Randi Weingarten and Jonah Edelman co-wrote an article in today’s Los Angeles Times, standing strong against vouchers.
I still remember Jonah Edelman as the guy who bragged at the Aspen Ideas Festival that he had crushed the teachers’ union in Chicago by buying up all the best lobbyists and raising the bar for a strike to 75% of the membership. I remember that he went to Massachusetts and threatened a referendum unless the unions capitulated to his demands. Stand for Children was showered with millions by the Gates Foundation and other promoters of the corporate reform agenda. Edelman strongly supports charter schools, even though they promote racial segregation.
In the middle of a strong article against vouchers, this paragraph was dropped in:
We believe taxpayer money should support schools that are accountable to voters, open to all, nondenominational and transparent about students’ progress. Such schools — district and charter public schools — are part of what unites us as a country.
It is public schools that unites us as a country, not charter schools. We have seen a steady parade of scandals, frauds, abuses, waste of taxpayer dollars, exclusion of children with special needs, from the charter sector.
Charter schools should be subject to democratic control (an elected school board), should be financially transparent, and should have the same requirements for teachers as public schools. They should be required to accept all children who apply, in the order of their application. They should not be allowed to exclude ELLs and children with disabilities.
Charter schools exist to bust unions and undermine public schools. They are a form of privatization. They should not be put into the same boat as public schools because they are not public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We have been discussing this Op Ed all morning on the California BATs facebook page. It’s disappointing to hear the AFT president equate charters with public schools, and a huge strategic mistake.
DeVos has helped put the spotlight on education, for sure. I have friends whose attention I could never get on these issues, who now are outraged at DeVos’ plans. But reactions by leaders to her extreme views show how the conversation is continuing to shift to the center-right. We need to keep explaining how charters are part of this continuum, not at all separate from vouchers. This Op Ed missed a great opportunity.
It is only a “huge strategic mistake” if you think Randi’s goal is to support public education. She’s been telling us otherwise for years, it’s just that some people have refused to believe her.
” It’s disappointing to hear the AFT president equate charters with public schools, and a huge strategic mistake.” Why oh why oh why is Randi still the AFT president?
Disappointing yes but remember the NEA and AFT are not labor unions. Such a term is too declasse. These are associations. HA! It seems that the designation allows the moral and intellectually bereft to ignore the abuse of teachers. 5,000 veteran teachers have been moved out in L.A. with “union” help. Due process here is a cruel joke like blaming the poor for not having grit or a firm grasp on their own bootstraps. Does anybody really wonder why there is a teacher shortage?
Agree. Clearly some serious educating on public-ed issues needed for centrist Dems [neolibs] — & maybe some progressives as well– who seem to have stopped reading the news once they decided that hi-stakes annual pubsch testing leading to closing pubschs/ firing pubsch teachers/ opening the field to privatizers would somehow lead to more/ better ed opptys for poor iner-city school kids. Even the NAACP has cottoned on to the scam..
Why, Why, Why?
Because There’s Gold In Them Thar Schools !!!
I suspect one answer is the unions’ attempt to expand their ranks by organizing charter school teachers. Two problems from my own direct experience
1)the teacher turnover at my children’s charter school (before I knew better) was 50% every single year. The union rep there told me that even though they were unionized, most of the staff was still on probation and therefore unable to stand with her.
2)parents will not be able to count on the union as an ally in our fights to prevent charter encroachment. At a time when the public is subjected to the constant barrage of anti-union propaganda, that can’t end well for teachers.
ok that is creepy– yet perhaps believable, that national teachers’ unions would support charters because they suspect/ project that underpaid, downtrodden charter-school teachers will ultimately have to unionize [or leave their non-living-wage jobs].
You got it! Welcome to the Gold Rush.
Incidentally, Randi selling out the membership of AFT and endorsing Hillary no strings attached was instrumental in Hillary getting the nomination. For anyone still thinking that Hillary was better on education than Bernie.
Noam Chomsky said to vote for Hillary. Is he some kind of neoliberal? Thomas Frank voted for Hillary, as he has admitted in several interviews as on the Jimmy Dore Show. Is Frank a neoliberal? Robert Reich first voted for Bernie but then voted for Hillary. I voted for Hillary because the alternative would be horrific. Bingo, here we are. A right winger added to the SCOTUS and more to come. Would NOT have happened with Hillary. Education is not the only issue, there are climate change, the SCOTUS, abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, the ACA, the promoting of creationism and Intelligent Design by right wingers (not Hillary) and Hillary is smarter than Trump by a large margin.
The election is long over. Time to build a progressive opposition outside the Democratic Party without which the Democratic Party will surely put up another Hillary in 2020.
Sigh. Chomsky endorsed Hillary only after she was nominated. Randi endorsed Hillary out of the gate in the primary, no strings attached. See the difference?
For the record, I was none too happy about Chomsky’s endorsement of Clinton even in the general given the ample evidence of how she sandbagged Sanders. But reasonable people can disagree on that.
I think it’s funny when I hear people use the phrase “another Hillary” as if she is the evil co-opted right wing sell-out that the propaganda successfully painted her to be. We now know that the eastern European troll factories had people pretending to be Bernie supporters posting non-stop to attack her.
Didn’t we hear the same thing in the past? “We can’t have another Gore”. “Never again with that traitor/coward Kerry”. “Dukakis must slink off and his name never mentioned again – what a loser”. Funny how Obama seems to get a pass and isn’t the corrupt, money-hungry, sell out to anyone who gave her a nickel stereotype that Hillary was portrayed as.
And in my opinion Obama (whom I voted for twice) did more to undermine and very likely destroy public education than even the most right wing Republican could have done.
Obama LEGITIMIZED the “who needs no stinking oversight anyway let the market decide” view of charters that is now pervasive in the Democrat party. He looked the other way as Arne Duncan allowed the US DOE to give away money with no strings attached and refuse to speak out if the charters getting money had high attrition rates or were suspending outrageous numbers of low-income minority students.
Obama could have been pro-charter AND pro-oversight. The Democrats should and could have demanded oversight of how federal funds were being spent but instead they completely abandoned it. And that oversight would have led to real data about what works and what doesn’t instead of the fake billionaire-reform funded data in which attrition rates are somehow just not very interesting nor worthy to examine closely.
I don’t see any Democrats except Bill de Blasio who have any grasp of how high scoring charters actually become that way. He is getting attacked for it. If some of the supposedly “progressive” leadership actually spent some time with Black Lives Matter and other groups calling for real transparency and listened to their issues, maybe they would be capable of offering more than the Bernie platitudes that sound so lame that they do more harm than good. If there are any politicians who actually care about education, I’d like to know who they are. And Bernie’s “free college” does not make him someone who cares about education. It just makes him sound like a typical politician making promises that he hasn’t even bothered to educate himself to know will work.
^^In other words, ira shor, you should have said ” Time to build a progressive opposition outside the Democratic Party without which the Democratic Party will surely put up another OBAMA in 2020.
You say Obama, I say Hillary; tomayto, tomahto, let’s call the whole thing off. Anyone who thinks Hillary would have been substantially different than Obama on education hasn’t been paying attention.
Hillary won the nomination. Period.
The question is not whether she would have been better than Obama, but whether she would have been better than Trump
Bernie would have defeated Trump but Wall St speeches, Clinton Foundation and emails made it impossible for her to win. Self inflicted wounds.
AFT supported the Wall St candidate not the workers candidate.
Randi doesn’t get it. If you love public education:
Vouchers are the enemy BUT charters are also ghe enemy. Every last one of them.
Once again, Diane, did you follow the conversation? NYCPSP was most definitely talking about Hillary being better than Obama. That’s what I was responding to. S/he can’t blame every evil in the world on Obama and then turn around and say that Hillary is so wonderful. They are cut from exactly the same cloth.
As for Trump being worse, I’m not so sure about that. He’s vouchers, she would have been charters – I really don’t see the difference. The difference I do see though is that Trump/DeVos are so blatantly odious that people are getting off their backsides and fighting back (with some success too). Had Hillary been elected, she and Randi would have happily gone off charterizing the country (while talking about their undying support for public education) and most people who are currently fighting would have sighed, complained, maybe tried to “educate” Hillary, but ultimately would have gone back to the latest trendy fad.
“Bernie would have defeated Trump but Wall St speeches, Clinton Foundation and emails made it impossible for her to win. Self inflicted wounds.”
Given that the Bernie surrogate Russ Feingold got even FEWER votes than Hillary Clinton did against a right wing Republican who was the tool of the big money, your claim of a Bernie win is based on nothing but wishful thinking.
But I’m sure you believe that crooked Russ Feingold did some corrupt and nasty things just like Hillary that led him to deserve his own “self-inflicted wounds” and he should go slinking off into the sunset for his crimes. And you are sure that Bernie is Christ-like in being impervious to any attacks, unlike the corrupt Feingold who has no one to blame but himself.
I know it was the Wall St. speeches and e-mails that made Hillary worthy of defeat. What did Russ do that made him so deserving and why do you think those people who knew Russ was so corrupt would have voted for Bernie?
“NYCPSP was most definitely talking about Hillary being better than Obama. That’s what I was responding to. S/he can’t blame every evil in the world on Obama and then turn around and say that Hillary is so wonderful. They are cut from exactly the same cloth.”
I’m not blaming every evil in the world on Obama. I blame him for every single thing that his appointee Arne Duncan did to thwart any kind of oversight of charters while directed inordinately high federal dollars their way.
But guilty as charged that I don’t believe that Hillary Clinton would have abandoned absolutely all oversight of charters the way Obama did.
I think there were some “wonderful” things about Obama and there were some “wonderful” things about Hillary and there are some “wonderful” things about Bernie. And there are some flaws with all of them.
Unlike you, I did not see ANYTHING good about Trump and the way he has acted since being elected has done nothing to convince me I was wrong.
Will you despise me as much as you despise Hillary for my beliefs? Or am I like Noam Chomsky and I’m allowed to consort with the enemy without being attacked as being a traitor?
You’ve already acknowledged that Bernie himself is no better than Obama when it comes to public schools and I happen to agree with that. But if Bernie wins the nomination, I won’t be voting for a 3rd party and insisting that another 4 years of Trump will be better than that co-opted Bernie because he is basically pro “public” charter and doesn’t seem at all interested in the issue. Will you?
“But if Bernie wins the nomination, I won’t be voting for a 3rd party and insisting that another 4 years of Trump will be better than that co-opted Bernie because he is basically pro “public” charter and doesn’t seem at all interested in the issue. Will you?”
As you well know, my reasons for voting third party had nothing to do with education – it was a given that there was no good education candidate. Do you really need to hear my list of why I voted third party again? Libya, Honduras, Haiti, “no fly zone” in Syria, TPP, Keystone, fracking, Monsanto, private prisons, …. stop me if you’ve heard this before.
dienne77,
mea culpa. That is a very legitimate list of grievances although I think you fell for some of the fake Bernie bot propaganda about Hillary. There was a good reason that Robert Reich and Bernie and Noam Chomsky and countless others didn’t believe the same kind of “Hillary will hand over this country to neoconservative rich bomb other countries polluters” that you accepted without question.
And the irony is you believed Trump when he opposed some of those things, as if his word was to be trusted and he wouldn’t sell out any idea he claimed to support if it was good for Trump. Do you still believe in him just a little?
“Libya, Honduras, Haiti, “no fly zone” in Syria, TPP, Keystone, fracking, Monsanto, private prisons” — sure Trump will be just dandy on all those issues! And of course why wouldn’t you trust Trump and his minions to conduct the best foreign policy when you just know that Hillary’s foreign policy would have been all about pleasing (insert name of the evil entity Hillary answered to) and not trying to do the right thing for the country she actually loves.
Why wouldn’t you trust Trump on TPP when you just know that Evil Hillary planned to sell out American workers and Bernie and Noam were too stupid to realize it?
Why wouldn’t you trust Trump on “private prisons”? It’s not like he believes in privatization anyway? Of course you wouldn’t want a pro-privatizer like Hillary because her whole life has been devoted to privatization while Trump is “no worse”.
And why not hope that having Trump and DeVos destroy public education will be GOOD for us? Because it will bring opposition! And if that opposition gets rounded up and jailed because you just voted in a party that doesn’t actually believe in free speech or democracy? Which is what happened in Nazi Germany? Will the rest of us pray for some foreign army to bring us back to democracy?
Oh, criminey, NYCPSP, which of those are “fake propaganda”? They’re all extremely well documented (some in Hillary’s own words, which I’m betting you still haven’t read, amiright?).
What still isn’t documented, incidentally, is any proof that “Russia hacked the election!!!”
“Noam Chomsky and countless others didn’t believe the same kind of “Hillary will hand over this country to neoconservative rich bomb other countries polluters” that you accepted without question.”
Haven’t read much Chomsky either, have you?
“And the irony is you believed Trump when he opposed some of those things, as if his word was to be trusted and he wouldn’t sell out any idea he claimed to support if it was good for Trump.”
Man, reading comprehension just isn’t your thing, is it? I’ve said over and over and over and over that Trump is an odious liar. I don’t believe a word he says, including “a”, “and” and “the”. That does not, however, as I’ve also said over and over and over and over again, make Hillary an acceptable candidate. As you well know, I didn’t vote for either one of them. The fact that you keep trying to paint me as a Trump supporter says an awful lot about you, and it’s not good.
Please do yourself a favor and debate honestly or don’t bother debating at all.
BTW, NYCPSP, putting words in people’s mouths and debating them on things they’ve never said is a standard tactic of right-wingers – nearly universal. They learn that technique in their right-wing home school “debate” classes. The fact that you are so fond of that technique makes me seriously question your claimed liberal bona fides.
dienne77,
I know you are not a Trump supporter. But you made it very clear again and again that you thought Hillary was just as bad as Trump and his election was not enough of a problem for you to vote for someone as completely awful as Hillary Clinton.
If you read my posts at all, you will know that I try to acknowledge my mistakes. In a different post I said I was wrong when I implied you supported Trump. I should have said that you believed Trump was no more dangerous to this country than Hillary was.
To be fair, I voted for John Anderson and was just as adamant as you are that Jimmy Carter was a lying right wing sell-out (just like Hillary) and if only Ted Kennedy had beaten him in the primary it would all have been good. A friend begged me to vote for Carter to prevent a win by Reagan but I absolutely knew that I was right about how terrible Carter was. In fact, I used much of the same language you use when you talk about Hillary and how you just couldn’t support her knowing how terrible she is. That’s exactly how I felt about Jimmy Carter. After all, Ted Kennedy, like Bernie, might have endorsed Carter in the end but I knew better than Kennedy.
It took me years to realize how wrong I was about Carter and how I fell for the propaganda that painted Carter as the right wing tool and Ted Kennedy to be the ONLY progressive savior in the Democratic party worthy of my vote. I now see that Carter was a man who made mistakes but tried to be a good person and he certainly wasn’t worthy of the amount of disgust I felt toward him. He might have done some good his 2nd term but we’ll never know. Maybe Carter would have sold us out just like I thought at the time.
I hope someday you will be a big enough person to realize how wrong you were about Hillary. I — and the people like me who kept spouting on about how evil and corrupt and weak Carter was so that it became the popular meme — helped elect Ronald Reagan. And you — and the people like you who kept spouting on about how evil and corrupt and terrible Hillary was — helped elect Trump. Maybe in 30 years you will regret your vote as much as I did. (Actually, I came to regret it much earlier than that. My memory is not good enough to recall if I kept telling my friend that at least Reagan wasn’t as bad as Carter would have been — I probably sounded very similar to you all through Reagan’s first term as I justified my vote.)
Doug Little, no, Sanders would not have beat Trump. You underestimate the vast anti-commie-socialist Bible Belt in this country, whose anti-Sanders propaganda would have been even nastier & more unfair than what they unleashed on Hillary.
Bernie swept states across the nation. Only swing states matter. No Bern would not have won Alabama or Mississippi but he would have won Florida Wisconsin Michigan Pennsylvania and Ohio znd thus the election.
Maybe you didn’t notice socialism is growing rapidly and capitalism is becoming very unpopular.
Doug,
Why would Bernie have won when his surrogate Russ Feingold lost to a right winger by a much larger margin than Hillary lost to Trump?
Your absolutely certainty that this is true mirrors the absolutely certainty that many Trump voters had that Obama was a Kenyan.
Dienne 77: Hear, hear.
Do we need to hear more about how Billary became neoliberals because of McGovern’s defeat? How they decided they needed to re-paint the Dem party w/a ‘NOT-liberal [the kiss of death]’ brush? They abandoned the middle & working-class principles of the Democratic party in the late-’80’s & rode into power on the coat-tails of the Republican party by staking a claim to the right of center– which helped push the whole political machine to the right of center, too close to the libertarian fringe. Hence today we liberals, bizarrely, find ourselves trying to defend public goods such as ed (& health, & environment, & — basic infrastructure?!) against a Republican super-majority whose Speakerof theHouse is a fringe Tea-Partier!
Had Hillary [& I voted for her against nutjob Trump] become President, we would have been in safer hands– but that’s about it. Ed-wise, things would have continued to privatize. QOL-wise, middle & working-class Americans would have continued to nosedive due to automation/ globalism; 1% would perhaps not seen major tax cuts nor relaxing of fed regs, but would have been allowed to continue gradually bulking up as they sucked at the neck of taxpayers.
I fear a Hillary presidency would have allowed the US to continue its downward trajectory. The Trump presidency, to my mind, presents an opportunity for change. He is so in-your-face with contrarion ideals that his presidency has fomented a political conversation that involves the ‘silent majority’. His outrageous, beyond-the-pale conflicts of interest & potentially-impeachable actions have engendered multiple investigations that may bring his presidency down. This could be a good thing: it may draw in its wake an understanding among the populace that polarized politics, with its failure to engender compromise & consensus, cannot govern.
Jesus H. Christ. How did a post on Weingarten’s endorsement of charters devolve into rehashing speculative garbage about Hillary vs. Bernie vs. our Dear Leader?
Why don’t we just speculate about Truman vs. Dewey vs. Wallace vs. Thurmond? It’s about as constructive as this discussion. Can we finally stop this “But Hillary…” crap? Weingarten is the Quisling we have to deal with as Trump/DeVos try to destroy public education.
Early endorsement of HRC part of Randi’s long history of bad judgement. Always too moderate always too complex, appears to all watchers as either unprincipled, or a poor strategic thinker.
Randi is “… either unprincipled, or a poor strategic thinker.”
Or both.
“He looked the other way as Arne Duncan allowed the US DOE to give away money with no strings attached and refuse to speak out if the charters getting money had high attrition rates or were suspending outrageous numbers.”
When a reporter asked Arne why he was following his anti-union/public education course, he said he was just doing what the president told him to do.
I couldn’t agree with you more: Obama was a disaster for public education. Trump/DeVos might just end up being the coup de grace if we don’t get together and stop this madness.
You got this right, dienne77
Why would Randi throw her teachers ‘under the bus’? More charters will cause a loss of teachers jobs/positions. I met a Los Angeles Charter Principal who had just left his job at Gallo Wine and did not have a credential in CA. Yet he was running, and still is, a CA Charter in Hollywood.
Thanks Randi. You should be impeached today.
“Why would Randi throw her teachers ‘under the bus’?”
For the same reason a dog licks his, er, you know. Because they can.
Now you’re talkin my lingo, dienne77
Very disheartening but I can’t say I’m surprised. Saw the writing on the wall when Randi immediately endorsed Hillary, the corporate, pro-charter candidate over the labor-friendly candidate Bernie. Some charter teachers are now talking of unionizing, Randi will now jump on that! No one in power is standing up for true public education, democratic representation, transparency of public spending. All selling out our children and the promise of a equitable education to the highest bidder. We need a true People’s Party.
Bernie supported charters and failed to defund CCSS when he had the chance.
Karen, Bernie, like Hillary (&–no, she didn’t! & probably every other candidate/politician under the sun, except those who were/are actually educators &/or parents/community members {Dyett hunger strikers, for example} who have had extensive communication w/their public school districts) unfortunately, did not REALLY (not shouting–can’t boldface) understand/have all the knowledge he needed to adequately address our issues. Of course, he SHOULD have–we tried to tell his campaign staffers that over & over–talk to TEACHERS & PARENTS. In fact, someone who was a Bernie delegate at the Dem Convention attempted to do just that. If we’d been able to talk to him, he’d have gotten the picture. That having been said, he’s the only one who repeatedly stuck to the issues (pointing out inequities). As Matt Taibbi stated in the excellent, must-read book, Insane Clown President: Dispatches from 2016, Bernie appeared grumpy or grouchy because, unlike most of us, he was thinking–on a DAILY basis– about all the bad things going on in this country (poverty, lack of health care, college debt) that–w/a committed government could, indeed, be ameliorated. When I think of those things, it makes me more than grumpy…it makes me sick.
And I am greatly saddened that none of us were able to get to the source and TELL him about all the evils in education.
All of that being said, Bernie did, recently make a statement against charters.
Despite all of that, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have chosen Randi to be Sec. of Ed. (we educators would have gotten him the message by then!)
How long has he been on the HELP committee in the Senate? Bernie is great on equity issues. Anything else, he can’t seem to be bothered with, including education.
But Bernie IS educable.
I think you’re right. Randi sees opportunity in trying to unionize charters while she sells out those that have paid her salary. She has always been complicit, and even attended the “Broad Academy’s fake school,” to ensure her a seat at the table that is now in Hillary’s attic. https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2014/10/04/weingarten-broad-and-collaborative-privatization/
Somebody needs to tell Randi we don’t want charters unionized, we want them eliminated.
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Ya gotta give it to Randi: though a willing tool and enabler of privatization for two decades, she can always be counted on to sink even lower, and do even more to prostrate herself before the Overclass and its rapacious appetites.
It wasn’t enough that she has betrayed the people paying her generous salary for years, and functioned as an “asset” (re: 2009 Broad Foundation annual report) of Eli Broad’s and his ilk, but apparently she now feels compelled to publicly ally herself with an avowed enemy of public education and s*%t-heel like Jonah Edelman, who can be expected to turn up shortly on another YouTube video, smirking and bragging about how he punked the teacher’s unions yet again.
After all, Edelman knows, even if Randi doesn’t, that charter operators will have their bread buttered on both sides by Trump/De Vos, while crying crocodile tears at how awful they are. Thjey will be vary, very happy to circulating her agreement that charters are “public schools.”
I’d wish shame on her, but that’s pointless since, as with Trump, it’s a waste of time to try to shame the shameless.
Or is it that, having worked tirelessly to ensure that teachers didn’t fight the metastasis of charter schools (in fact, having partnered with crooks like Steve Barr), she now feels the need to distract and misdirect them from the consequences of her malefaction? After all, it’s been obvious for quite a while that charters were the camel’s-nose-under-the-tent for vouchers. Or should have been.
Go away, Randi; just go far, far away, and remain silent for a long time while you ponder your endless duplicity and betrayals. Think of the careers destroyed by what you’ve done, and the resulting misery experienced by schoolchildren, just so you could have the self-aggrandizement of “a seat at the table” with a group of well-dressed, well-spoken pigs.
Public education cannot be rescued and rebuilt from the long destructive looting by the billionaires and their privatization war unless and until the renegade chiefs of the two teacher unions, Randi of AFT and Lily of NEA are ousted and replaced by authentic labor leaders and real advocates for the public sector. The ugly attack on our public schools and colleges is part of the neoliberal dismantling of the public sector and all its goods without which no society can function humanely or democratically.
The teachers of America are several million strong but they have been prevented from using their muscle by their two renegade chiefs and their crony cliques. As agents of the Democratic Party, they will do whatever the Dem insiders want. Hillary and the Dems along with Bernie now in the Dems abandoned public schools for the whole campaign last year. Besides all the teachers being abused and disrespected year after year, there are 50 million families with a stake in public education. This enormous constituency has yet to become a fighting force and won’t until the two self-serving chiefs, their enforcer cliques, and the Democratic Party are finally abandoned for an independent politics of the public good.
Why can’t Randi be ousted? Do the majority of teachers support her?
Randi’s instinct is always to compromise too much. That is why she endorsed HRC against Bernie too early. Bernie would have demolished Trump. She takes the privatized bait every time. Wake the **** up. Vouchers and CHARTERS must be crushed.
Oh please. It has nothing to do with compromising. It has to do with the fact that she’s no dummy. She knows where her bread is buttered.
I’m glad Randi is finally getting honest about what she really believes in. Until the rank and file get smart and replace her with someone who represents them, union leaders like her will continue to cozy up to the corporate Dems, only look out for themselves, and do damage to working people.
What Winegarten is doing is trying to move the Overton window, modifying what is publicly acceptable ( to include charters) by attacking a more fringe idea (vouchers)
Correct but it is a HUGE mistake. This is the DfER position. Surely not the AFT position.
Weingarten seems to believe that she IS the AFT, setting policy and making decisions (eg, about Common Core, testing and Presidential endorsement) unilaterally.
She acts much more like a corporate CEO than a union leader.
SomeDAM Poet,
That’s to be expected from a union who’s ruling caucus (Unity Caucus of the UFT in New York City, and in control of the union for over half a century) demands that initiates sign a loyalty oath, and does not have rank-and-file election of national officers.
Those same loyalty oath-signing delegates to the union convention (since the UFT is the tail that wags the AFT dog) are the ones endlessly re-electing Weingarten.
And, in a classic example of the snake eating its own tail, Randi still has control over the UFT, via her embarrassingly lapdog, Michael Mulgrew.
Best example of Unity rigging: The best predictor of winning an election is incumbency. So how many UFT presidents served out their terms to completion without appointing a “temporary” president to run in the election? Hint: less than 1.
Snakes, tail-wagging dogs and lapdogs: mixed metaphors, but you get the idea…
Randi endorses K-12 privatization (contractor schools).
Hillary-linked think tanks promote Gates’ privatization plot in universities.
If Americans fail to understand that the Democratic hierarchy and some union managers are working with oligarchs to sell off the common goods, they are deaf, dumb and blind. Two-party complicity prolongs the period before revolution, by successfully distracting what independent media remains in the country.
Thank you, Diane, for posting this. How can Randi support a system of schools that is out to bankrupt districts and destroy the union that she herself represents? The teaching profession, if it can still be called a “profession”, is still under assault across the country. The general public still does not understand that high performing states and countries all have highly educated and highly unionized teachers who are well compensated. It’s no surprise that states like California are suffering from teacher shortages and fewer and fewer high school students enrolling in teacher preparation programs.
It’s a recipe for disaster…….charters or vouchers equal unregulated schools that are not subject to any reasonable oversight. Both are under the heading of “privatizing” of education no matter how you look at it.
Well said.
It is important to bring the correct stats to the conversation. I haunt CA comment-threads to ed articles, & find foolish taxpayers who make claims such as ‘we pay the highest per-pupil yet our ed-achievement is 48th’– when in fact CA pays 14% under the US ave per-pupil expenditure (1/2 what we pay in NJ), & they rank 40th… CA taxpayers are right to question why, tho they they pay 14% under the US average– which should rank them at roughly 20th-place, ed-achievement-wise– yet they place 40th out of 50 states.
My guess is, CA pubschs are still diggimg their way out from the devastation of decades+ underfunding consequent to 1978 passage of Prop 13,which cut RE tax funding of pubschs by almost 60%.
Success or lack of it is primarily based on a states poverty rate. Not what it pays for education.
Jonathon Kozak documents in Savage Inequalities the fact that averages are meaningless if some suburbs pay twice as much. In Canada the poorer the school the more money it gets. The richer the school the less it gets.
Nothing Randi does surprises me…. I was there when her UFT allowed teacher grievances to fall by the wayside, and thousands o fnYC’s most experienced, dedicated ‘tenured ‘ teachers’w er introduced to the ‘gotcha’ squads, as local school administrators ran lawless.
http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/2009/03/gotcha-squad-and-new-york-city-rubber.html
UTLA learned from UFT. The same program is in place here. UTLA is 3,000 grievances going back ten years. We thought that this treason was unique but now we find that it’s a broad conspiracy by careerist union leaders. The joke’s on us but the stench is on Randi, Lily and their minions.
I am not a teacher so I do not understand this.
If the rank and file of the union don’t agree with Randi and haven’t for years, why is she still being re-elected?
How exactly do union elections work? It doesn’t sound very democratic to me. Where are the people coming up to challenge this?
As an AFT member, I have never had the chance to vote on AFT president. To be honest, I would like to know how this works myself.
Isn’t that a problem if the AFT members themselves don’t know how it works?
Most unions elect at conventions
As mentioned above, the AFT is controlled by the UFT’s Unity Caucus, the “political party” that controls the NYC local and the national union, and which requires incoming members to sign a loyalty oath requiring them to follow all Caucus directives and policies.
Observing the groupthink that goes on at a Unity-dominated UFT Delegate Assembly or national convention, and the shambolic facsimile of democracy therein, is a very dispiriting experience.
Those loyalty oath signers are the ones who keep electing Weingarten, and slitting the throats of their colleagues. In exchange, some of them get after-school jobs at the union, and annual trips to Schenectady or Utica, all in exchange for their integrity and independence.
Most unions are controlled by a faction. Nothing undemocratic about it. Our government is controlled by a faction known as the GOP. Sometimes if is controlled by the other one. Democratic?
Yes, Doug, but this faction has had One-Party State control of the union for over half a century, since its very inception, and demands that its members sign a loyalty oath, which the even the Dims and Repugs don’t do; that’s a huge qualitative and quantitative difference.
What Michael Fiorillo just described does not sound like one member one vote to me.
On the other hand, I guess it’s possible that Weingarten represents the majority of union teachers whose views are different than the posters on here. It’s just that looking at the comments it seems like no one supports her so it’s hard to believe that she keeps her job.
Randi’s actions come as no surprise to any teachers union (UFT) member who has experienced the Weingarten and, now, Mulgrew regimes within the Unity Caucus.
Michael’s assessment is spot on. He’s got another more detailed description of how the Unity Caucus has undermined the democratic process in our union, further down in this thread.
Thank you – I just read that comment.
I’m sorry that it works that way — I can’t imagine how frustrating that must be for the teachers in the trenches (so to speak). And it’s very sad if Weingarten and Mulgrew are too lazy or co-opted to listen to the teachers who they are supposed to represent.
And I remember Jonah Edelman coming to Denver in 2009 and telling me all I had to do to earn Stand for Children’s support for my reelection was to denounce teacher protections, in other words bash the union. Since that time in Denver SFC or as many of call it Stand on Children has put in hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect board members and legislators who support 12 years of educational so-called reform failures. What a shame Randi has done this.
How disturbing! Stand for Children went to Memphis and paraded around like they were for all children, visiting public schools and talking sweetly to parents. Even collecting donations from them! They got their endorsed candidates onto the powerful so-called unified school board. Look at Memphis now with the Achievement School District charters that do a terrible job. SFC want nothing but charter schools. Nashville rejected their candidates even though they spent 200K on the election. And there was an ethics probe. Don’t let Stand for Children into your school district. They are all about privatization.
Democrats keep losing ground on public education.
They’re now fighting to keep basic civil rights protections in place. They gave away everything else.
They’ve already lost on vouchers. Their opposition is pure posturing. They’ll make some garbage deal where they’ll get token funding for preschool or something and ed reform will get their vouchers.
You watch.
The decision has already been made on vouchers. They’re bickering over terms of the deal- charters will get their cut, vouchers will get their cut, and kids in public schools will get screwed.
Is there a link?
Between Randi and Betsy?
Both are at the top of pyramids.
Both are top pyramids and top pyra-sites . . .
Kinda like Betsy at the top of her pyramid (scheme that is).
I said before Trump won that Democrats would fold on vouchers and you’re now watching that capitulation take place.
It’s all over but the shouting. They lost this battle when they redefined “public” to mean “publicly funded”.
There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Democratic Party and Jeb Bush on education.
It really sucks that children in public schools have such lousy advocates.
Since January the entire elite education discussion has revolved around vouchers. If it isn’t vouchers it’s vouchers vs charters.
90% of children are utterly and completely ignored. It’s a shame. They deserve an advocate in government. They’re very poorly served.
Is anyone discussing the unfashionable public school sector at the education writers conference?
It would be pretty remarkable if “education writers” excluded children who attend public schools, but then “education advocates” already do, so maybe not so remarkable.
Why is anyone surprised?
It’s nice that there are so many paid charter advocates in powerful positions, but would it be too much to ask to get one adult who supports public schools?
They can still cheerlead charters. All it would mean is public school children have an advocate like charters and vouchers do.
We could hire one. You could probably raise enough online to pay one for a year. They won’t get what these two get- we’re not talking about paying anyone half a million, but you could pay a decent wage.
There has to be one adult in the US who loves public schools like ed reformers love charters and private schools. I want that kind of advocate. A real one.
The issue of Randi Weingarten is not simply “another” one of our problems, or a “complication,” or a “frustration” for working teachers…..
The issue of Randi Wengarten is at the VERY CENTER of organized teachers thus-far losing battle against privatizers and reformers.
I have loudly said for years that we as organized teachers will do nothing but lose until we are an extinct species, unless we clean our own house first and make our labor organizations the first, loudest, and most aggressive antidote to any reform thinking at all. That Randi Weingarten remains in place is evidence that we have not done this even a little.
What will it take? I’m sure this won’t do it.
Removing her from the field very loudly would be an enormous rallying cry for organized teachers and may begin the process.
But i doubt it. A minority of public school teachers even know who she is, or even have a grasp on the reality of public school privatization. My colleagues beg like whipped sheep for more technology in their classrooms. Fools all.
Randi remains and likely will remain in place, being a daily reminder to us that we are losing, and losing at a pace that accelerates daily.
Worst decision of my life….doing this whole teacher thing. Looks like myself and a few hundred thousand of my contemporaries will be left high and dry career wise.
Randi Weingarten. Just a symbol of how things crumble….
Pig.
Would you like fries with that?
Wait….. Here’s an idea…..
Diane,
Will you call for Randi to step down, loudly and publicly, here on this site, citing her support for charters as the last straw and how she is now, at long last, an acknowledged opponent of working, organized public school teachers?
That would help us.
Can you?
You are the loudest voice on our side.
Please.
If not, please tell us why Randi belongs heading the AFT and being the defacto representative for organized teachers.
Thank you.
NYSTeacher,
Two topics I don’t touch.
1) personal grievances by teachers, because I don’t know all the facts
2) decisions about who should lead the unions, because that is best settled by their members.
I had to try!
Your policy regarding the unions makes sense, Diane, but is undermined by the fact that UFT elections are so gerrymandered that it’s virtually impossible for non-Unity caucus members to be elected to officer positions, even when they win the popular vote.
For example, at one time NYC teachers elected officers by division: the elementary teachers only voted for elementary VP, and so on. That was until an opposition caucus candidate actually won the high school division in the ’90’s. Unity made it impossible for the electee to do his job, and then switched to at-large voting, whereby division VPs are elected by the entire membership (the strongest opposition to Unity has always been in the high schools, weakest in elementary schools).
Consequently, the top vote-getter for High School VP among high school teachers in the last election was the laudable James Eterno, but the Unity candidate still sits in that office.
Attend and observe a UFT Delegate Assembly some time, and you will be shocked by the lack of democratic process. When Randi was UFT head, she did an excellent job of maintaining the form of democracy, while undermining its substance. Her successor, the embarrassing Michael Mulgrew (who often doesn’t show up for union Executive Board meetings, or at most attends for a few minutes), doesn’t even bother. Unity minions, focused solely on those after-school union gigs and trips to Syracuse, couldn’t seem to care less.
Michael,
Do you really think a statement from me would change the union?
No, Diane, not at all, and I was not asking you to do so. I posted the comment for the benefit of the readership.
And it was perfect, Michael. Accurate and informative. Much appreciated, brother.
I’m a UFT member of many years and have worked in management, outside of the world of education, as well. I know how the game is played on both sides of the fence. We do have representation, which is important…but this game is rigged. Has been for some time, now.
Thank you very much, gitapik.
RW is reprehensible.
Deplorable?
As a long time UFT member I always felt she was merely an opportunist that thoroughly betrayed the membership.
To the pont made in K. Wolfe’s comment above, I saw this today:
http://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25920011&item=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.edweek.org%2Fv1%2Fblog%2F62%2F%3Fuuid%3D65567
I ordinarily do not defend neolibs like Randi. However, in this case, I can see, possibly, why she called charters public schools. Her argument is more powerful to reformsters when made in cooperation with education sycophant Jonas Edleman. That line might have been his. Randi is still backstabby and either duplicitous or gullible, but this op-ed in the Times was a general positive. Vouchers are the worst idea conceivable.
Too cute by half.
Are you ready to give up on her now? Did the Democrats learn nothing from this past election??
No, Jackie, no, they did not.
Oh, but they did learn something, something extremely important.
They learned that all of their previous bodily fluids are being sapped and impurified by the Sandernistas.
I’ll do anything, anything, to maintain my Purity of Essence!
Especially since Putin is determined to take it from me!
I’ve said before on this blog – and have been chastised for it – that Randi Weingarten has been a day late and a dollar short on everything related to school ‘reform’ and the Common Core. The NEA has been no better. Both have sold teachers down the river.
Let me remind readers that Weingarten penned an article with “Hurricane Vicki” Phillips of the Gates Foundation in which they said (falsely) that it was critical for American public education to “align teacher development and evaluation to the Common Core state standards.”
This was the NEA position statement on Common Core:
“NEA believes the Common Core State Standards have the potential to provide access to a complete and challenging education for all children. Broad range cooperation in developing these voluntary standards provides educators with more manageable curriculum goals and greater opportunities to use their professional judgment in ways that promote student success.”
Say what?
Even worse, the NEA’s chief policy analyst repeated the nonsense spewed by the corporate “reformers.” She said “Students need the knowledge and skills that will prepare them for…our global economy.”
As I’ve noted, the U.S. already IS internationally competitive, and when we drop in the World Economic Forum’s competitive rankings it’s because of stupid economic policy choices that piled up big deficits and debt and plunged the nation into the Great Recession. The corporate-style “reformers” –– from ExxonMobil to the Waltons, from Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan to State Farm and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, from GE and IBM to Microsoft and Intel –– supported all of those stupid (but for them, very lucrative) policy choices. And they are all lobbying quite hard for more of the same.
When the top teacher representatives don’t do their homework, and resort to reciting bad “research” and inane pronouncements, then teachers and public education truly are in trouble.
+1000
Well said and please see my post, below.
Yeah, democracy, & the NEA pulled the same early endorsement trick–& you wouldn’t believe the colorful NEA magazine covers & inserts all HRC, all the time.
But the great Mass. Teachers Assn. reputed the endorsement, as did the NJEA & 2 other NEA state affiliates (Rhode Island, maybe, & can’t think of the other).
& amen to your last paragraph, democracy.
I’m a Sanders Istanbul for sure. First Debbie WS and Donna B cheated the nomination.
Second poll after poll said Bernie would beat Trump but that with HRC it would be much more risky. Ignored by Dem idiots.
Leading fool Randi W. Trump is on people like her.
Oh God spell checker. Sandernista
Sometimes diplomacy is nothing more than giving time for the opposition to reload. This isn’t the time for our union leadership to be making alliances with the enemy. We already did that with Gates. Making charter schools part of the “new normal” is, imo, a very bad choice. We have no fight, anymore.
Ms. Weingarten clearly has no idea how devastating the impact of charters has been in some places!
Randi is a very intelligent person. She understands what she’s doing.
If there’s a method to her madness, I’d love to know what it is. As is, all I’m seeing is the madness. If she thinks we’re “keeping up with the times”, my take is that she’s selling us out.
“Mess ed in her madness”
There’s method in her madness
And madness in her method
A mess ed kind of badness
The baddest kindly mess ed
“kind of”, not “kindly”
DAM self correct
Got it, but good that you corrected for posterity’s sake, Poet.
BTW: I had an idea for a verse that you might be interested in. I’m more a musician, so if you get a moment (or more) (and apologies to Mr Dylan):
Masters of Spin
Come ye masters of spin
Who design all the tests
that bring tears to the eyes
as the kids do their best.
But the best it ain’t nothin’
‘cuz the grit that they lack
is draggin’ ’em down
and it’s breakin’ their back.
That’s a start, I guess. Only 423 more verses to go…
dienne 77, I liked some of the comments I read by you, and wholeheartedly agreed. I did not read this whole thread, but thank you for what I did read.
Copy that, just! Dienne is a treasure–&–correct me if I’m wrong, Dienne, but you’re not a teacher, right?
Know you’re a parent, & it’s just a pleasure that you are so outspoken
& knowledgeable.
Thank you for sharing your infinite wisdom w/us, here, in this blog.
Weingarten gets paid about ten times what the average teacher does in the US.
It’s all about money and power for her.
People should have expected as much. She got a master’s from Cornell’s ILR school, where she learned to manipulate union members to “compromise”with management.
And–correct me if I’m wrong–but isn’t she a lawyer?
I believe she spent very little time as a teacher.
She had a substitute’s license for a couple of years, and had a cushy job for six months in a Brooklyn high school.
Don’t ever believe a thing she says about teaching or education, since like the so-calledreformers she enables, she’s a colonizer, as well.
She gets a double pension, too, all paid for by the members she reliably betrays
Charter schools have an unfair advantage
Instead of providing interventions for troubled students they get to send them to back to public schools, so they can deal with the child’s issues. If you are special needs no can’t teach to you either. Special Ed no can’t teach to you either If you are on basic or above then yep we maybe able to teach to you, but our teachers are not all certified so we will do our best if not public school will take you back but we already spent your money so good luck with the funding.
I think Randi Weingarten is two-faced fool. One cannot stand for public education and destroy the means that delivers it. I see her as worse than DeVos. At DeVos openly hates teachers. Here we have the one who represents us???