This statement was released today by the Chicago Teachers Unuon, the pioneers of #RedForEd in 2012.
Now is a good time to remember CTU President Karen Lewis and her inspirational leadership of the 2012 strike.
Duncan take on LA educators’ strike shows he knows nothing of real student needs
CTU blasts former U.S. education secretary for arguing Los Angeles teachers’ should back off demands in face of ‘lack of resources’ in state with fifth largest economy in the world.
CHICAGO, January 15, 2019—
Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey issued the following statement today in response to public pronouncements – including in The Hill – by former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Los Angeles educators, who began a strike on Monday.
“Arne Duncan has never taught a day in his life. He sent his children to an elite private school with small class sizes and great resources. He landed his job as CEO of Chicago Public Schools through insider ties – where he pushed policies that hurt our public school students’ access to the very same resources his own children had. He’s pushed endlessly for school privatization, and he’s been a national proponent of the teacher blame game as a way to dodge the real need for more resources for public education. Now he wants to silence Los Angeles teachers who are demanding the very supports for their students that Duncan’s children received. That’s the height of hypocrisy.
“LA teachers know what their students need: smaller class sizes, more staff for special education and bilingual education, and the resources and wrap-around supports that allow low-income students of color to thrive as life-long learners and productive adults. Duncan has instead promoted the opposite, by starving neighborhood public schools, promoting privatization and austerity, and purging Black educators from our classrooms. Public education is a right. Duncan has treated it like an afterthought, and has zero credibility with the parents, educators and community residents who care about equity for ALL public students.
“When he’s shilling for management, nowhere does Duncan mention the toxic impact of right wing tax policy on Los Angeles’ Black and Latinx students. He conveniently fails to mention Eli Broad or the Broad Foundation and their scheme to orchestrate the mass privatization of Los Angeles public schools. Instead, Duncan says the union should ‘cooperate’ more with the very management that is seeking to undercut public schools through mass charter expansion. That mirrors his statement almost a decade ago that the devastation of Hurricane Katrina was the ‘best thing’ to happen to New Orleans’ public schools, because it opened the ground for mass charter privatization. As in Chicago under Duncan and his successors, privatization in New Orleans has slashed the number of Black teachers, and more than ten years on, New Orleans’ Black working class parents, students and residents charge that the experiment has failed them. Duncan’s policies profit private operators – and undermine parent voice, public accountability and the educational needs of students.
“Just as Duncan regularly shortchanged CPS by refusing to identify and raise progressive sources of revenue that our schools need, he massively expanded selective enrollment schools for well-off white students. He continued those policies as education czar, to the detriment of school districts across the nation.
“The educational policies he put in motion in Chicago and pushed in Washington have helped drive out thousands of Black families from Chicago, families who struggled to find stable schools for their children at the same time they confronted racist, classist city policies in housing, policing and economic development. As a principal architect of Chicago’s disastrous school closure experiment, Duncan was CEO during the first wave of massive charter expansion in Chicago – forcing neighborhood public schools that had been under-resourced for decades into brutal educational hunger games that have left neighborhood schools starved for resources. As US Education Secretary, he promoted the misnamed ‘Race to the Top’, publicly blaming teachers for the dire consequences of racist school funding practices and endless austerity. He’s dismissed class size as an issue – an excuse to purge thousands of Black public educators in Chicago, at a time when a growing body of research shows that our schoolchildren need more, not fewer, educators of color.
“We need the opposite of what Duncan brought to the table in Chicago and what he proposes in LA. We need smaller class sizes, respect for veteran teachers of color, progressive forms of revenue to adequately support public school students, adequate staffing for special education and bilingual education, and a school nurse in every school. We need an end to the failed school privatization experiment. And we need respect for the voices of parents and educators who are sick of being shortchanged by the political elites that Duncan serves. Instead of asking Los Angeles teachers to shut up and accept less for their students, Duncan should be denouncing the very policies he implemented that have so profoundly harmed public education across the nation.”
Duncan is a linear thinker. Complexity eludes him.
Duncan’s not a thinker. He’s a mouse in a maze trying to get a pellet from billionaires.
Great metaphor!
Wonderful.
Yes
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
This is a great, insightful post from the CTU. It hit all the main issues and problems in the strike. It clearly defined Duncan’s role in test and punish, undermining public education and promoting privatization. Duncan is a biased elitist that refuses to see the truth, and nobody but the 1% value his opinion. More public unions should demonstrate solidarity with the brave teachers of UTLA.
STANDING OVATION!!!
FANTASTIC!!! This states exactly what needs to be said.
Class size does not matter for Duncan except for his kids who went to a private school with 10 to 15 kids in a classroom. Funny how small class size is the hallmark of elite private schools but not for the Lumpenproletariat public schools.
remember that Duncan and his handlers (especially very dangerous person, Gates’ wife) argue that “good teachers” are the key — according to the “good teachers” argument, truly great teachers can BOTH handle large classes and bring about amazing test scores due to some kind of standardized “good teacher” magic handed them while they get their three or four weeks training from a teacher factory
Just a reminder, Big Arne: Why not hit the bench for this round?
It won’t penetrate Arne Duncan’s bubble at all.
Ed reformers have set this up so any criticism of ed reform or ed reformers is self interested or greedy or invalid.
They recite slogans along the lines of “you know you are RIGHT when people oppose you!” The problem with this slogan is it doesn’t allow for a situation where ed reformers are wrong.
If you oppose Duncan that doesn’t mean he might be wrong- it means he is MORE right
He served 8 years under Obama and left reciting the same slogans he started with- he learned absolutely nothing new over 8 years.
I liked Obama as a President but boy, his hiring Duncan really doesn’t reflect well on him. Duncan’s such a lightweight. I know they were friends but was it really fair to foist his buddy on the public like this?
Chiara,
Neither did Obama’s selling out of the people of Flint, Mich. reflect well on him. The video clip of the incident in Fahrenheit 11/9 is very damning. Since Michael Moore chose to ask Podesta about the event and aired John’s weak answer in the film, I presume Moore knew or suspected who was the source for the strategy.
Unrelated but, fyi- Podesta founded the Center for American Progress.
I would LOVE to hear what Obama thinks of the teacher strike(s). I would love to know if he has seen the error of his ways when it came to the hiring of Arne (and some of the other business friendly staff). I too, thought Obama was a likable President, but I do NOT think he had a full grasp of what he allowed his cronies to do/carry out against the general population. And I know that I will take some flack for saying this out loud, but Obama wasn’t really a “black” President or FOR “black” people….just look up what “colorism” is within the black community and you will find that Obama (John King, Cory Booker etc…) fits right into the definition. Just saying….and I thought it was wrong.
“With the election of Barack Obama, our stars have aligned.”
–Eli Broad
Posted at OOEN
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Chicago-Teachers-Union-Bla-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Blame_Credibility_Diane-Sawyer_Duncan-Arne-190116-460.html#comment722288
with this comment
Miriam Pawel, an independent historian and a contributing opinion writer for the Times, was allowed to explain the real dynamics behind the teachers’ strike: demographic change; high poverty rates; overcrowded classes; underfunding of the schools; and an aggressive charter industry, led by Eli Broad and other billionaires, willing to spend vast sums to privatize more public schools and kick out the unions.
Dr Ravitch says: “What is so remarkable about this article is: 1. The New York Times printed it; 2. Pawel connected the dots among demographic change, underfunding of the schools, bloated class sizes, and the district’s deference to charter expansion; 3. Pawel acknowledged that the rapid growth of charters is the direct result of the intervention of billionaires like Broad, who poured $54 million into two losing statewide races last fall. I couldn’t have said it better.”
Here is part of that article:
“The struggle in Los Angeles, a district so large it educates about 9 percent of all students in the state, will resonate around California. Oakland teachers are on the verge of a strike vote. Sacramento schools are on the verge of bankruptcy. The housing crisis has compounded teacher shortages. Los Angeles, like many districts, is losing students, and therefore dollars, even as it faces ballooning costs for underfunded pensions.
‘California still ranks low in average per-pupil spending, roughly half the amount spent in New York. California legislators have already filed bills proposing billions of dollars in additional aid, one of many competing pressures that face the new governor, Gavin Newsom, as he begins negotiations on his first state budget.
“Unlike other states where teachers struck last year, California is firmly controlled by Democrats, for whom organized labor is a key ally. And the California teachers unions are among the most powerful lobbying force in Sacramento.
“On paper, negotiations between the 31,000-member United Teachers of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District center on traditional issues: salaries that have not kept pace, classes of more than 40 students, counselors and nurses with staggering caseloads. But the most potent and divisive issue is not directly on the bargaining table: the future of charter schools, which now enroll more than 112,000 students, almost one-fifth of all K-through-12 students in the district. They take their state aid with them, siphoning off $600 million a year from the district. The 224 independent charters operate free from many regulations, and all but a few are nonunion.
“When California authorized the first charter schools in 1992 as a small experiment, no one envisioned that they would grow into an industry, now educating 10 percent of public school students in the state. To counter demands for greater regulation and transparency, charter advocates have in recent years poured millions into political campaigns. Last year, charter school lobbies spent $54 million on losing candidates for governor and state superintendent of education.
In Los Angeles, they have had more success. After his plan to move half of the Los Angeles district students into charter schools failed to get traction, the billionaire and charter school supporter Eli Broad and a group of allies spent almost $10 million in 2017 to win a majority on the school board. The board rammed through the appointment of a superintendent, Austin Beutner, with no educational background. Mr. Beutner, a former investment banker, is the seventh in 10 years and has proposed dividing the district into 32 “networks,” a so-called portfolio plan designed in part by the consultant who engineered the radical restructuring of Newark school”
Read more,. learn The truth! https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/opinion/california-teachers-strike.html
I want to hear Troy LaRiviere’s sermon on this.
Bad Ass Teachers on 4/19/2017 posted e-mails, allegedly written by Ann O’Leary (a Center for American Progress expert until 2015). One of the e-mails addressed a Democratic strategy for the conflict between Chicago public schools and Mayor 1%.
(The article is titled, “Arne Duncan….” .) A person can infer from the e-mails that O’Leary assumes she can direct Randi (AFT) to send or not send out a proposed tweet critical of Mayor Emmanuel. I infer from the e-mails that O’Leary recognizes there is a huge problem for the Dem. establishment that won’t go away related to the Party’s backing of privatization of America’s most important common good.
According to Wikipedia, O’Leary (a lawyer) while in private practice advised high profile organizations like Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
The Justice Democrats which include Ocasio-Cortez aren’t corporate Dems like Rep. Susan Davis (Calf.), who is backed by DFER AND, funded by AFT.
Davis who won by 30 pts. said there should be a charter school in every state and community. We can hope the Justice Democrats primary Susan Davis. Before we send any campaign funds to an establishment Dem., we should think carefully. IMO, in primaries, we should lean toward progressive instead of the candidates of CAP or Third Way.
Lawyers have a whole system of self-justifications codified in their profession.
Trump is a total disaster but do we really want Pence to have more power than telling the Orange Hair Monster what to do? She is an elementary art teacher. How proud we in the arts should all be. [sarcasm]
….
Karen Pence has just started working at a school that bans LGBT students and employees
BY TOM PORTER ON 1/16/19 AT 7:26 AM
Karen Pence, wife of Vice President Mike Pence, has started a job teaching art at Immanuel Christian School in Northern Virginia, which refuses to enroll LGBT students and hire LGBT employees.
In a parent agreement posted online, the school says that those who participate in or condone homosexual relationships will be refused admission. A recent employee application form states that those who engage in homosexuality will not be employed by the school, and says that God intended sexual acts to occur only between “a man and a woman who are married to each other.”…
http://www.newsweek.com/karen-pence-has-just-taken-job-school-bans-lgbt-pupils-1293513
I find this quote from President Obama extremely disappointing: “Arne has done more to bring our educational system – sometimes kicking and screaming – into the 21st century than anybody else.” I take the “kicking and screaming” as a personal offense to those of us who passionately advocate for our kids. I like to think Obama was just clueless, but was he??
annat: “Arne has done more to bring our educational system – sometimes kicking and screaming – into the 21st century than anybody else.”
It’s hard to figure out how people reach their conclusions. This quote coming from Obama disappoints me. We teachers know this is a complete untruth. I worked very hard to get Obama elected. I also worked to get ACA passed.
Obama certainly was better than what we have now. The garbage in my condo basement dumpster is better than him. At least the dumpster downstairs is fulfilling its purpose and this useless garbage will be removed.
Obama supported privatization of public schools. He was friendly with Bill Gates and allowed him to insert his bad ideas into policy. Thus, public schools faced the Common Core, test and punish, VAM- fake test based teacher evaluation and RTT, Race to the Top. He also appointed Arne Duncan and stood by his disastrous privatization agenda. Obama’s education policies ushered in the way for DeVos. Education was Obama’s weakest link in my view.
An then–let us not forget–Obama appointed John King Sec. of Ed. when DunCAN’T left!
Not one slap to the face of public school students, teachers, parents & communities, but a final sucker punch to our very guts!
Insofar as American education, POTUS 44, you can do one right thing now–put on those comfortable walking shoes & get on the lines in L.A.
(or even come to Chicago & join the next group picket lines).
Or…are you too busy counting all that Netflix $$$$$–?!
Annat,
I think the Democratic establishment had and has plans to give the schools and public pensions to the oligarchs from the tech industry and financial sector.
CAP’s Corey Booker, the hedge funds’ Gina Raimondo, Z-berg’s Chuck Schumer and Ann O’Leary’s Newsome are just a few of the politicians who are in on the plan, IMO.
The only hope for democracy is the Justice Democrats or a third party.
If Hillary had been elected (I voted for her because a Republican is worse), the transfer of Americans’ assets would have been carried out.
“Better education” verbiage about privatization is cover for both the Republican and establishment Democratic politicians and, nothing more than that.
Here is another bit of good news! Teachers are getting fed up and are doing what needs to be done!!!
…………..
Charter teachers at second Chicago operator to set strike date
BY YANA KUNICHOFF – 20 HOURS AGO
A second Chicago charter school strike could be on the horizon as teachers at Chicago International Charter School prepare to announce a strike date Thursday.
Last fall, 96 percent of Chicago International’s 138 unionized educators voted to authorize a strike if contract negotiations failed. Now, claiming little progress at the bargaining table, the union plans a mass gathering of teachers at a press conference to announce a strike date….
https://chalkbeat.org/posts/chicago/2019/01/15/charter-teachers-at-second-chicago-operator-to-set-strike-date/?utm_source=email_button
Yep–that’s what I meant about Obama’s donning his comfortable walking shoes & joining a picket line in Chicago.
& since we are having nothing but snowstorms & -20 in the forecast,
striking soon takes guts (as well as layers & layers of clothing).
That having been said, since you got your political breaks in Chicago & your library is to be built here, well…come on down & join the fun, 44!