The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) expressed its delight over a decision at the recent NEA meeting in Houston not to take into account a presidential candidate’s views on privatized charter schools when making its endorsement. AEI is a conservative, free-enterprise think tank in D.C. that is partially funded by Betsy DeVos and her family foundation, who appreciate AEI’s libertarian stances.
Friends at the NEA meeting tell me that the organization contains a few charter teachers and did not want to offend them. If you were there and have a different view, please comment. There are 7,000 charter schools. A few hundred have organized and joined the NEA or AFT. Ninety percent are non-union, which is what their funders (like the anti-union Waltons) want.
NEA’s decision signals that it is fine if a candidate like Cory Booker or Michael Bennett gives full-throated support to privatization of public schools. That should not be held against him. It matters not if a candidate supports a sector of schools where 90% of teachers are non-union. It matters not if a candidate aligns himself or herself with the anti-union right-wingers like DeVos and the Waltons. It matters not if a candidate supports the federal Charter School Program, which currently spends $440 million a year to grow corporate charter chains.
Meanwhile, the candidates who have bravely resisted the lure of billionaire dollars to defend public schools and the right of teachers to bargain collectively get a snub from the nation’s biggest teachers’ union.
Does this mean that the right-wingers and the media will stop bashing “the teachers’ unions” for battling charter schools?
Don’t count on it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Aie yie yie
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The Unions will align with the DNC pick/suggestion and we will have another 4 years of an orange nightmare. When will the Unions align with what parents and teachers want for children? When will the Union decide to do what is decent for children. When will the Union stop taking corporate blood money? The Dems and Unions better wise up or history is bound to repeat itself. Feel the Bern!!
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I long ago lost faith in our national unions, yet I continue to find their faulty representation of our profession to be profoundly disappointing.
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The NEA sure isn’t what it used to be, it seems. Too bad, because Race to the Top, bread out of the same privatizing motives that gave us this kind of charter industry, truly worsened working conditions for teachers.
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When my state looked at dropping Common Core five or so years ago, my state’s NEA affiliate sent out mass emails, begging us to contact our legislators and school board officials to KEEP Common Core. I was, and still am, disgusted.
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NYSUT keeps pleading with New York to “fix the tests.” Instead, they should be telling New York to just take out the garbage. We don’t need these horrible, high stakes tests.
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NYSUT talks a good game about the tests, but when the Legislature had an actual bill confirming the right of parents to opt out of the tests and assuring that children would not be punished for opting out, NYSUT fell silent. No NYSUT support for the bill. It passed the State Senate, died in the Assembly.
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EXACTLY! The complicity of the national, state, and local unions in the appalling use of standardized testing makes me sick. The unions are all in for the testing, and publish garbage about how to help kids through the stress of testing, or how to help teachers with testing, or whatever.
They NEVER question whether the tests should be given at all.
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My hackles always rise when I read someone blasting/alleging that local teachers’ unions are sell-outs like the national or state levels often are — the two biggest, AFT and NEA are often guilty — but I belonged to one local for thirty years (1975 – 2005) that was linked to CTA/NEA. For a few years, I was even an elected rep from the high school where I taught in that local.
There are thousands of locals across the country.
The local I belonged to (a public school district in Southern California with about 19,000 students and 1,000 teachers) did not follow lock-step behind CTA (California Teachers Union) or NEA. The president of the local was a working school teacher that still taught classes every day.
Locals are in the trenches. The state and national levels, the suits, seldom if ever work in the trenches and the only time they go near the embattled trenches is on a whirlwind tour where the classes they are allowed to visit are cherry picked. Sort of Betsy DeVos when she actually steps foot in a real school. I do not think schools in the charter industry are real schools.
In addition, the Chicago Teachers Union often does not agree with the nationals and fights back against everything the nationals often support.
“For more than 75 years the Chicago Teachers Union has fought for the schools Chicago’s students deserve. The CTU represents more than 25,000 teachers, paraprofessional and school-related personnel, and school clinicians working in the Chicago Public Schools and, by extension, the students and families they serve.
Explore Our History.” …
“06. to unify the educators of traditional public schools and public charter schools in the City of Chicago, together with other Chicago-area educators that may join with this Union.”
https://www.ctulocal1.org/
When it comes to disparaging local district teachers’ unions, I suggest you only disparage the ones you know because you worked there for several decades or use language like “some locals”, but not all locals.
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You’re right, Bob. Not all of the locals are sell-outs, but, unfortunately, many are.
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Sorry, Lloyd, not Bob.
And my experience has ALL been with sell-out locals. I have no experience with a local that actually supports teachers and stands up against the malpractice that is happening.
I know there are locals that are good. I’ve just never personally experienced one.
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I only had experience with that one school district, but that district’s administration was always combative with the teachers and the teachers’ local so we were more unified at the local level than not.
Trump and his administration remind me of that district’s administration. I’ve heard that things have changed for the better in that district but I’m not interested in finding out. I moved 500 miles from Southern California to the SF Bay area after I retired from teaching in 2005. I have little to no desire to go back for any reason.
However, there is one former very toxic district administrator I hope to never run into. He’s retired now and when other teachers that were there when he was get together, he almost always come up in conversation but no one knows what happened to him after he retired.
I suspect, he moved back to hell where he was spawned by one of Lucifer’s demons.
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So, as far as education policy is concerned, a Democratic win in 2020 would result in another Obama/Duncan-style DOE that was basically “Diet Bush/Trump.”
The only difference is that Obama drew the line at vouchers and was willing to support increased spending for whatever he proposed.
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Hello,
That may be the best we can get, but we have to fight for something better than the Obama-Bush deforms.
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yes; Obama’s massive RttT blame-the-teachers money did astounding damage
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There is a lot of blame to go around.
Clinton sided with the newly emerging charter industry and created a new federal program to jumpstart new charters, called the Charter School Programs (currently DeVos’s slush fund for KIPP, IDEA, Success Academy, etc.)
Bush wrote charter schools into NCLB as a “remedy” for “failing public schools.”
Obama-Duncan required all states to lift their limits on charters if they wanted to be eligible for $5 billion in federal funding (Race to the Top), since charters were miracle schools.
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Charters have never been miracle schools.
All the misleading, lying propaganda and purely toxic BS from the charter industry painted them as promised miracle schools — that never materialized, but the charter industry never, like Trump, admits that they are a failure and have never delivered on those false promises, not once.
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Lloyd,
I wish that there were some leading progressive candidates in this primary who will directly explain how charters have lied when they make these false claims that charters have delivered on their promises.
There is still an underlying assumption that there are non-profit charters who have delivered on those promises – I even see that underlying assumption in Bernie’s Thurgood Marshall plan.
The only charters that have “delivered” are those that exclude the students who don’t allow them to make false claims that they are delivering on their promises. The public doesn’t know this because no candidates are enlightening about this.
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Every candidate should be required to take classes from professional teachers to learn about all of the facts and history behind each major issue instead of letting them learn from lobbyists with the most money behind them.
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NEA’s decision to not take into account candidates’ positions on charter schools is an insult to every public school teacher. I find it appalling and assume that the NEA made that decision so as to stay close to the big money of the funders of charter school. Money corrupts. Big money corrupts big organizations like the NEA. For shame.
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The Los Angeles teachers showed that teachers have their own convictions. In the end any union stands on the support it gets from teachers. I have wondered why some people vote for candidates who once elected ignore the needs of their electorate.
It is madness to continue supporting entities who show little care for the hopes and needs of its members. The suggestion that nothing can be done seems to be acquired helplessness.
Teachers will have to find unions which support their needs. But it is a kind of insanity to lend your money, time and support to people who blatantly ignore your concerns.
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Question 3…last 30 seconds:
https://educationvotes.nea.org/presidential-2020/forum/beto-orourke
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From those last 30 seconds:
“There is a place for public, nonprofit charter schools, but private charter schools and voucher programs, not a single dime in my administration will go to them.”
–Beto O’Rourke, 2020 Presidential Candidate
O’Rourke fails my litmus test, straightaway.
Litmus test: Mr. or Ms. 2020 Presidential Candidate, kindly say “Yes” or “No,” and nothing more, to this question: Are charter schools public schools?
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From those last 30 seconds:
“There is a place for public, nonprofit charter schools, but private charter schools and voucher programs, not a single dime in my administration will go to them.”
–Beto O’Rourke, 2020 Presidential Candidate
O’Rourke fails my litmus test, straightaway.
Litmus test: Mr. or Ms. 2020 Presidential Candidate, kindly say “Yes” or “No,” and nothing more, to this question: Are charter schools public schools?
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That was my exact take. His words were very well-chosen as were those of many who have come before him. Very common deflection to throw around the word “public” as if it means the same thing regarding charters.
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Cory Booker was absent from the panel.
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Ha! It would have been fascinating to hear Cory Booker speak to the NEA representatives about his views on education.
Too bad he skipped out
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Cory is probably doing the “bob and weave” now that news is out about his brother Cary and his new position after he failed up when his Charter scheme failed. Seems like it’s a family business.
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Excellent point. At the time of the NEA conference, Cary was not yet in the news, however Cory could have been trying to be pro-active.
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Cory did not want to be cornered. What if someone had asked about his all-out support for privatizing the schools of Newark?
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I was disappointed that Booker was not there because I was so hoping he’d be confronted, however…NEA controls which questions get to the candidates so it’s possible he would not have had to face the music even if he was there.
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Unless there is a miracle to help Booker, he is also out of the competition. His poll ratings are less than 2 percent.
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When the NEA endorsed HRC for the 2016 election well before she was the democratic candidate, the NJEA did not outwardly support it. The national union does not always reflect what the state unions stand for. I don’t think it’s a good idea to throw the baby out with the bath water by overly criticizing the union at the national level when you can do so much at the state and local level. We need to be positive and work to better the organization or else we stand to lose the structure that allows us to make the changes we seek at other levels. Support the right to organize.
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I hear that all the time. I should be “doing more to support the local and state union.” That I “am the union, so if I don’t like what’s happening, I should speak out.”
Doesn’t work that way in my state or local. I speak out, all the time. For that, I’ve been treated by garbage, and even called a “traitor” by my local union. The state just ignores me.
And I don’t think I’m the only one who has been treated that way.
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I spoke out all the time when I was still teaching but always through writing that I made public. Any attempt to isolate me always backfired.
I pointed out in writing what I disagreed with in the local union and in the district, but no one dared to treat me like “garbage.” I don’t know why, but the local union leaders either feared me and/or respected me too much to treat me that way and the same thing went for the district administration.
One time, another teacher I was friends with who had friends working at the district warned me that district administration had me on a list of teachers to get rid of and that my name often came up during their meetings about that list because they didn’t know how to get rid of me without it backfiring on them. They tried twice and both times they lost.
They even hired a hard-assed principal to get rid of me that I ended up nicknaming “Hitler” and the school board ended up buying out his contract three years early to get rid of him because his attempt to get rid of me blew up in the national press and burned the district.
The ACLU was willing to get involved. In addition, the union provided a lawyer for me and there was another non-profit organization that supports high school journalists that stepped up in my defense. I think they are called Quill and Scroll or another organization affiliated with that one.
I was also warned about being on that blacklist by a Vice Principal I was friends with. He said he’d deny telling me about it if I ever told anyone else. He feared for his job.
But I never feared what they were trying to do. The more they went after me, the angrier I got but I never expressed my anger in person verbally, always through writing after I had time to calm down and edit the anger out of what I wrote, and what I wrote was always made public to every PTA president at every school in that district, everyone on the school board, and every administrator in the district and every principal for every school.
Usually, my written missives were mailed out on Monday mornings but I always held back the letters going to the admins I was fighting. Everyone else got their copies first so they were my alleged enemies were the last to know what my counter-attack was.
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You have every right to say what you feel. My experience has been different. I belong to an incredibly strong local (currently going through contract issues for the first time in decades) that is pro-active. I find that talk about how horrible unions are does nothing to improve them—it only gives fodder to those who would like to see their complete demise. We work out our problems internally or we fall. If you have issues with your local go to the county or regional level. Keep going until someone hears you.
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No offense, Lloyd, and I’m glad you were listened to. But I’m a woman. In education as in many places, men are listened to, and women are dismissed as “bitches.” Of course, that’s obviously not the case in a lot of places, but in my neck of the woods, men still run most everything.
NOTE: That is NOT to imply to Lloyd, or any other gentleman on here, that they are the problem. But the problem IS out there.
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I agree.
I met my 2nd wife when I was a substitute teacher at her middle school. The next year I was teaching there full time. A friendship developed into a relationship over the years and we ended up living together and then got married, in secret because that school district had a rule that married couples could not teach at the same school.
We even had a mutual friend that was a teacher at the same school and he helped us keep our marriage a secret whenever anyone mentioned us being seen together. That friend was really good at convincing others at the school that we didn’t like each other.
Then Jeannie was targeted by the school board president, a bread truck driver that wanted his son to have a higher GPA and the district administration wanted to give their boss what he wanted so they targeted a woman they thought was single without a boyfriend or husband and she was my “secret” wife.
I wanted to get involved when the pressure was put on her and would not stop, but she said no. She wanted me to stay out of it and continue to keep our marriage a secret so one of us wouldn’t have to transfer to another school in the district.
But eventually, the “shit” the district and this school board president was throwing at her became too much and I went to one of the school’s counselors I was friends with and told him that we were married and how angry I was. He asked if it was okay for him to talk to the principal on my behalf. I said yes.
Like turning off a light switch, the pressure was gone and the district and the board president were running for cover. It turns out that they were worried I might come hunting for them. It seems that being a former US Marine and Vietnam combat vet has a dark side to the benefits that come with that history. BAck in the 1980s and early 1990s, most of the films about Vietnam painted an image of combat vets as lunatics with firearms and knives.
The district perps were so scared, they didn’t want to meet with me so I met with the counselor again and made it clear that the district was going to stop harassing Jeannie. I never said in detail what I’d do if they didn’t. Lighting a match to their imaginations worked better.
And I was the one that transferred to another school in the district but they knew I was still watching them.
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The traitor slam WAS from the state union.
I changed unions. That has helped, but this other union is tiny in my state, so we can’t get much done.
It’s not that I want to ruin unions, but people need to know about situations where they are NOT working. The major teachers’ union in my state does not work. They stand aside and let the legislature and districts do whatever they want to do to destroy teachers. They then tell us that, “it could be worse.” I was SO tired of hearing that.
I’m FOR unions. But what good is a union if it won’t listen to its members?
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O’Rourke was the only one directly asked about charters. I am assuming he wanted to clarify his position. He only supports “non-profit charters.” There were groans and boos after his statement. DeBlasio’s positive support for public education were made to gain favor with the crowd, but we know that his actual record is wishy-washy. Overall, the questions were real “softballs” at the NEA Forum in Houston. It was a big fail for the NEA if they were more concerned with offending a few charter teachers in a room that was mostly full of public school teachers.
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Leadership comes from the top, and leadership decided to protect the feelings of the handful of charter teachers.
Forget about the fact that more than 90% of charters are non-union, as the Waltons intended them to be.
High teacher turnover in charters is an impediment to unions.
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How much money has Gates “given” to NEA and AFT?
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apparently…..NOT ENOUGH yet!
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This is how the NEA will be able to endorse anybody but Bernie. Shame!
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Bernie, Warren and Biden got a standing “o” from the crowd. Harris softened her busing statements from the debate. https://thegrio.com/2019/07/04/kamala-harris-backpedal-a-bit-issue-school-busing/
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I don’t have too much confidence in Biden. His brother ran a shady for-profit charter chain in FL. I could see him appointing another Arne Duncan.
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George Will wrote a column today urging Democrats to pick Senator Michael Bennett from Colorado
Bennett was a hedge fund manager before becoming superintendent of the Denver schools.
As superintendent, he nearly bankrupted the district with dubious financial transactions.
He is a steadfast supporter of school choice.
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Appointed in 2009 (not elected at that time), Senator Michael Bennet was born in New Delhi, India. How can he run for president?
Bennet has a 0.5 RCP average in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination list. Biden has 26.8. Unless there is a miracle of some kind, Bennet doesn’t stand a chance.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/2020_democratic_presidential_nomination-6730.html
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-bennet-might-be-the-democrats-best-chance-to-beat-trump/2019/07/11/f6e411f4-a3fd-11e9-b732-41a79c2551bf_story.html?utm_term=.be6fd05e9ad1&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1
Good question. The Constitution says you must be native-born.
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Here is what I just found:
“Legal requirements for presidential candidates have remained the same since the year Washington accepted the presidency. As directed by the Constitution, a presidential candidate must be a natural born citizen of the United States, a resident for 14 years, and 35 years of age or older.”
And from two other sources: “A natural-born citizen refers to someone who was a U.S. citizen at birth, and did not need to go through a naturalization proceeding later in life.”
“The weight of legal and historical authority indicates that the term ‘natural born’ citizen would mean a person who is entitled to U.S. citizenship “by birth” or “at birth,” either by being born ‘in’ the United States and under its jurisdiction, even those born to alien parents; by being born abroad to U.S. citizen- .”
That means the fact that Obama’s mother was a native-born American citizen, it didn’t matter where Obama was born. He was still a citizen. The entire Obama citizenship conspiracy theories were built on hot air and/or confirmation bias and total ignorance.
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LOL at that George Will column. It is unintentionally hilarious!
Shorter version: The way for Democrats to defeat Trump is to nominate a candidate who has almost zero support from any Democrats but might get the 3% of Trump voters who absolutely adore him to support him because he sounds a lot like a conservative Republican.
Next.
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Exactly right. Nominate the candidate who acts most like Trump without the tweeting. The word according to George Will.
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John McCain and George Romney were both born outside of the U.S. But their parents were citizens. That made them natural born citizens.
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G. Washington and other founding fathers that also became president were not natural citizens of the United States but of Britain. A case of ignoring the rules of our Constitution perhaps until we got going.
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It’s rumored that Daily Kos is neoliberalism lite and is part of the “never Bernie” campaign.
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Linda, I think you are right about Daily Kos.
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I’m shocked! Oh, I forgot that Eskelsen (NEA) accepted 25 million and Weingarten (AFT/UFT) accepted 15 million from Bill Gates. Weingarten even publicly ridiculed UFT members who demonstrated against Bill Gates at a forum she invited Gates to speak at during a time when Gates and his ilk were conducting all out war against public education teachers.
One can only imagine what goes on behind the scenes with the leadership of these two major unions.
One thing I’m certain about is that teachers in NY are no longer required to pay dues or agency fees if they do not join a union. While veteran teachers, especially those near retirement will not want to rock the boat, I wouldn’t, new teachers, especially those only planning to stay for a few years may be more reluctant to dish out such high fees at the low end of the pay scale. As the ratio of new to veteran teachers increases for new teachers who may be more inclined to not join, the union leaders will be forced to heed their concerns in order to get them to join. In other words, sooner or later union leaders will have to fight for members if they are to survive since they can no longer count on guaranteed dues or agency fees.
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Money talks and Randy and Lily sit, bark and rollover.
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I’m not a teacher, so I address this question to members of the teachers’ union:
What is the answer?
You aren’t getting everything you want from the union and in some ways the policies they support have been repellent.
If the union doesn’t endorse Bernie, do you start a public relations campaign about how corrupt and evil the NEA and UFT are in the hopes that the public will agree with you that the teachers union is corrupt and worthless and it would be better if the union had no power at all?
Is it better to empower right wing politicians who agree with you that the union is corrupt and worthless and hope that the union dies and maybe a new progressive union will replace it eventually?
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I belonged to a local of CTA/NEA for thirty years (1975 – 2005). The decisions of the Nationals seldom represented the beliefs and thinking of the majority of the members of the local I belonged to.
The local that I belonged to was in a school district that had about 1,000 teachers working with 19,000 students in one Southern California school district. There are 977 school districts in California.
I taught in one of that district’s three high schools (for 16 years of the 30 I worked in that district) that had about 100 teachers and 3,000 students at the time. Among those 100 high school teachers were a “few” burned out teachers that needed to retire but couldn’t afford to, and even “fewer” conservatives that if still alive today probably voted for Trump, but most of the teachers were moderates and/or centrists in their political beliefs and thinking and would have never supported the charter industry or voted for Trump. If they didin’t like Hillary, too, they probably didn’t vote in 2016.
There were not that many extremists from either end of the Left < – – – > Right extremist war raging in the United States today. I can only think of one and he was one of the burned out teachers that retired a few years before I did. He was on the left and would never vote for someone like Trump.
And there were always some teachers that were unhappy with what was going on at the state and/or national level if that topic came up when we had time to actually had free time to talk about something other than our students and what was going on in our classrooms.
The major topic of discussion was almost always related to our students and education. Teaching is such an all-consuming, mentally-and-physically exhausting profession, there isn’t much time or energy left to get heated about anything else going on in the country even what was happening with the state or national teachers’ unions.
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Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think the same thing is true about most democrats not necessarily paying attention to the DNC.
The question is how to make the union better. It is certainly possible to start a campaign to enlighten teachers and the public that the teachers’ union is synonymous with greed and corruption entirely run in the service of corporate interests. That would certainly get public opinion to be against the teachers union. Would making those kinds of attacks so that the public knew how corrupt and evil the union was lead to reform and a more progressive and responsive union or would it lead to the end of unions – cause the public to despise them – and the rise of far right corporate-run schools?
I like to think there is a way to “reform” teachers unions without trying to convince the public that they are the most evil and corrupt organizations that are run solely for corporate interests. I think once the public is convinced that the teachers’ union is corrupt and greedy, that it will destroy the teachers union and not reform it.
it is possible that a new, progressive union will arise from the ashes once the public is convinced that the current union is too corrupt and greedy to support and once the public is convinced that whether or not there is a teachers union at all is not important and they might as well end that corrupt organization now. But I think that once the public is convinced the union is totally corrupt and greedy, that they are likely to vote for right wing politicians who agree and the union disappears.
It is a catch-22 because the more the public agrees with the notion that the teachers’ union is totally corrupt and greedy, the more a candidate like Bernie Sanders can be undermined because he supports having union teachers. And if Bernie spends his time agreeing that the teachers’ union is totally corrupt and evil, then he is called a hypocrite for supporting unions. It’s hard to win when you are a progressive.
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I read “The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism.” Worth reading.
Anyway, in that book, there is an attempt to end labor unions during their birth when Teddy was president. The argument from the private sector was that labor unions were corrupt and shouldn’t be allowed to exist.
Teddy’s response was golden. He said corruption exists in all sectors, private and public, and that wasn’t a good enough excuse to exclude labor unions from existing and representing workers.
Because without labor unions, he said, workers had no voice at all and Teddy did not use his power as President to kill the labor movement in its infancy and from what I read in that book, he could have done it.
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Thank you!
Great information about TR! What an excellent retort.
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I’m not a teacher either, so I won’t answer your question, but the question itself sounds like an abused girlfriend. You have this guy who treats you like crap and betrays you at every turn. But aren’t you better off keeping him because, well, I don’t know. Maybe the alternative is worse. Or something. Don’t hope for anything better, much less take action toward anything better. Just stand by your man, no matter how many times he slaps you in the face.
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Really, a labor union is like an abusive boy-fiend?
Labor unions are nothing like a boy-fiend abusing his girlfriend.
While labor unions are at risk of corruption/abuse just like any corporation, billionaire, member of Congress, the military, or U.S. President, et al., labor unions are about the only voice workers have. Without labor unions, workers have no voice.
However, an abused girlfriend always has the choice to dump the boy-fiend, seek a restraining order and find someone better that will treat her right and keep the boy-fiend away from her.
Wait, … wait, …. workers can do that too! If a worker don’t like the fact that his/her labor unions don’t do whatever he/she expects and wants the union to do, there is a choice, quit that profession and find another job that has a different labor union or no union at all.
The fact is that when there is worker abuse, the abuse is almost always coming from the employer and not the labor union, and the union’s responsibility is to decide if the alleged employer abuse of a worker or workers warrants stepping in and defending the worker.
Every case is handled differently on its own merits. Just because someone, a worker, complains their union didn’t jump in and do what they wanted when they alleged the employer was abusing them, doesn’t mean that worker was right. Without all the facts including witness statements, there is no way to judge properly if the union was at fault or the worker.
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dienne77,
I think a more accurate analogy is this:
You have a guy who is a normal, flawed human being and sometimes does wonderful things that are very good and sometimes doesn’t do everything you want him to do and can be kind of selfish.
You decide to reject him, even though you are aware that means that you will be completely under the power of the guy who really does treat you like crap and betrays you at every turn and gives you nothing. Now you are totally abused.
The old boyfriend who you rejected might have helped you get out of the abusive power of the new awful guy who has total control over you. But the guy who has total control over you has used his power to destroy him.
So now you are stuck trying to figure out how to get out of an abusive relationship with a guy who is so powerful that everyone is afraid to do anything to help you.
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Wow, that example says it like it really is.
The union isn’t perfect but without the union, we are totally at the mercy of monsters instead of just sometimes. And as long as the unions exist, maybe, just maybe one day we will elect someone at the top that will do a better job defending us.
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Well said NYC and Lloyd. It’s the same old song with the progressives who are searching for the perfect candidate. One doesn’t exist, but purists will go on and on about how we should have zero tolerance for any candidate who isn’t perfect when the alternative to supporting an imperfect but really excellent and qualified candidate is another four years of what we got in 2016. No union is perfect, but the alternative is far, far worse.
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The formula to remember: No human is perfect unless you are Donald Trump (according to him).
That means imperfect humans manage labor unions and should not be expected to be perfect unless they are Donald Trump (according to him).
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BadAss Teachers should certify as a union.
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It was reported that 1 in 3 NEA members voted for Trump.
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We’ve seen this movie before. Premature is the title.
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TAGO, LCT! Short & sweet!
&–about the unions (& I was a member of both NEA & AFT, because I worked in a school district that was AFT for a year.
&–NJEA member (is it LG-?)–you are so right. There are a # of state orgs. that have very strong unions & great leaders, Massachusetts being one (is Barbara Madeloni {sorry, spelling-?} still MEA President? Also, whenever I’ve been to Atlantic City, I’d always seen great TV commercials for NJEA &–correct me if I’m wrong–NJEA has always been a strong state affiliate.
In my personal experience, my IL local (& those of many friends in other districts) have had great leadership, & the rank-&-file very strong. That having been said, ILL-Annoy E.A. leadership has been…just…bad. Sold us all down the river w/Jonah Edelman (who famously bragged that he’d gotten both the IEA & the IFT to sign on to his collective bargaining busting shenanigans) & Stand on Children.
(Karen Lewis was the only one who fought back, & she was cornered by both state leaders.)
Anyway, is anyone surprised about the NEA “interviews?”
And that Cory Booker was a no-show? As I said in an earlier comment on another post, his #s are in the toilet anyway, so…buh-bye Booker!
(That calls for a poem, SDP!)
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Madeloni is no longer at MTA
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Premature Inoculation
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Linda: I hope 1 in 3 NEA members voting for Trump means 2 in 3 NEA members voted for HRC as 2.86 million was margin of popular vote HRC beat Trump.
NEA 2019 Houston Representative Assembly New Business Item 59 stated “The NEA demands that all candidates seeking our union’s endorsement publicly state their opposition to all charter school expansion.”
I was one of the approximately 7,000 delegates to Houston NEA Representative Assembly and voted for New Business Item 59’s call for a moratorium on charter school expansion. The 1 in 3 Trump voters were likely included in the winning no voice votes. But, my guess is that Trump delegates were a very small part of the prevailing voiced no vote.
I think that making a demand on presidential candidates may have been rejected by the majority of No voters as to radical a political action and demanding anything of invited presidential candidates as a condition of their endorsement had never been done before.
Endorsement of presidential candidates by NEA started with presidential candidate Jimmy Cartier. Endorsements have always been by secret ballot. Trying to limit the choice of a big field of candidates with a New Business Item that was voted on with a voice vote was something totally new.
Also, with 10 presidential candidates asking for the NEA endorsement, many no voters may have felt that their candidate is the one to defeat 45 and feared that voting yes might exclude their candidate from being endorsed.
And, some No votes were because although they felt their candidate was in support of charter schools, it was poor political strategy for their candidate to be pressured by NEA and have to publicly take a stand against charter schools. In other words, some that voted No on New Business Item 59 oppose continuing growth of charter schools but felt NEA making a demand on presidential candidates was inappropriate.
The NEA has a three (3) page policy statement on Charter Schools whose purpose NEA states as follows: “The purpose of this policy statement is to make plain NEA’s opposition to the failed experiment of largely unaccountable privately managed charter schools while clarifying NEA’s continued support for those public charter schools that are authorized and held accountable by local democratically elected school boards or their equivalent.”
Some, but not all, presidential candidates could take up the NEA position of declaring charter school experiment of reforming public education a failure but claim the candidate supports the good public charter schools locally controlled and doing no financial harm to public schools nearby.
I oppose the position of being against the bad charters and supporting the good charters.
A public school system, I believe must be universal; and because it is universal, serve in the interest of all students. Diverting public school funding to private management of charter schools violates the principle of being universal. Public education funding managed, not in the public interest, but by a private interest is the privatization of public funding and should be opposed.
The charter school supporter’s propaganda, for reforming public education system by injecting in the system competition in the form of charter schools competing with public schools for enrollment, was a promise that competition would make the two competing systems stronger. That promise has not panned out.
Public schools are financially harm with lost of students and not made stronger with charter schools often seeking to cream off the easiest students to teach. And, financing of second system of charter schools has proven costly reform.
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Thank you for the explanation. The introduction of item 59 was a good start to waking up NEA members. However, an awakening to the threat is well past due. Reportedly, in contrast to the NEA, the AFT only had 1 out of 5 Trump voters. And, I speculate BadAss Teachers had zero.
The NEA name crops up in lists of supporters of various tech industry intrusions into education policy and practice. An NEA representative sat on a teacher education accrediting board that elected a Pahara Fellow as chair. And, a state government board of education member’s experience was at NEA and he was aligned with deformers.
Without repeating info. about Gates’ gifts to the NEA,, my view is the NEA leaders and members should engage in some reflection and rout those working against public education.
At the NEA meeting, the Weyrich training manual posted at Theocracy Watch should have been distributed. It makes clear the goal of
parallel schools.
It’s been suggested that NEA has members who are wives of professionals and they vote Republican in an effort to protect the interests of the major bread winner. Evidently, they are willing to put their pensions and possible careers for their daughters in jeopardy.
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The NEA let it be known that it does NOT care about charter school teachers when it decided not to take privatization into account in its endorsement decision. I wonder if the few NEA charter teachers who reportedly are offended by calls for a moratorium realize that the future expansion of charter schools means more competition and therefore fewer resources for the presently existing charter schools in which they teach, for them and their students. Likewise, I always have to wonder about those parents who allow themselves to be bribed and bused by charter lobbying organizations to school boards and legislatures. Don’t they understand they’re calling for less for their own children. If the political action arm of the NEA intends to protect and support the charter teachers who bravely organized and fought to be part of the union, it needs to endorse candidates and bills that seek to restrict charter growth. Funds are spread thinly enough already. Enrollments are spread thinly enough already. Protect those charter union members and endorse a presidential candidate who opposes the expansion of the charter and charter management organization industry.
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Strange that the NEA does not acknowledge that the goal of charter funders is to destroy unions
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I agree……maybe that is why the media is SCARED to ask any questions at all about charters……and bill gates, arne duncan, and devos.
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More than strange–does that make the leadership either ignorant or stupid or just outright bought–?
I ask this question in all seriousness.
This has been going on for far too long.
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I don’t know the answer to your question. I think that unions want to organize a few hundreds of the 7,000 charters. It is understandable that they don’t want to alienate their members who are charter teachers. Paradoxically, this puts the unions in the position of being unable to stand strong against the use of charters by people like DeVos and the Waltons to kill union jobs.
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Concept of charter school is to reform public education system by introducing competition and ending public monopoly over education. Charter school experiment failed to positively reform public education system that was not able to demonstrate that competition improved public education system by privately managed charter school competition.
The charter schools have grown at the expense of public schools loss of education funding and closing of public schools. Public schools and charter schools in competition for enrollment are in a zero sum relationship.
The NEA policy on Charter Schools acknowledges the reality of public school charter school zero sum relationship stating that charter school growth is unregulated and destructive of public education.
But, the NEA in its written policy is protective of public charter schools that are created locally and well regulated by local school board. Such charter schools are not a threat to public schools as they are by definition managed by public school governing board.
NEA calling these benign public charter schools managed by local school boards in its NEA Charter School policy is self-defeating and inhibiting of a strong NEA policy that will clearly makes NEA defender public schools from the existential threat of privately managed charter schools.
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“Friends at the NEA meeting tell me that the organization contains a few charter teachers and did not want to offend them.”
Quite apart from NEA and AFT, I think that criticism of charter schools is suppressed in a range of “professional associations” who want charter enthusiasts as members, and have a “big tent” orientation to special interest groups.
Some also seek accept perks from charter school supporters. For example, in 2016, The American Educational Research Association (AERA) announced Dissertation fellowships funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The program supports secondary data analysis using the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Longitudinal Database, and other activities associated with the deeply flawed MET project. https://www.aera.net/Professional-Opportunities-Funding/AERA-Funding-Opportunities/AERA-MET-Dissertation-Fellowship
The National Art Education Association routinely offers short-term professional development session offered by charter school teachers and encourages membership from workers in many varieties of schools, museums, and social service organizations.
I think that most national conferences sponsored by professional associations of educators also function as trade fairs that help to offset the cost of the conference. Recruiting for charter schools is not likely to be prohibited. I have been told that the Walton Family has no influence on a leadership learning institute sponsored by the National Art Education Association at the Walton funded Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas.
Finally, like many non-profits,The National Art Education Association has an “action arm” that can functions in the manner of a lobby and in principle, ask political candidates for answers to questions and take a stand on their preferred policies.
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Chicago, for example, has a very strong law regarding lobbying. If the associations you reference are lobbying, which Chicago’s law describes as any attempt to influence (hefty fines apply), they should be held accountable in Chicago, in all cities and states and, at the federal level when lobbying Congress and government agencies.
City and state teacher unions, BadAss Teachers, citizen groups and NPE should bring attention to means to curtail staff lobbyists of associations of publicly-paid employees who are underwritten by “philanthropists”. SETDA comes to mind.
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For those who are against labor unions, I think it should be explained that when teachers don’t belong to unions, as is the case with most Early Childhood Educators who teach where the majority of young children are educated, in private programs which are mostly non-union, then you end up with educators like me who, despite all my degrees and experience, were low-paid teachers throughout our careers and have no pensions. So, after working for over 50 years, I get poverty level Social Security Retirement Income (SSRI) which is truly unlivable. Therefore, despite the fact that my body is deteriorating (and I’m disabled), I can’t ever really retire and have to work until the day that I die.
I must keep working to survive, but with every paycheck that I earn, it’s required that I keep paying INTO Social Security and Medicare –plus Medicare premiums are deducted from my SSRI checks each month. However, despite adding to the SSRI kitty monthly, I never see an increase in my SSRI checks, except the years when everyone in the country who is getting SSRI is given a very small cost of living adjustment (COLA).
Unions made the middle class in this country and as union membership has declined, we have seen a steady erosion of the middle class. First private sector unions declined. The largest number of union workers remaining are those in the public sector, so they became the targets and since the majority of teachers are women, they’re the low hanging fruit. This was all done by design, and you are sorely mistaken if you think there is one party that has consistently stood up for and represented workers while it all occurred. Both parties are in the pockets of billionaires and that is why we have such income disparity today.
If your union is in the pocket of billionaires, too, as it surely appears to be, then you MUST stand up and be counted! AFT is very likely to do the same as NEA. This has been going on for way too long and you don’t have to take it anymore. Your union dues should not be going to support political candidates that promote policies which undermine union workers, livable wages and pensions. Organize, resist and protest! Make your voice be heard!!!
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Question: Why did union membership decline amidst so much success? I maintain it was in large part do to automatic payment of dues, whether or not a worker joined a union at a unionized job. Witness how effective the UFT in NYC was before agency fees and how ineffective, even sclerotic, it became after the imposition of those guaranteed dues. The union leaders no longer had to fight for their members. Instead the union leaders became beholden to the state leaders who essentailly guaranteed their incomes via those mandatory dues, so why bother worrying about those pesky members making “unreasonable” demands???
Over time many people started to see unions more as vehicles for corruption for their leaders hence the long slow decline of union membership, aided of course by conservative politicians.
Finally, a membership that is forced to pay dues rather than one that wants to pay dues will never result in a strong entity.
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MB, well, I can see your mind has been taken over by the union hating vampire billionaires like the Walton family and the Koch brothers.
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When I attended my last union meeting in 2009 before retirement in Jan 2010, I witnessed two veteran teachers complain about the first “U” ratings they received in their entire careers. One woman with 32 years the other in her 37th year. I recall both teachers telling Michael Mulgrew, UFT President, that the union was no help. The teacher with 37 years was fortunate to have a high income husband who was able to pay for a high priced lawyer and took the matter to court. Two years later she won the case. I don’t recall what happened with the teacher with “only” 32 years other than it apparently ended without further ado. I do recall when those two teachers asked Michael Mugrew for comment the result was …… utter silence!
My own experienece dealing with the union has been good & bad. I won an arbitration case with the help of the union, but: while attempting to get the union to take my case the rep I spoke to at the union headquarters was incredibly rude. He would cut me off mid sentence and even hung up on me. I persisted and eventually convinced the union to take my case to arbitration. At arbitration the rep who handled it was very thorough resulting in a favorable ruling. In fact virtually any time I spoke to a rep at headquarters, not the local chapter leader, I detected a sense that the goal of the rep was to get off the phone as quickly as possible.
When I called recently and obviously after the Janus case the reps were incredibly friendly and even cracked jokes! It seemd almost as if it is a union policy!
Or how about this: There has never been a UFT vote for president consisting of 2 new candidates while the current president serves out the term. It has always been the case that the current president resigns about 6 months before his/her term expires and appoints an “interim acting” president that becomes the UFT leadership’s candidate, and, of course the greatest predictor of victory is incumbancy!
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My experience was different. I think workers need unions even if they are corrupt. Since when is corruption unique to only unions? Corruption can be found in every sector. Look at how corrupt Donald Trump is and he made it to the White House.
As for the two teachers you mentioned that worked for more than thirty years, they were probably burned out and were not performing as well as they had during their first 20 to 30 years. I think it was probably time for them to retire. Teaching in this country is an abusive, demanding, demoralizing job and it burns good teachers out.
I think most workers need unions more than they want them, because they have had decades of lying, misleading, crap dished out by the likes of the Walton family and other totally corrupted-by-their-wealth billionaires that are probably all psychopaths and/or narcissists just like Donald Trump that can’t stand anyone else having any say over their lives.
Getting rid of labor unions because examples of corruption can be found in them is not an excuse to get rid of them. If it was, then we’d be getting rid of some of our government and most of the corporations out there like Ford Motor Corporation, all the cigarette manufacturers, the entire sugar industry, the drug industry, et al.
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Why do you think I want to get rid of unions. I want to strengthen unions. The UFT was much stronger before the dues checkoff. I also take take strong exception to your comment about the two teachers being burned out. During Bloomberg’s mayoralty he made veteran teachers a target to cut costs. Anybody with over 10 years in the system was a target in my experience. In fact I sat in a supervisor’s meeting in my school (I wasn’t a supervisor but I was the programmer so sat in occasionally) and heard the principal state he wanted to see more “U” ratings. He also made it especially clear that he wanted that applied to veterans by telling the A.P.’s to tell new teachers to avoid speaking with veteran teachers as much as possible.
But getting back to Bloomberg & the UFT, the UFT in 2005 negotiated a contract that removed seniority/transfer rights, a huge concession made even worse with the big recession in 2008 Bloomberg used as an opportunity to close schools and force veterans to interview for position in other schools. Those who were unable to land a permanent position, the vast majority, were put into the “ATR” pool or “teachers in the reserve” pool and sent to various schools as substitutes often to the most difficult locations for them to attend travel wise. Also just being in the ATR pool was used by Bloomberg’s stooge, the infamous Joel Klein, to castigate and describe the ATR teachers as unwanted failures almost on a daily basis in the media.
Finally, all, I repeat all the teachers I know who are still working are in the ATR pool. Mayor de Blasio has not eliminated it but at least his administration is not attacking teachers as did the Bloomberg administration.
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Good, I’m glad you don’t’ want to get rid of unions — just clean them up and make them better.
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Agreed!
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Since Janus took care of the mandatory dues requirement, I would think that members now have a lot more leverage over how their unions operate and, ostensibly, represent them.
People who belong to unions should take advantage of that and demand their unions be restructured and provide more democratic representation!
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The Janus decision affected public unions in states that allowed what’s known as “agency fees” or “shop fees,” which was a charge to workers who declined to join the union but still benefited from collective bargaining.
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I agree. Furthermore when I contacted the union the receptionists went out of their way to be friendly and helpful. When I spoke to a rep about an issue he was also “very friendly and helpful”. Prior to the Janus case the attitude exhibited, especially by reps, was decidedly less “friendly and helpful” in my experience.
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The summer after I graduated from high school, I got a job working in the meat department at a grocery chain and was told that, after a certain amount of time, I would be required to join the meat cutters union, but until then, I was still able to benefit and get the union wage.
They knew that I was going to college and I planned to leave before the time I’d have to join the union, so I didn’t join. Because of what they told me though, I have always assumed that in my state, if the place where you work is unionized, you are required to join the union. Do states have different requirements for joining unions?
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Union Rules Vary from State to State, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Janus vs AFSCME threatens the ability of unions to have enough funds to lobby for their members’ interests because lobbyists and lobbying are not free.
But no fear, corporations, and billionaires will still be able to spend huge sums of money on their lobbying efforts though.
It is just the working class that is being crippled because labor unions are one of the only few organizations and voices that speak for them even if some workers don’t like it that the unions are sometimes corrupt like corporations and billionaires are, too.
https://www.rollcall.com/news/union_rules_vary_from_state_to_state-235395-1.html
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The Janus case this year (2019) ended forced payment of dues if a worker does not join a union. Prior to this case if you were employed in a job that was a union shop you had to join and pay dues. Another type of union shop was the “agency shop” whereby a worker did not have to join but still had to pay slightly reduced dues that were called in this case agency fees. Again with the Supreme Court ruling in the Janus case a worker cannot be compelled to pay dues/agency fees if the worker does not join a union.
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I think there should be two levels of dues for labor unions.
The required lower dues would only be enough to support the basic cost of running the unions.
The higher voluntary dues would also support the cost of paying for lobbyists and lawyers used to defend teachers against abusive bosses.
If a teacher only paid the lower dues, the basic flat fee enough to support contract negotiations between labor and districts, those teachers do not have any access to the union’s lawyers if they get abused or in trouble.
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A teacher, or any worker, who does not join a union should not be required to pay dues and the union should not be required to represent/defend a non member. So the Janus case provides impetus for unions to listen to their members and non members to join if they expect help with abusive work conditions.
I will look for an article I found some time ago about the author of the idea of mandatory union dues published in the late 1940’s. He was a Republican and his reasoning was that it would make unions weaker, and in my opinion he nailed it. If I can find the article I will post it here for you to see.
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We need a revolution within the national unions to put in place leadership that stops compromising their core principles– fighting for public schools. Let’s start the movement now and be ready to put forth the plan for a new national model at NPE 2020
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Why doesn’t BadAss Teachers certify as a union?
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At the LULAC forum, Bernie was asked: More than half of Democrats polled say they want to keep their private health insurance. Would you let them keep their current plans? He said flatly, “No.” Ha! Beautiful! The audience laughed and cheered. That’s what I love about Senator Sanders. He doesn’t try to please all of the people all of the time. He tries instead to do right, to do good. Call it honesty. Call it righteousness. The NEA could learn from him.
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I agree.
However, I do wish Bernie would develop some retort to that question that explained it so people understood.
“Would you let them keep their current plans?”
Bernie: No. Are you saying that people don’t like Medicare? How many people in this audience want to end Medicare right now? Raise your hand if you think your grandparents are demanding that we take away their Medicare? I want Medicare for all and I think just like senior citizens aren’t telling Trump to take away their Medicare, Americans who are younger will like their Medicare, too.
I’m sure Bernie could come up with something better, but candidates who support Medicare for all should be prepared with a good comeback to those questions.
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