The Teacher Revolt continues!
Fred Klonsky reports here that 93% of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association voted to strike.
Denver has been the epicenter of merit pay since 2005. It has confused and demoralized teachers.
The city school board is completely dominated and bought by reformers, who hold every seat, thanks to out-of-state money. The board has jumped on the portfolio model, closing public schools and opening charter schools. Typically the charters and other alternatives are non-union. Betsy DeVos has praised the Denver model, and hopes it will one day add vouchers.
Read Tom Ultican’s appraisal of the failure of Denver’s portfolio district.
Be it noted that Colorado just elected a Democratic Governor Jared Polis, who started two charter schools, and strongly supports school choice, not public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My friend Yvonne and I are on a campaign to educate Polis. As a Democratic governor with some reasonable views on other issues, he ought to know better.
As to merit pay: It has been properly discredited as an ineffective, divisive approach to compensation, but it really has a more sinister purpose. Architects of these programs purport to be rewarding the “good” teachers with extra lavish compensation. They are really “rewarding” the “good” teachers with the modest raises every teacher should get and then shafting everyone else. There never is an intent to actually “reward” anyone.
And, of course, the entire idea of “merit” is predicated on assessments that are based on various metrics that are, de facto, ruining education anyway.
So this is, in the contemporary vernacular, a lose-lose-lose-win situation. Teachers lose, students lose, communities lose, and rich folks win.
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YEP!
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If you use this blog’s ‘Search All Posts’ and enter Jared Polis, you can read him in his own word’s where he showed up to comment. There are several posts from 2013 about ‘Texas and Texans’ where he comments. Also one post about ‘finding common ground’ where he pens a poem, so there’s that.
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Jared Polis is a DFER.
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I hope the DFERS find their minds.
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Thanks, Steve.
I am sending Polis, Nelson’s book, First Do No Harm (Garn Press). This book is excellent, so readable.
Heard Steve speak at the Boulder Bookstore on Tuesday evening. A colleague/friend who is a professor at CU-Boulder and my husband went with me. We really enjoyed this event. Was so refreshing.
I was heartened to learn that one of our middle schools in Boulder recommended to the parents to read Nelson’s book and attend Nelson’s book talk. So at the Nelson book talk at the Boulder Book Store (independent bookstore), there were parents whose children attend BVPS in attendance as well as other educators and parents with young children. I agree that parents should read Nelson’s book, First Do No Harm.
Now I am reading Anthony Cody’s The Classroom Teacher & The Oligarch.
Good news:
And I looked to see if my LFL is on the map. It is. Yay. I put in books and they are gone. There are 30 LFL within a 5 miles radius from where I live.
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Merit pay is another business concept that was imposed on Denver teachers. “The theory was simple for those who thought of teachers and teaching only in terms of a transactional model.” This transactional relationship may work for sales people or commissioned employees, but teaching is quite a different relationship. Teachers bear no responsibility for students’ poverty, neglect, dysfunction, access to healthcare or proper nutrition. There are so many variables in students’ lives that is seems absurd to assume that these factors can be ignored. “Reformers” have always chosen to ignore poverty unless, of course, they are cherry picking students for charters. Then, they choose the least poor, brightest and cheapest to educate.
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Polis is no different than Beutner.
It’s likely the Koch’s idea to have federal workers in Denver schools, as scabs. Let’s hope that the “destroy government” libertarians who are building their American oligarchy don’t succeed in turning workers against workers.
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To those die hards who refuse, despite all of the evidence, to accept that Bill and Melinda Gates are ugly, social Darwinists, read Mother Jones. Microsoft, Google and Facebook financed LibertyCon. (The oligarchs use the word liberty to identify their schemes.
It dupes citizens in the same way that the promotion of cigarettes as the spirit of independence did.)
One of LibertyCon’s messages- climate denial.
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The more the wealthy take from the people, the closer the people come to rebellion. Good for you, Denver teachers! We are with you. When you strike, you win. When you strike, we win. I hope every city and every state that has been targeted by privatization schemers will go out on strike. Learn from Chicago. Learn from #Red4Ed. Learn from us in Los Angeles. Take lessons even from the yellow jackets in France. It is long past time to push back hard against regressive taxation and privatization/destruction of public services. It is time to take back public education. Students deserve better. We all deserve better. Damn the billionaires! Strike!
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Go Denver Public School Teachers.
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Solidarity! And Godspeed, Denver teachers!
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