activist Angie Sullivan to meet. Angie is a dynamo who keeps close watch on the governor, the legislature, and the Clark County school board, doing her best to advocate for the needs of the children she teaches, most of whom are poor. If every district and state had an Angie Sullivan, we could win more battles. We were supposed to meet on Monday, the 26, the day I arrived. But I was laid low by a sudden onset of very bad flu, so we postponed our meeting to my last day, Wednesday September 28. Angie was late, my friends went to dinner without me, but I was determined to meet this force of nature, face to face. She sent text messages every few minutes, and arrived when I had to go. We had time for a hug, a photo, and my advice to her: Never stop making trouble on behalf of the kids. All too fast.
Angie the wrote this post to her vast email list of legislators, school board members, journalists, and education officials:
I briefly met with Diane Ravitch tonight.
Yes she is my hero.
And yes, in spite of all my plans – I was two hours late. And yes, she waited anyhow. So I owe her friends who she was delaying eating dinner with some special love or toys or something.
And I cannot apologize enough.
Says a lot about her . . . and a lot about me!
So . . .
I wanted to tell everyone the story about the socks.
I put together a – Diane-Ravitch-is-my-hero – gift bag with books from Nevada because “Home Means Nevada.”
And I threw in the socks.
________________
The Sock Story
The millionaires and billionaires threw an event at the Smith Center this last year to celebrate teachers.
It was supposed to be similar to the Kennedy Center which does something similar.
The first step to being honored was to be nominated by someone. And the second step was to have the nominee submit a self description of how wonderful they themselves truly were and to toot their own horn. Really weird.
In the business community, it is most likely an asset to give lists of personal accomplishments and announce your personal curriculum vitae. Teachers just don’t. Real educators aren’t in this for the money, title, or laud. Foreign.
But . . .
We wanted to dress up and hear good music. So we sat around the computers at my school and wrote for each other as if we were speaking about ourselves.
We got an invitation to attend. Yay!
It was fancy. We dressed up.
We knew it was rigged by reformers and none of the real educators would be on the stage but it was night out. None of us would be chosen for the cash reward but it did not stop us.
Friends were great.
Music was awesome.
And they gave a lot of awards to reformers and TFA.
We clapped because no one likes a bad sport.
And we got a swag bag.
Some swag was awesome. Tickets to shows on the strip were once in a lifetime.
Some swag was interesting.
Included in the swag bag – was an unusually large pair of men’s socks.
I know I should be grateful and just say thank you. The gift was free. I had a good time with co-workers. I have pictures.
But part of me is tired.
The millionaire and billionaire party throwers gave 500 teachers who are primarily women who teach kids to read – a large pair of men’s socks.
Next to the socks, we also got a coupon for a percentage off a $1000 suit and a percentage off a $1000 watch.
Frankly, we laughed. I have not spent $1000 on clothes in the last ten years. If it isn’t on the $10 sale rack or at the Goodwill – I can live without it.
Mixed swag – tickets and socks.
So ends my tale of the socks.
__________________
Moral of the Story: My education career is full of people “giving me a large pair of men’s socks.”
Everyone has an “idea” about what will improve education.
No one studies the research.
Part of me says: just be grateful.
Part of me says: my kids deserve better.
I need a box of paper and books – not a pair of socks or a $1000 suit. I also need to be a professional and authentically teach kids. I would really love some research based best practice to be at the core of legislated decisions – rather than ideas from lobbyists and reformers who line their pockets by implementation “great ideas” and experimenting on brown children.
That ends up wasting a lot of money and not really helping kids.
I gave those socks to Diane Ravitch. She knows teachers do not need a large pair of men socks.
We have been polite for too long while enduring some strange misconceptions and misunderstandings about public education.
We need to speak up and tell people what we really need to make gains with students.
Teachers need to speak up. And that is what Diane told me – I’m passing that on.
Diane Ravitch's blog 