The notorious billionaire Koch brothers have decided to target K-12 public schools. This fits neatly with their decades-long campaign to destroy public programs like Social zsecurity, Medicare, and anything else that taxes their ample pockets for the benefit of the common good.
Jeff Bryant writes here about the assemblage of Dark Money that includes not only the Kochs, but the DeVos family and nearly 700 others willing to put $100,000 into a common fund to destroy democratic institutions.
It is not surprising that rabid libertarians want to ruin the commonwealth.
The question, however, is what the Democrats will do about it. Will they join the Kochs and DeVos to support charters and choice? Will they defend public schools?
Given the abysmal record of the Obama administration, it seems that the people have to fight for their schools and not wait for a political savior.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Concern about Pie$”
Piece$ of the public pie$
“Races” to the public dollar$
Common Core and other lie$
Pearsonalie$ the charter “scholars”
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$cholar$
Apologie$.
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If the Democrats are awake and listening, they will make the connection between their recent victories In Virginia and other states and the support of candidates that ran in support of public education. There is a strong parent and community backing for strong public education. These groups are rejecting the radical right wing and neoliberal Democrats that want to destroy public education. If Democrats want to win election, they need to unequivocally support public schools.
The merit of “choice” being sold to unsuspecting people is a lie. It is simple an enticing marketing ploy to get people to give up their democratic rights and toss them into the fake marvelous marketplace. In education we understand that schools do the choosing, not students. In healthcare insurance companies do the choosing as well. Choice is no solution; it is a Pandora’s box of winners and losers, with most of us losing.
As for the big union resistance, this is a joke. Unions are a paper tiger. The unions are great for a speech or some words of “wisdom;” but do not expect much action from them. They are sitting on the sidelines watching their membership get kicked to the curb. They are waiting for survivors so they can “sell” them on the union, and they do not seem to care if the survivors work in public schools or charters.
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So what would you have those Unions do . This ought to be good . Keep in mind this assault is not only on Public Schools . The NLRA is being dismantlement as well.
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I would like to see them work with parent and social justice groups and protest. I would also like to see them actively backing teachers when their contracts are violated.
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dismantle public service unions, dismantle public services…
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The Koch brothers’ 700 cronies contributed $100,000 each PER YEAR. That’s $70 million dollars… more than twice the $32 million the AFT and NEA gave to campaigns in 2016! And while that list is not available to the public, I’m guessing that some on that list might own newspapers and TV stations. The unions DO need to push back harder against the neoliberals in the Democratic Party, but they will never have a megaphone as big as the Koch brothers.
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Nancy Maclean explains it beautifully in her book “Democracy in Chains”.
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hopefully Democrats have read “Dark Money”, “The Great Suppression” and “Democracy in Chains” to understand that this is a strategy and has been in the works for over 50 years — since Brown vs Board of Ed. Dems must learn the history that has led us to where we are today.
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Actually this brings me back to one of my earlier posts on this blog: The main problem our country faces is the extraordinary concentration of income & wealth that empowers the wealthiest to control government against the wishes of the majority. What is happening to public education is one symptom of that wealth concentration.
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Union resistance is a joke. Randi Weingarten was in bed with the likes of Bill Gates and Eli Broad. That’s why I have mixed emotions about the Janus case that will come up in the Supreme Court.
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Yes, supporters of public schools must fight the likes of the Kochs and De Vos, the federal DOE, and corrupt state and local elected officials.
Worst of all, they also must battle the teachers unions, which have defamed themselves by collaborating with those who would destroy the public schools and the profession of teaching.
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I support public schools. I don’t understand how I am supposed to “battle teachers unions”. Isn’t that something the teachers themselves have to do? If I battle them, how is that helping?
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“The Weingarten”
The wine is very nice
In garden, with some ice
And rubbing elbows too
Is what I like to do
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So you are willing to destroy the only institution capable of organizing resistance to Oligarchy because the resistance they offered was inadequate.
The model Weingarten was following is known in the labor movement as the “value model” . Yes our members are more expensive but they are well trained and produce more. ” The quality remains long after the cost is forgotten” Thus we are willing to work with employers to see that they get all the benefits from our highly skilled workforce and insure that all workers produce.
So Janus is a continuation of an assault that started with Taft Hartley in 1947 and Landrum Griffin in 1959 . Two laws that were designed to cripple Labor and have worked well. The provisions that enabled Right to Work were the least of the damage done . The banning of secondary boycotts stopped Unions from joint efforts against an employer and his clients in an official capacity . Landrum Griffin made Labor leaders and their Unions directly responsible for any violence in a labor dispute. .Using RICO statues to treat it as racketeering. Angry worker in a 10 month strike who throws a brick through a window could cost a union Tens of thousands in legal bills. And embroil the leadership in a criminal prosecution.
So if not the “value model” that leaves the resistance model . Are the members ready to resist . You may want to go back through history to see what that resistance looked like .
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And it left labor in a position of relying on Politics to protect them . While they could not compete with the money from the oligarchy and starting in 68 then 80 ,could not assure that they delivered the vote.
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If the union stands on the sidelines while “valued employees” get fired due to VAM or any other “reform” garbage like depersonalized learning, how are they supporting their membership, you know, the people that pay dues?
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The “Value” model Weingarten followed in my opinion was first and foremost preserving her & Unity’s power in the UFT. I agree with you about Taft-Hartley etc. but I recall Randi Weingarten using the transit workers strike as an example of the failure of strikes. Fact: The transit strike resulted in the city/state give-back of virtually all their demands on workers for a new contract. The vote however failed because other transit leaders were opposed to the current president and convinced the workers to reject even the new proposals that eliminated almost all give-backs (I don’t recall what it/they were but I’m fairly that only one or two minor ones remained). So in essence the strike succeeded but was then defeated by its own leadership.
The UFT will lose a lot of money if Janus succeeds. The UFT and other unions will have to show good reason for peole to join and pay dues.
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Understand that unions would not stand on the sidelines if they thought that the membership would stand by the union. . Are the teachers willing to do what spectrum workers have done in NYC are they willing to walk a picket line for 10 months . While strike breakers were brought in from out of town . Are they willing to chip in 2 % of their wages throughout the AFT or a region to support those strikers.
Wake me and let me know . The leadership knows exactly where the membership stands that is why they are forced into these positions . And Randy knows the History of the UFT and probably the current temperature as well . Since PATCO Unions have had an aversion to strikes . That is changing slowly.
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“So you are willing to destroy the only institution capable of organizing resistance to Oligarchy because the resistance they offered was inadequate.”
If that is what has to happen in order for new, vibrant organizations to take the reins of leadership that the NEA and AFT have abdicated, so be it.
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Starting a war to replace the AFT or NEA would be counterproductive in two democratic organizations. Since both are democratic institutions, it would work much better to use the members’ votes to bring about change within those organizations from the bottom up.
Both the AFT and NEA are national organizations with state and local unions branches making up the national tree. Each state votes for its leade5rship and each local votes for theirs.
Getting rid of AFT or NEA and creating a new organization is the same reason that the Koch brothers and ALEC want to hold a Constitutional convention and rewrite the U.S. Constitution to turn it into a document that represents their “extreme” conservative, fascist, autocratic, theocratic, view of what libertarianism means.
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I think it is ironic that you could substitute “Democratic Party” for “teachers unions” and have the exact same debate.
Is the way to reform “destroying” them?
(FYI – that is certainly what the school reformers seem to believe about struggling urban public school systems.)
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Nobody wants to destroy unions. We want them to represent their membership better Unions should be more proactive when members are being fired for some “reform” baloney. They should public a full roster of pro-education candidates in state and local elections to help members select more public school friendly candidates. I know this didn’t work with Hillary, but there are many more offices at stake.
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Unions cannot hinder personnel actions. Unions enforce contracts that include the right to “due process,” which is not an outrageous concept in a democracy. Our legal system is based on it. There is a designated procedure to follow. In the red states people can be fired at will. This can lead to nepotism and favoritism rather than quality of work.
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“What the Democrats are doing”
The Democrats are doing
Exactly as they planned
The teachers they are screwing
And public schools are damned
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I’ll probably get my head handed to me on a silver platter by posting this here, but c’ést la vie!
First let me say that I support the concept of unions for teachers. Society has underpaid teachers since Day 1, and, if not for unions, the situation would undoubtedly be worse. Also, teachers do get in situations where they are unfairly accused and need union help to defend themselves. No question about either of those points. Finally, as Diane has written repeatedly, many top-performing countries such as Finland have teachers unions. I have read about the history of the labor movement, and capitalist offenses against workers have been egregious.
Those points granted, why doesn’t anyone ever ask the simple question as to why such frustration boiled up against public schools in the first place? Diane has addressed this problem in her books and has blamed the situation on poverty, especially in urban schools. I taught some classes in this kind of environment, with students on parole and other issues, and I know how hard it is for teachers to succeed in this kind of environment. I also know how parents can blame teachers for problems originating from their own families and environments.
All of this granted, when one talks to faculty one-on-one it always seems that teachers know the staff in their school who should no longer be teaching, but these people seem to go on forever, and this is always a sore point that parents zero in on. Telling them that we can’t educate their kids because of their poverty is not going to make them go away happy!
From the standpoint of humanity, I can understand why it is completely cruel to subject a teacher to a stressful work environment and then throw them out on the street when they are crushed by it. Schools need to find alternate employment for such cases, if not within the district, then possibly provide transition assistance to a different career.
Quite some time ago I asked Diane about solutions that she has seen to this problem, and she cited a peer-review program that she observed in Maryland that apparently had buy-in by all parties.
I have been told that, in our local district, it takes on average about four years to resolve a personnel issue.
I will be the first to admit that I do not have the years of experience that Diane and a few others on this blog do. I am a reasonable person who will admit the error of his ways if provided with information showing why my position above is wrong.
Until that happens, I think the best way that public schools can regain the public’s confidence and can get parents back on their side is to find a way to address this problem. I know that Diane always cites opinion polls claiming that the public always supports their own schools, saying that they are great and that the problem lies with other schools, because they have been barraged with falsehoods about the failure of public education. While there is some truth to that statement, I do not think it is the whole story. There are intelligent people on both sides of this debate. Problems do not get solved when people keep saying that their side is completely right and the other side’s case has no basis in fact. By doing so, both sides go to extremes and the center falls apart.
We don’t have to look very far these days to see the truth of this observation.
So, dear readers, go ahead and pile on!
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PS – the unions clearly have it in their ability to address this issue and improve their public image. What, if anything, are they doing about it?
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Blame unaccountable administrators, not teachers. With the VERY few “bad teachers” I have worked with, teachers (and parents, and students) HAVE been complaining to administration, both school and district. But there’s no system for accountability for administration, so they just sweep all of the complaints under the rug. This is especially true when the bad teacher is a relative of someone in power, which happens more than you think.
I’ll bet my next paycheck that this is the case for the vast majority of teachers. We don’t want a lousy teacher in our faculty–it destroys the reputation of all of us.
Blaming teachers is a red herring, and I think you’re using it as a way to scapegoat teachers and to destroy public education and unions.
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I’m addressing the blame at unions, not at teachers.
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And I completely agree with your comment “I’ll bet my next paycheck that this is the case for the vast majority of teachers. We don’t want a lousy teacher in our faculty–it destroys the reputation of all of us.”
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Do others agree that these rare cases are due to the administration in the majority of cases??
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In my experience able teachers resent and do complain about poor teachers. My Social Studies department had two teachers not yet tenured and asked the principal to not grant tenure based on numerous observations and student complaints. Among the people who requested that tenure not be granted was the chapter leader of the union. Nevertheless the principal gave both tenure.
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Why?
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Threatened Out West — how can administrators be made more accountable for failing to address the problem of “bad teachers”?
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Administrators should be expert teachers. I believe expert teachers know what to look for, how to develop it, and care about students enough to get rid of anyone who harms their educations. Administrators should not be testing data analysts who care about data, as they are in many places today.
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Agreed! So how do we implement that requirement?
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Nothing to pile on about. You are essentially saying that the problem is bad teachers. That’s exactly what Bill Gates, Koch brothers, Eli Broad and their ilk want people to think. The vast majority of teachers to a credible job. Some don’t and some are exceptional, as in any field. To say that the small percentage who should not be in the classroom are what causes bad publicity and lack of support for public schools is ludicrous. What causes lack of support of public schools is nothing more than the fact that they are public schools. I suggest you read “Democracy in Chains” by Nancy Maclean.
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One more clarification – I am not saying that public education is “failing” because of “bad teachers.” I agree with Diane’s statements that poverty and the high U.S. income inequality are far more significant causes. However, the Koch brothers et al. seize on the “bad teachers” issue because they know it will elicit a sympathetic response from people who may be aghast at their other positions. Consequently, IMHO the best way to defeat them is to address this issue proactively and take it away from them!!!
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You are missing an important point: The Koch brothers, et al, are unalterably opposed to public education, period. There is no taking away an avenue of attack such as “bad” teachers. If every bad teacher was removed and students were all high performing the Koch’s and their allies would still hammer endlessly that public schools are failing. Nancy Maclean points out in her book that The Koch’s and their allies know there political goals would not be supported by the majority of voters so deception became the norm. In other words tell the public that you want to improve public education with “reform” when the goal all along is to eliminate it. Or, tell the public that Social Security is broken and needs reform to make it “sustainable” when in actuality they want to kill it.
There is no accomodating them. They are absolutely opposed to compromise as a general rule.
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I agree completely that the Koch’s have an ideology that we can not compromise with. That does not lead to the conclusion that we should not address a problem that aggravates the public. Yes, the Kochs would continue to hammer away, and I am not missing that point. However, they would have a much harder time convincing people with their propaganda.
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I would much rather have problems addressed by people who are sympathetic to public education than have it fall apart and have solutions imposed on it by the Koch brothers.
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My niece is taking physics in a public school.
The physics teacher regularly calls people in the class stupid and retarded (her exact words)
The administration is well aware of this.
Is the fact that the teacher is allowed to continue doing this the fault of the union?
Or is it the fault of the administration?
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EXACTLY!!!! We, as teachers, have NO power to “stop” these VERY few “bad teachers.” Neither we, nor our unions, have ANY power to hire and fire.
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All good points!
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But unions do have the power to hinder personnel actions…
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And this teacher is actually far from incompetent.
My niece’s class is the intro class, but the teacher also teaches AP physics and has had very good results in the past with her students (one team won a statewide competition a few years back)
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Then it sounds like you have just answered the question – the adminstration puts up with a bad situation to keep up test scores ☹️…?!?
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I clearly don’t know. You’ll have to tell me and I am not trying to be “cute” here. On the surface, it sure sounds like the administration is at fault, but is that possibly because they have tried to do something to correct a similar problem in the past and were stymied by the union? “Threatened Out West”’s point about the administration being to blame in most cases may very well be correct, but I have not heard this issue raised often before, and I have never heard a parent cite it as the reason their kids were being negatively impacted.
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I would argue that there are many things that can be done in a case like this that do not involve firing.
As I indicated, I don’t think an effort to fire would even succeed because it’s actually not a case of incompetence — t least not of the teacher. I can’t say the same for the principal who allows this to continue.
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I have heard of similar cases to yours where the administration did act, and the teacher calmed down – at least for a while.
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Actually, the competition that the team coached by the teacher won actually involved a lot of creative problem solving. It was not a test in the standard sense.
I don’t know whether the union defended the ” right vof the teacher to call students stupid and retarded, but I somehow find that implausible.
But dumber things have happened so I can’t be sure.
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I would hope the union would not defend such a case, so I agree with you here. But if that is the case and remedies short of firing might solve this issue without the union being a roadblock, why specifically do you think the principal has done nothing?
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There is one more part to this story.
This teacher normally does not teach the “lower level” class, but was effectively assigned this class as a punishment for something she said to a student last year.
I guess the principal showed that teacher!
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This all sounds like a case of “adults” behaving immaturely unfortunately…
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As the old saying goes,”You can’t legislate morality.” Or civility unfortunately…
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The teacher is obviously very petulant, but i’d say it’s more than immaturity on the part of the administrator.
He should have known that his “solution” of teaching her a lesson would very likely backfire.
It does not take a psychological genius to see that.
It’s clear who got “schooled” and it ain’t the teacher!
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There is a reason I call administrators “adminimals”, meaning minimal critical thinking, major following the herd in implementing educational malpractices/fads.
As a supervisor of union clerical positions at the UMC hospital pharmacy, I had to do all the necessary diligence in documenting the problems that an alcoholic clerk had that contributed to his not doing the job properly. He had been passed on from university department to department over twenty years without anyone doing what needed to be done. We did our best to try to get him counseling, help, etc. . . but he refused. It took about three months but we finally got him dismissed.
Now I give that story as a background to what I have seen from administrators who, because they choose not to do that due diligence allow the very few “bad” teachers to hang around. At the same time, I have been targeted by administration many times in my teaching career for having questioned, challenged the malpractices they were instituting. And the Missouri NEA did hardly anything, mainly having a rep show up for any meeting that I had with the administration to prevent the admins from completely lying through their teeth when “writing me up”. But they certainly didn’t stand by me as they suggested that “I move on to a different district”. You see the MNEA has administrator members and those members are believed to be demigods whose word is taken over the teachers. So. . . . . .
For me it’s not a matter of bad teachers, it’s an adminimal problem.
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David Kristofferson,
In my experience as a parent, every time I believe that a teacher is completely incompetent and awful and so do the parents I am friendly with, I end up getting the surprise of my life.
Because it will turn out that some of the parents I don’t know all that well actually adore that teacher. They think that teacher is terrific for their kid. They think that teacher is the best teacher ever.
Sometimes those differences of opinions result from parents coming from different backgrounds and cultures.
But sometimes those differences of opinions are because their kids either love or hate the teacher.
One teacher does nothing but assign stupid work and one kid is bored and constantly complains and his parents know the teacher is incompetent.
That same teacher does nothing but assign stupid work and one kid likes not having to work very hard and all the fun things they get to do in class instead of learning and gets an A and loves that teacher. The parent thinks the teacher is great.
And exactly the opposite can happen:
One teacher teaches work at a very advanced level and the students looking for a challenge love it and thrive and their parents adore the teacher. Meanwhile that very same teacher is impatient with the students who struggle and makes them feel humiliated by their learning deficits and flounder and their parents hate the teacher.
Your mileage may vary.
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David: the problem with your post is that you frame the negative view of public schools in terms of teacher failure. You have framed public perception within a perspective that is limited in its vision.
Public education evolved from various attempts to satisfy the need to have a public that can perform tasks necessary for stable government. One influence was the Napoleonic success with the lycee during his attempted reforms in the wake of the reign of terror and the wars against the revolution. He was decidedly successful in his efforts to produce reliable social servants to administer government. Seeing this, the rest of the world actively contemplated how their educational system might work in a similar way for them.
In this country, public schools emerged as the paradigm for providing this service. By 1920, a sort of standard had emerged that saw schools with yearbooks and plays and sports teams. These developments paralleled other national trends including massive migration to the industrial north and the entrenchment of Jim Crow in a much more slowly developing south.
Because of this, public schools were mostly the game in town when de-segregation occurred. This led those severely impacted by the political struggles during that period to blame schools for the problems that occurred. As public schools and their unions advocated for programs to help segments of the population previously ignored or discriminated against, the part of the public began to blame the schools and the teachers for needing revenue for programs. Still, there was a tendency for the national politicians to ignore education since it was a state matter. Then the fall of communism robbed the republicans of their wedge issue. Soviet Russia died in1991. Five years later, Bob Dole called out the teacher’s union in his acceptance speech at the republican convention.
Ever since then, the attempt to drive a wedge between the population and its teachers has been the goal of the Republican Party. With the election of Obama, the Democrats joined the chorous.
Why do we not wring our hands about getting rid of incompetent nurses, doctors, priests, or policemen? Because it is more politically successful to go after teacher unions. They sound big and bad to voters.
Of course there are bad teachers. I might be one, I do not know. There will always be people whose chosen calling does not fit the mold. But this is not the real reason public schools are the whipping boy. For that look no farther than the fall of communism.
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Thank you, Ray, for taking this seriously enough to compose such a detailed history of the problem. I was not aware of the Napoleonic connection, but was aware of most of what you wrote about the events in the U.S.
I would take slight issue with your word choice in your opening paragraph regarding my framing the issue in terms of “teacher failure.” This makes it sound as if I am down on all teachers. This is definitely not the case. I have agreed with others in several places in this comments section that such teachers represent a very small fraction of the profession.
My points stem not from some grand historical theme, but simply from my own experience, from talking directly to the parents of students whom I tutor during my retirement, and from participating in other conversations in my local area. Since I am no longer in a position to grade or retaliate against their kids, people are more inclined to speak their mind to me.
As I have stated elsewhere on this blog and on my own blog, there are two recurring themes from these parental discussions in my area:
1) the negative impact that curriculum experimentation has on students and
2) the difficulty of being able to take any action when students are impacted by bad teaching.
While solving poverty is clearly NOT directly in the power of the teaching profession, it is possible (albeit difficult) to address these two issues.
I can assure you that the public would be very grateful if these problems were addressed and would therefore be much less susceptible to right-wing propaganda against public education.
When under threat of attack, a wise general will seek out and strengthen the weak points in his defense, not make excuses for them and thereby allow the enemy to exploit them.
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David: I return the thanks. I see what you are saying about addressing the problems we have and not trying to solve the poverty problem or whatever else exists. That said, my experience has been that the good promising young teachers eventually find their way out of schools that are a tough job, making their way into a sustainable position where the kids are responsive and the problems fewer. Inner city and rural schools have to take chances with unknown quantities. This leaves administration between bad decisions if they do not think a teacher is doing a good job. You can get rid of someone borderline, but get someone incompetent if the job market is good. The same is true of administration, which tends to be a local politics job.
My experience suggests the real problem is getting and keeping good people, not getting rid of bad ones.
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I agree that retaining good new teachers is a bigger problem, Roy. One step that could improve retention is to stop dumping the hardest classes to teach on the newest teachers. If seniority is used to grab all the “good” classes for older teachers who have “paid their dues” and “earned” the right to teach the good students, we shouldn’t be surprised that new teachers who usually have the hardest time with classroom management give up and move on to other jobs. New teachers would be more inclined to stay if they didn’t feel that they were being dumped on by their seniors.
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Very true
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These billionaires are out to destroy public education. We the ordinary folks must stand up for or Public Schools!
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I agree with some of your points. I don’t believe that teachers have lost the public’s confidence. I believe some of these poor perceptions come from the negative campaign launched by the “reformers” over the last thirty years. When parents are asked about their children’s schools, parents overwhelmingly respond positively. As Pasi Sahlberg has said, “American does not have a school problem; it has a poverty problem.” More than half of public school students today are children of poverty. Many of these poor students live in urban areas where under funding is common due to due to using real estate taxes to fund education. No politician has dared to take on this problem. Instead, many of them want to sell of the problem under “privatization”to abrogate their responsibility to poor, minority students. Many parent and community groups are the most vocal in fighting privatization as they understand “choice” is no solution and, they lose their democratic input when schools are privatized.
As far as unproductive teachers, I have encountered few in my career in a suburban public school district. Teaching requires a great deal of stamina, and most of our teachers decided to leave on their own. The district also offered a cost effective incentive allowing teachers to use unused sick days to pay for health care in retirement. By the way, these teachers were some of the most dedicated and ethical people that worked on all cylinders until their last day. It is much more positive and cost effective for people to end a career on a positive note than in a bitter dispute.
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Agreed. These “legions of bad teachers” are a myth. I’ve seen a handful in my 17 years of teaching. All but one quit on his/her own. The final one did some VERY bad things to students and was eventually sent to prison, but she was a terrible teacher even before these crimes. She was protected from the results of her terrible teaching, in my opinion, because she was pretty. She should never have been in the schools in the first place. But that’s ONE out of hundreds of teachers I have worked with.
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Please note that I never mentioned “legions” of bad teachers. I agree that the numbers are small, but each one unfortunately impacts a large number of kids over the years.
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Even the so-called expert witnesses that were used by the offense in the Vergara trial “guessed” from years of observations that only 1 to 3 percent of teachers were incompetent.
And that was the evidence presented to take away all protection from every teacher.
For the 1 to 3 teachers that are incompetent, we must punish the other 97 to 99 by making it easier to fire all of them.
And, there is also the FACT that in the United States most if not all students have about 30 to 55 teachers from K-12.
1 percent of 30 is 0.3
1 percent of 55 is 0.55
3 percent of 30 is 0.9
3 percent of 55 is 1.65
You said, “but each one, unfortunately, impacts a large number of kids over the years”.
What do you mean by a large number of kids?
The K-12 public education system teaches more than 50-million children. What are the odds that one of those children will be exposed to an incompetent teacher every single year they are in school K – 12.
But what are the odds that a child will have incompetent, abusive parents?
How many parents are incompetent?
How many parents are abusive?
How many parents have to work more than one job to pay the bills and they aren’t home to be a parent?
How much time does a child spend at school vs the home environment each day?
A child spends about an hour a day with each teacher, but a child spends their entire childhood to legal adult status with their parents/guardians.
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Lloyd, all good points, especially your summary “For the 1 to 3 teachers that are incompetent, we must punish the other 97 to 99 by making it easier to fire all of them.” And yet, if you spend your time talking to parents, everyone seems to have these stories, so these small numbers seem to have an unfortunate outsized impact in the public’s mind. Elsewhere in this section I mentioned 150-175 kids a year. Yes, you can make this look trivial by comparing it to a nationwide total of students, but decisions to support one’s local school are made locally, and in California, school funding issues often fail to get their 2/3rds majority vote by relatively small margins.
I raised this issue in the hope that people far more experienced in educational policy than I am might come up with creative ideas for solutions. I guess the position of many/most people here is that it is not an important issue compared to the other factors that you cite above. I acknowledge that these other factors are more significant, but personnel issues are problems that schools CAN, in theory, address. Parenting problems are on another level entirely and no one will argue that teachers can substitute for parents.
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”And yet, if you spend your time talking to parents, everyone seems to have these stories”
Seriously, you have talked to that many parents — everyone is a very LARGE claim? That sounds like Trump’s bogus claims “that someone said”, as cover for one of his many, many, many lies, but he never provides specifics.
And how many of these everyone parents have actually talked to that might be just repeating something they heard and never fact-checked?
I’m sure that Trump and his supporters have never met a fact-chck they liked.
There are more than 50 million children in the public schools so it is safe to say that there are probably close to 100 million parents and yet Gallup’s annual KDP poll shows that the majority of parents think highly of the schools their children attend.
The only poll that counts is the one that asked parents what they think of the public school their children attend. Everything else is an opinion based on what they read or hear in the news or social media and if they don’t fact check, then it’s useless.
Click the link and scroll down to that chart>
“How satisfied are you with the quality of education your oldest child is receiving? Would you say you are completely satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied or completely dissatisfied? Based on K-12 parents”
There is an error in the latest poll data.
Completely satisfied is 35 percent
Somewhat satisfied is 44 percent
Somewhat dissatisfied is 14 percent (not 144 percent)
Completely dissatisfied is only 7 percent.
http://news.gallup.com/poll/1612/education.aspx
And actually, for the thirty years, I was a teacher, I talked to a lot of parents and none of them, not once, ever talked about teachers abusing children sexually or otherwise. In fact, we talked about their child’s progress — that was the usual subject.
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Clearly I haven’t done a poll and do not have the resources to do one. I try to rely on logic and common sense which is the best that I can do.
Note however that in this poll “somewhat satisfied” is a very loaded term. Saying that the combined satisfaction level is 79% is a real stretch using this data. I could use your same data to argue that only 35% of the public are really happy with their kids education, but I am not going to pursue that point.
And note that I never once mentioned anything about sexual abuse. This is a gross exaggeration of my position. My comments were restricted to teachers who were ineffective in the classroom due to reasons like burnout.
Lloyd, I try to keep this conversation respectful. Comparing me to Trump because I am expressing a viewpoint that differs from yours goes a bit overboard IMHO.
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Spouting off and claiming that every parent has a story about child abuse is not “logic and common sense”.
You said, “Lloyd, I try to keep this conversation respectful. Comparing me to Trump because I am expressing a viewpoint that differs from yours goes a bit overboard IMHO.”
I used reputable facts with links to make my point that your claims of widespread child abuse in the public schools is without substance.
And I still think you sound just like Trump and/or his followers that wouldn’t know the difference between a fact, a rumor, a conspiracy theory, a lie, and an opinion.
I refuse to even attempt to be respectful to anyone that makes a general statement like you did about what every parent thinks.
No one knows what every parent thinks or knows. Exaggerated, general statements like that is what we expect from Trump and his followers and that is dangerous in a democracy.
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I never made any claims about widespread child abuse on this blog or anywhere else. I don’t know where you got this idea.
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This is the comment you made that caught my attention.
Lloyd, all good points, especially your summary “For the 1 to 3 teachers that are incompetent, we must punish the other 97 to 99 by making it easier to fire all of them.”
Then you wrote, “And yet, if you spend your time talking to parents, everyone seems to have these stories, so these small numbers seem to have an unfortunate outsized impact in the public’s mind.”
I don’t know why I started to mention sexual abuse. Something triggered my comments about that topic. Maybe it was something someone else said in a comment, and if you never brought that up, then I stand corrected.
Yes, the very (with an emphasis on “very”) small number of incompetent teachers has been blown way out of proportion, but that’s because of the war being waged against the public schools by the Kock brothers, the Walton family, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, et al. The propaganda by the privatizers has been and is designed to turn the public against the public schools. If a lie is repeated enough, it becomes an accepted fact that some or many people will think is true even when it isn’t.
I know what caused me to bring up the claims of sexual abuse. Recently, Campbell Brown was mentioned on this site in another post’s comments.
Campbell Brown rants about teachers unions and sexual predators but never mentions that the same things happen in the corporate charter schools probably more often than in the public schools.
“Campbell Brown’s Selective Indignation with Sexual Misconduct in Schools”
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Thanks for making this correction. Again, so that other readers are clear, this was a simple misread in an extended series of comments. I NEVER made any claims about sexual abuse.
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Lloyd, I have skimmed back over the entire Comments section and never once made any statement like you claim I did with your quote above “Spouting off and claiming that every parent has a story about child abuse is not “logic and common sense”.”
My comments were about every parent having a story about their children being impacted by ineffective teachers at some point in their education. You have misunderstood me and blown this way out of proportion.
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I should also note that if we were required to do a public opinion survey before ever voicing an opinion, this would clearly shut down discussion on virtually every topic here and elsewhere.
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Thank you, “retired teacher.” You make many of the same points Diane raises in her books, and I agree with them. I also agree with “Threatened Out West” that these cases are relatively rare, but if such a teacher teaches 5 classes a day with 30-35 kids per class, they are impacting the education of 150-175 kids each year and parents take note of this.
I am also sympathetic to the points in “retired teacher”’s last paragraph having often survived on 4-5 hours of sleep a night while teaching!
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Usually, David, a teacher who is perceived as incompetent by one parent is not by another. Every teacher knows that there are some students with which they will not make a connection. I look back on all the teachers my four children had, and I cannot single out a single teacher in particular who was out of this world (although I have subbed for a few teachers whose classes I would have liked to join). One teacher who was very good for one of my kids was disliked by the other teachers; in staff meetings he was perceived as arrogant and overly impressed with himself. He didn’t last, appropriately, but he connected with my son and helped him survive a bad year. As a special ed teacher, I was privy to numerous complaints about teachers from students and some parents as well. Most really had to do with personality differences or simple misunderstandings and/or poor communication between parties, in which I could be a mediator. Usually the key was in helping the student understand what a teacher was trying to do. I made a few bad calls in how I handled students and/or parents myself, and those are the situations that will come back to haunt me, usually in the middle of the night, but overall I did a good job. The most problems I saw were in the low socioeconomic community where I spent my final years teaching. They had all the problems associated with poverty, and it showed. Somehow we have got to do a better job of making sure our most vulnerable communities have the resources to provide the level of support needed both in the community at large and in the schools. I was overworked and underpaid and in the end poorly treated. I still miss those students, but could no longer survive the toxic climate that has only grown worse.
I don’t question that you have heard some disturbing stories from parents,but being outside of the school system, you cannot be aware of the dynamics from all sides. Not that those parents are wrong although I suspect in most instances there is plenty of blame to go around. Parents aren’t always subtle when they feel their child is being mistreated and don’t always seek out the teacher’s point of view at all, much less in a diplomatic way. On one occasion, I had to ask a principal to sit in on a regular Spring conference scheduled with a long term sub who had left learning long division up to my son and his workbook. He taught himself how to do it in a way no one would have ever imagined, which while creative was totally wrong. I was furious that weeks of confusion had gone unnoticed and uncorrected and was afraid that I would not be able to remain civil without the principal’s tempering influence. That was one of the smarter moves I made as a parent.
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Thanks very much for taking the time to write about your interesting experiences, speduktr!
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Thank you for mentioning it. I hope my reminiscing helps.
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PS – I have on several occasions assisted parents by joining them in conferences with their student’s teacher. I realize how important it is to try to get all sides to a story, and I try to mediate, having been on both sides. I should also note that I have donated my time freely to my tutoring clients for all meetings of this kind and will continue to do so. While adults contest these issues, kids don’t often have someone with sufficient expertise to represent them. Parents typically feel that something is wrong, but often go away frustrated because they can’t navigate the system effectively. I try to help my students and their parents, but if the teacher is correct, I will not hesitate to side with the teacher and explain that to the parent.
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Some Democrats genuinely care and are golden; most don’t give a hoot.
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Well, we just had a comet and the Demo dinos are still around!
“The Era of Reform” (Sometimes referred to in the literature as “The Era of Error” and “The Cretinaceous Period”)
In “Era of Reform”
Tyrantosaurus wrecks
And Dumbosaur’s the norm
And Teachosaurs are hexed
And VAMosaurs wreak havoc
On Publosaurus schools
With Demosaurs ecstatic
That Chartersaurus rules
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Bill Moyers & Company warned us about the Koch brothers back in early 2016.
Five Myths About the Koch Brothers — And Why It Matters To Set Them Straight
Charles and David were no neophytes. They had been at work for decades trying to reshape American politics and public policies. Starting in the 1970s, Charles and David Koch founded and provided sustained funding for an array of free-market and libertarian think tanks and academic research entities, including the Cato Institute and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. David Koch became active in Libertarian Party politics and even ran for vice president on the party ticket in 1980.
to think of the “Koch network” as a personal pet project funded by these two is to miss the forest for the trees. In fact, Charles and David have succeeded in rallying hundreds of other wealthy conservative families to support their strategic political operation. For years, many wealthy donors — including husbands with their wives — have gathered at swank resorts for the twice-a-year Koch seminars, where they listen to presentations about conservative politics and ideas and pledge funds to support the Koch political organizations. Available data, which we have pulled together, indicates that these meetings have grown from about 17 participants in 2003 to around 500 in early 2016. Regular attendees must now pay annual dues and shell out contributions in Koch-approved directions amounting to at least $100,000 per year (or a lot more).
there is a strong tendency to view the Koch network as merely a political front for their privately owned corporate conglomerate, Koch Industries, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas. … According to the environmental group Greenpeace, the Koch brothers “direct a web of financing that supports conservative special interest groups and think-tanks, with a strong focus on fighting environmental regulation, opposing clean energy legislation and easing limits on industrial pollution.”
The Koch network is better understood not as a labyrinthine tangle of funding flows, but as an evolving set of core organizations directly created and funded by the Kochs and run by their close associates.”
it is a mistake to think of this network as operating outside of — or independently from — the GOP. That notion gets the relationship wrong and overlooks an important source of the Koch network’s political clout. Far from being independent of the GOP, the network’s operatives and resources are closely intertwined with the Republican Party. Forging this symbiosis, we believe, has been the whole point, a deliberate, long-term strategy to move the Republican Party to the far right. Koch honchos do not aim to displace the GOP; they want to capture and use it as a tool to radically cut back American government.”
http://billmoyers.com/story/five-myths-about-the-koch-network-and-why-it-matters-to-set-them-straight/
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The Kochtopus is waging war on the commonwealth. The problem is not the commonwealth. The problem is not elected leaders across the country being bought by the Charles Koch. The problem is Charles Koch. Know the enemy. Concentrate fire on the Kochtopus, not on those caught in his tentacles. Don’t be fooled when he changes colors. Don’t be fooled by his ALEC ink.
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To answer the question: NO!
Why not?
One of the main reasons, along with the Dims total ignorance of the negative effects on the students of the eddeform efforts which they support, that I see that the Koch juggarnaut not being stopped as quickly as could be possible is the continued usage of the language of the edudeformers. From the article:
“. . . the Republican party have made public schools one of their top targets, a progressive plum. . . ”
Public schools are “progressive”. Horse manure! Public schools are mandated by each state’s constitution and therefore to support their continuance is to actually be conservative in the proper sense of the word. To allow the Kochs and their sycophants to declare that public schools are “progressive” is absurd. Totally ludicrous and risible.
“ESAs further the conservative cause to transform collectivist endeavors, like public education,”
Collectivist??? What the hell? In most folks minds, as trained by the main stream media, collectivist = socialist = communist = UnAmerican. Public education is the function of state government as delineated in the state’s constitution. To suggest that it is “collectivist” is absurd, ludicrous and risible. It is a community endeavor, no doubt but community does not equal collectivist.
Perhaps we should add more appropriate descriptors such as with this sentence from the article:
“With the Koch Network’s announcement remaking LOCAL COMMUNITY public education. . . ” or “to “bust” the SUPPOSED public school “monopoly,”” Now I understand that having the words bust and monopoly show a certain usage, perhaps false as in the case of monopoly but let’s be more explicit in our language, eh!
“As Republicans are poised to go after public schools as “the lowest hanging fruit,” it would be a shame, and ultimately a tragedy, if Democrats let them pick it.”
The Dimocraps won’t let Rethuglicans pick it alone. They’ll be in there garnering as much fruit for themselves as possible. . . . except for a few who understand that supporting our community public schools is a winning election strategy, not to mention being the right thing for a politician to do considering she/he represents the whole electorate and not just the sugar daddies like the Kochs, DeVos, etc. . . .
Overall the article is a good one, but those of us without the money resources need to be very careful in our language usage lest we unwittingly contribute to that “picking the low hanging fruit” by the avaricious bastards who seek to destroy local, community public education.
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Well stated, Duane!
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I agree with you Duane, that it is all about the language.
“The war of the words”
He who frames
The diamonds as turds
Effectively rules the lore
He who wins
The battle of words
Eventually wins the war
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Avaricious bastards indeed. Greed lies at the base of a lot of problems.
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I wish there was a way to correct typos such as their for there etc.
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No hay problema, Michael, we all make them.
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Some of us make them on porpoise.
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Thank you all! It has been an interesting discussion this AM (still AM in CA), and I was particularly interested in “Threatened Out West”’s claim that the few cases of bad teachers causing bad publicity for schools is due to protection by administrators. Still would like to hear other opinions as to how prevalent this is, but will have to check back later as I have actual work that I need to get done today even though it is Sunday.
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How prevalent? You mean supposed bad teachers or the protection by adminimals?
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The fact that bad teachers represent a small minority of the profession has been well documented here and elsewhere. I am asking about how often nothing is done about these cases because they are protected by the administration instead of the union as “TOW” claimed.
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Miniscule. .001%
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So you are disagreeing with “Threatened Out West,” Duane? I must admit that her/his comment surprised me, but that’s why I read this blog – to learn new things.
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I’m not sure how I would be disagreeing with TOW unless in the percentage of supposedly “bad” teachers. It seems TOW also believes the % is quite low.
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So your .001% above refers to the percentage of bad teachers. My question was different. I was asking how frequently in these personnel cases were “bad” teachers protected by the administration as TOW claimed instead of by the unions which is the common public perception.
When you answered .001%, I thought you were saying that very few of these cases are protected by administrators.
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There is no such thing as a bad teacher, just as there is no such thing as a bad student. The only people who are bad reside in prisons and mansions.
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I think the fabric of this question is much more complex than we are willing to admit. When I was younger, I would have argued that spotting a bad teacher was as easy as spotting a pothole. After almost forty years in the classroom, I am not so sure. Complete incompetence or immoral behavior is such a rare thing, and even that can inspire disagreement.
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Fair point!
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Roy,
I agree. The problem is that if you poll the parents of all the students who had some of those “bad teachers” in the classroom, you may find 10% or 40% loved the teacher.
Or — and I have seen this happen with my own eyes — you can have 99% of parents in a class certain that their kid was stuck with the worst teacher ever, and poll the parents in the very same teacher’s class 3 years later and 99% of the parent in that class are certain that their kid had one of their best teachers ever. Teachers are human. Maybe that one had a bad year. Maybe that one became a better teacher. Maybe that one had a particularly difficult class. Maybe the parents in that class were particularly judgmental.
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I taught for thirty years in California’s public school and do not remember any incompetent teacher that was protected by the union or administration. In fact, the administration went after incompetent teachers to improve them or get rid of them and the local branch of the union, if a teacher was really incompetent, refused to defend them.
The local is made up of teachers that were elected to represent them by the voting teachers in a school district. There are more than 15,000 school districts in the U.S. Since the war on teachers’ unions, there probably aren’t that many locals anymore.
That means, when a teacher is under fire from the administration and they come running for help from the unions, the elected, teacher president of the local will talk to the reps from the school the alleged incompetent teacher came from to find out if it is true or not.
The teachers in a specific school know who the few incompetent teachers are if there are any.
But what causes a teacher to be incompetent. A study in Texas discovered that many teachers had PTSD from teaching and the way they were treated as teachers. Those teachers were burned out but might have been good teachers once before they were driven past the brink.
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Thanks for this informative response about your experiences. Unlike your last one, I have nothing here to disagree with and can understand why some teachers would get PTSD. A teacher in a school I taught at was beat up by two of her female students.
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“A teacher in a school I taught at was beat up by two of her female students.”
Now, this is a fact you know about because you have a connection to this event (it happened in a school where you taught when you were still teaching there — I have similar, factual stories from when I was teaching), but you do not know what every parent thinks about sexual abuse in public school or if every parent has a story about sexual abuse in public schools that is similar to what you just said in that sentence up there.
It is impossible to know what 100 million parents think and know about any specific topic unless they have all been influenced by media headlines like this one:
“Studies Find Sexual Abuse of Children is Widespread
“NEW research on child molestation shows that individual offenders are responsible for abusing unexpectedly large numbers of children, and that child molestation is more widespread and a more violent crime than was formerly supposed.” …
“Estimates by child-protection organizations of how many American children are sexually abused each year range from 100,000 to 1 million, but most of the incidents are unreported. The Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates that only one in five of all sexual assaults are reported, and where children are involved, incidents are usually reported only when hospitals, schools or social agencies become involved.”
But if you read the story, you will discover this abuse is everywhere and not specifically just in public schools by public school teachers.
Or this story from The Associated Press
“Thousands of children sexually assaulted at school, AP finds”
“That figure represents the most complete tally yet of sexual assault among the nation’s 50 million students in grades K-12. But it also does not fully capture the problem: Such attacks are greatly under-reported, some states don’t track them and those that do vary widely in how they classify and catalog sexual violence.”
Except when you read the story, you will discover that most of the sexual assaults in a school are by other students — and not by teachers.
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2017/04/school_sex_assault.html
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Lloyd, ARE YOU LISTENING??? This is the third time that I am saying that I never made any comment anywhere about sexual abuse in schools. I have absolutely no idea how you came to this conclusion!!!
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Patience, I was offline for about an hour when you wrote two or three comments about not mentioning sexual abuse. You’re right, you didn’t. You were talking about incompetent teachers. The sexual abuse was a topic in another recent post and I was still thinking about it so bringing that up was me, not you.
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Thanks. No offense taken. I just don’t want my positions misrepresented.
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I understand. The challenge for me is how to keep my comments focused on each thread when so much is going on across the country and being discussed here on multiple blog posts and comment threads.
I get all fired up about one topic and then another and then another and they are all related to the war against public education. I’m finding it overwhelming and have started to avoid engaging later in the day so I can sleep better.
In fact, I’ve started to avoid anything about Trump’s twitter fingers and/or his unending flood of lies after 3 PM, and I’m sleeping better because of it. Can’t stop him and the extreme right, so why obsess over what they are doing? As one person, there isn’t much I can do except stay informed, express what I’m thinking (even when I confuse the topics), and vote.
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No hard feelings. WordPress doesn’t help unfortunately. If I get really caught up in a conversation like yesterday’s, I find that people reply in many different parts of a thread and one has to keep scrolling through it to find replies to one’s comments when respondents inadvertently reply to someone else. For some other strange reason sometimes replies to the same comment also show up out of chronological order.
I think we can stop the extreme right but it will take time. I keep talking to people, keep blogging, am actively involved in trying to keep my own “education backyard” clean, and try my very best to do a good job with my retirement tutoring hobby.
Greed always has the weakness of overreaching and ending in economic problems as we have seen with the Savings & Loan crisis, Long Term Capital Management and Russia, the Latin America debt crisis, the dot.com boom/bust, and the mortgage meltdown. More people will unfortunately get hurt, but sadly this may be what it takes to resolve the current problem.
Finally, in the mornings I go out for long bike rides, and do at least one ride of 70-100 miles each week in the Bay Area coastal ranges. Works wonders for relieving stress!
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I have a daily morning routine that includes an hour or two of exercise starting upside down on an inversion table while listening to Grace VanderWaal’s LE and LP for ten to twelve minutes before moving to another room to stretch, lift weights and do aerobic exercises for about one hour. I end this daily routine with focused meditation for an additional 20 minutes.
The reason I listen to Grace sing her songs is that her music is changes the chemistry in my mind so I start out the day more positive. The VA has done some research on music therapy for combat vets with PTSD and some music works for some vets but not all vets while some music can make it worse.
Grace’s music works wonders for me. If I’m in a dark place before going to bed. I’ll log on to one of your YouTube videos and watch and hear her sing her work. I’m not alone. Others like me have also said her music works for them too. I’ve tried other singers but none have come with the same results consistently like Grace has.
I wrote about it here:
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Glad that works for you. For me deserted country roads during weekdays with nothing around but the sun, firs, birds, a gentle breeze and me gliding through it all on my bike does the trick.
One final note to everyone and then I have to get on with my day. If you have never visited the FDR presidential library and museum at Hyde Park, NY, please do so! We tend to forget our history and how bad things became during the Depression. There was a compelling reason for the New Deal.
I took my daughter there and the exhibits were real eye-openers. FDR and Teddy before him took on plutocrats and won. There is always hope, but it may unfortunately take the current administration creating a financial crisis before people wake up again.
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That financial crises may be with us — have you been reading the latest news on the stock market?
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Yes, big point moves so far but only a small correction percentage-wise. We’ll see! I thought it telling that the first big drop was rounded off to 666 points, the sign of the beast from Revelations 😉!!! Fitting coda to Trump’s State of the Union.
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Before arthritis invaded my knees, my favorite therapy was trekking deep into the mountains when the weather permitted and in winter downhill skiing. I miss both.
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Sorry, I meant to say “Her (Grace VanderWaal) YouTube videoes” not “your YouTube videos”. I thought I typed it correctly. How did that happen?
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As I stated above in another section of these disjointed comments, it is very common (I won’t use the word “every” or “always” here) for parents to complain about their children being negatively impacted by ineffective teachers at some point in their school experience and then express frustration that nothing ever seems to be done about these cases. There was NEVER any mention of sexual abuse in ANY of my comments, but somehow Lloyd came to this erroneous conclusion. Unfortunately WordPress inserts replies where one hits the Reply link and this makes these discussions hard to follow.
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No, Democrats do not care.
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I left this as a response to “Retired Teacher”, but think it bears repeating:
The Koch brothers’ 700 cronies contributed $100,000 each PER YEAR. That’s $70 million dollars… more than twice the $32 million the AFT and NEA gave to campaigns in 2016! And while that list is not available to the public, I’m guessing that some on that list might own newspapers and TV stations… I’m guessing the Sinclair broadcasting group and Rupert Murdoch might be on the list…
The unions DO need to push back harder against the neoliberals in the Democratic Party, but they will never have a megaphone as big as the Koch brothers…
And last but not least, all who read this column need to be vigilant at the state and local level. Formerly non-partisan school board races and GOP primaries are places where a small investment by the Koch’s will go a long way toward tilting state legislatures toward the ALEC mindset!
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The unions are in bed with the neoliberals.
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