Talk about a hard line! Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform urges LAUSD to fire all the striking teachers!
PeterGreene writes about it here.
Jeanne Allen is a true rightwinger, out there on the edge.
She looks back nostalgically to 1981, when Ronald Reagan broke a strike by the air controllers union by threatening to fire them all if they didn’t return. To work at once.
Her advice to the LAUSD:
In a post-Janus world, teacher unions cannot exist and continue to gain members unless they demonstrate and prove their value. This strike, like others we’re seeing around the country, is a desperate attempt by the union to maintain relevance in a day and age where they can
no longer require teachers to join.California needs to break the district up into 100 different pieces, have much smaller units, and allow for the freedom, flexibility, access and innovation that’s happening in charters. If it weren’t for charter schools, education in L.A. would be at the level of Mississippi. The UTLA sees charters
as such a threat to the status quo that it is willing want to hurt students kids even more to score a victory against charters.My advice to the district: Hold strong. Replace them all. If they want a dramatic impact on education, fire the union and begin to repair the schools, just like Reagan fired the air traffic controllers.
Peter Greene says that Jeanne Allen makes no pretense of being benign and caring. She despises public schools and teachers unions. She has no mask. She believes in privatizing schools, period.
Peter takes her seriously and wonders where LA would find another 30,000 or so teachers to replace the current force.
That’s very kind of him but the reality is that California is a blue state, a state where union-busting is absurd. A new poll by the ABC local station found that the trachers’ Strike has overwhelming public support (about 2/3 support it) and in,y 15% oppose the teachers.
Ain’t gonna happen, Jeanne!
Here’s an idea: how about giving teachers in LA the same salary as Jeanne Allen and call it a day. They work harder and have jobs of far more social value than hers.
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The PATCO analogy is telling. It now makes it undeniable that union busting is a core goal of privatization, something those of us who have been paying attention have known since day one. Another example of how children are mere pawns in a sinister game.
The oligarchs NEED slaves, thus a two tiered system.
The public education system and the rights of labor are the foundation of democracy. So, Greg is 100% correct.
Another helpful suggestion from edreformworld!
Still adding value, I see.
They all imagine themselves as tough-talking CEO’s. Maybe they should do us all a favor and go over to the private sector, instead of privatizing everything they get their hands on and appointing themselves “leader”.
Has anyone else noticed that ed reform leaders only pay attention to public schools when teachers refuse their directives and go on strike?
They haven’t done anything for kids in PUBLIC schools in LA, or anywhere else. The teachers go out and all of a sudden the whole echo chamber are gravely concerned about public school students.
Teachers in West Virginia had to SHUT THE SCHOOLS DOWN before they could even get a meeting. Where were the national ed reform lobbyists for the decade prior?
“Has anyone else noticed that ed reform leaders only pay attention to public schools when teachers refuse their directives and go on strike?”
Yes. Another reason to support teacher strikes. Teachers won’t just be helping themselves if they win; they’ll be helping the institution of public education.
I posted a link to Peter’s piece at OEN, on the post to your blog post : https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Chicago-Teachers-Union-Bla-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Blame_Credibility_Diane-Sawyer_Duncan-Arne-190116-460.html#comment722299
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
LOL…What a clueless human. This is not the Air Traffic Controllers of the 1980″s
She is soul less and clueless.
“California needs to break the district up into 100 different pieces, have much smaller units, and allow for the freedom, flexibility, access and innovation that’s happening in charters.”
The portfolio model is an invitation to monetize mostly minority students so they can produce a revenue stream for their corporate overseers. This sounds more like slavery or colonialism than innovation! By the way what exactly are all the innovations in charter schools? No excuses discipline, mouth bubbles, cherry picking students, counseling out, attrition, nonprofessional associates known as TFA, waste, fraud, nepotism, crooked education management organizations aka (Easy Money Operations-EMOs), real estate deals, off shore accounts and enhanced segregation. Charters are more about shifting the value of a public asset into private pockets than “innovation.”
Yes. I also Like Diane’s idea: how about giving teachers in LA the same salary as Jeanne Allen and call it a day. They work harder and have jobs of far more social value than hers.
Jeanne Allen considers herself among the elites who should govern by authority of divine right ($).
Jeanne Allen is all what is wrong with our country. She sounds like a thug from the streets with no intellectual ideas to actually help the situation. Instead she gives a street answer to fire all the teachers!
For a woman with a deep education history resume, to chime in on the LA strike and answer fire all of the teachers represents the fact that all of her educational works – that she so desperately puts on display – is really all bull crap and anything she has done in education really needs to be looked at with a keen eye. Go away creep.
Replace all 30,000 plus? With who? With what? Temps with 2 week training? That’ll raise educational outcomes, guaranteed. Rolling my eyes…
Exactly, Priscilla. & TFA, & anyone else they grab off the street who will be incapable of educating “other people’s children.”
Don’t educate, hire grads to be Walmart workers at below minimum wage, having to get food stamps & other subsidies & take the 99%
down to poverty level. ALEC plan–in the works since 1971.
UTLA–fight like hell! (Also, last night, I heard that LA’s only unionized charter is walking out & joining the picket lines.) All of you (Diane included–stay warm & dry.)
And–what can we in other states do to help?
My new rule: I refuse to dignify TFA with the earned title of teacher. I will call them associates, much like Walmart associates.
TFA’s will be joining the underemployed and underpaid in Amazon warehouses, stocking the product -schools-in-a-box- for delivery, which they deserve because they worked for an organization funded by Gates. Z-berg and Gates are investors in for-profit, schools-in-a- box. Gates’ goal for charters is brands on a large scale. There’s no forgiveness for today’s TFA’s. The info. about Gates is widely available.
With iPads, duh!
We should also keep in mind that this same insane rhetoric was spouted only a few short years ago by Pres. Obama and hit man Duncan once RttT was brought into the Blame Teachers arena. FIRE ALL OF THE TEACHERS if the scores are low. I remember schools, some in far flung rural areas, adamantly being told to do this when there were zero personnel available to replace educators suddenly labeled school-wide as being ‘bad.’
EdReform posted a bio of Jeanne Allen that says her kids have followed her into the same activity. If her family members get big paychecks like she does, we can hope that Non-Partisan Education Review provides the public with a chronology similar to the one it published for Fordham/Chester Finn.
Just what the world needs, more people to front for corporate raiders.
Gonna have to fire a whole lotta people Jeanne!
Day 1 Pics:
Day 2 Pics:
On a different note, I found that my school is creating student attendance groups on Schoology (presumably to give assignments to students who are attending.) The groups show how many 9th, 10th , 11th and 12th graders have been put in. I counted a total of 185 students out of our school’s 2300.
Anyone else seeing the same?
The privatization crowd: “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
The deform crowd is going to be reduced to the size that they can paddle away from the pitchforks in a dinghy.
Extremist Jeanne Allen is one of the few individuals even more reactionary than Arne Duncan and Betsy Devos.
Just learned that charter school teachers & staff have joined the LAUSD picket lines! Can you imagine how Ms. Jeanne is fuming about that???? Ay, pobrecita.
Now that really take guts! They have no job protection at all, and knowing how union protected districts still manage to make the lives of teachers they don’t like so miserable that they leave, what will charter schools do to their teachers who openly support the strike?
Democracy Now! had a TERRIFIC segment on the strike yesterday, w/the UTLA V.P. & the Guardian writer (who wrote the book “Red State”) interviewed, & it was stated that the strike is largely dedicated to bringing attention to what charter schools & privatization have done to our public schools, & to stop it–nationwide. It was the longest segment I’ve seen on television RE: discussion of the realities of the charter school movement as usually discussed on this blog (it’s broadcast on the Gary, IN PBS station, which we can get here).
However, all of you can go to democracynow.org to see it. (Sometimes it takes the 2 days to put it up, so it may not be available as yet.)
Send it to those you know who won’t believe you when you tell them about public school privatization (plus this post).
This article is not bad as well: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/01/la-teachers-strike-charters-privatization
Oh, better yet, also send it to your legislators &, if you’ve signed up for anyone who’s declared for 2020, send it to them/their campaign (Warren, Castro, Gillibrand & anyone else I hadn’t yet heard about) & TELL them that public K-12 education WILL be the issue for 2020, & the one that will, indeed, determine whether or not they can be elected
(because WE will make it so!).
No more “surveys w/most important issues” e-mails w/o K-12 public education!!!
How do these vulture capitalists sleep? “California needs to break the district up into 100 different pieces…”. Yet another disgraceful example of the corporatists’ oxymoronic (or perhaps just moronic) “creative destruction”. The deformer playbook is downright Trumpian – invent and market a crisis narrative then “fix” the problem through privatization. This is why it is an inviolable tenet of charters to keep their finances secret.