Andy Stern was once a powerful labor leader as head of the SEIU (Service Employees International Union). Since stepping down, however, he has turned against the movement he once led and is an outspoken foe of teachers’ unions. He even joined the board of the Broad Foundation, which is anti-union and anti-public school. I don’t know Stern, but I have seen one article that describes his change of views.
Stern developed a reputation as a business-friendly union leader, known for striking deals with companies that were often seen as too weak by many in the labor movement. Under the guise of modernization and growth, Stern seemed to lose his connection to the grassroots, radical, people-powered aspects of the union world. In 2010, The Nation quoted one union leader as saying, “Andy Stern leaves pretty much without a friend in the labor movement.”
His post-SEIU years have only intensified this feeling. Stern has spent the past decade serving on corporate boards, touting the idea of a universal basic incomeas an economic solution superior to building labor power, and further ingratiating himself to corporate America as a sort of post-union ambassador to the Aspen Institute world. He also took a seat on the board of the Broad Foundation, a billionaire-funded group that pushed charter schools—raising eyebrows from teacher’s unions, who are often cast as the villain by wealthy reformers seeking to build alternatives to America’s public education system.
Of course, he is not the only labor leader who flipped to the other side. George Parker was president of the Washington, D.C., teachers union at the time when Michelle Rhee became chancellor and started her famous campaign to crack down on teachers. At the end of his term in 2011, he teamed up with Rhee and spoke out against the same issues he had once championed. He went to work for Rhee’s StudentsFirst and joined her campaign for charters, vouchers, merit pay, and test-based evaluation. Now he works with the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
Paul Toner was vice-president, then president of the Massachusetts Teachers Union from 2006 to 2014. After his term ended, he joined the “reform” movement, as a Pahara-Aspen Institute Fellow, a graduate of the Broad Academy, and currently executive director of the Gates-funded Teach Plus, which is generally pro-testing and anti-union (its CEO is John B. King Jr. and its board includes DFER favorite, former Congressman George Miller). For criticism, see here and here.
In 2011, Sam Dillon of the New York Times called out TeachPlus for its role in pushing through policies in state legislatures that Gates favored, but unions did not. Dillon was one of the first journalists to realize that Gates was creating Astroturf groups to advance his agenda:
INDIANAPOLIS — A handful of outspoken teachers helped persuade state lawmakers this spring to eliminate seniority-based layoff policies. They testified before the legislature, wrote briefing papers and published an op-ed article in The Indianapolis Star.
They described themselves simply as local teachers who favored school reform — one sympathetic state representative, Mary Ann Sullivan, said, “They seemed like genuine, real people versus the teachers’ union lobbyists.” They were, but they were also recruits in a national organization, Teach Plus, financed significantly by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
For years, Bill Gates focused his education philanthropy on overhauling large schools and opening small ones. His new strategy is more ambitious: overhauling the nation’s education policies. To that end, the foundation is financing educators to pose alternatives to union orthodoxies on issues like the seniority system and the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers.
In some cases, Mr. Gates is creating entirely new advocacy groups. The foundation is also paying Harvard-trained data specialists to work inside school districts, not only to crunch numbers but also to change practices. It is bankrolling many of the Washington analysts who interpret education issues for journalists and giving grants to some media organizations.
Toner was succeeded at the Massachusetts Teachers Association by firebrand Barbara Madeloni, who led the successful fight to block a Walton-funded referendum in Massachusetts in 2016 to stop charter school expansion.
Just last year, Madeloni wrote an article about Toner’s switching sides. She writes that as soon as someone becomes a union president, he or she is offered the “soft handshake” by corporate and political leaders who want to woo them to the other side. She wrote:
As an elected leader of the largest union in Massachusetts, I found myself with many invitations to meet and cut deals with the very people whose policies the members opposed.
I wasn’t elected to get a better bad deal. I was elected to refuse their deals and reestablish the power of educators, students, and families.
Everyone has a right to change his or her mind. I did it myself. Still, I was not the leader of an organization; I was an individual who said, “I was wrong.” I admit that I don’t entirely understand how someone goes from being the president of a labor union to opposing the people they previously represented.
This sounds so familiar: in Louisville, KY, our local NEA affiliate, Jefferson County Teachers Association – has been corrupted by a union leader, Brent McKim, and his cohorts, who have been in power for 20 years, after forcing through a change to the Association bylaws allowing him to stay in power longer than Vladimir Putin. Since that change, JCTA has blocked transparency of investments in the teacher pension, KTRS, and many suspect there has been a fat, soft handshake. What else could explain being in bed with Wall Street?
Randy Wieck teacher, Union member Louisville, KY ________________________________ From: Diane Ravitch’s blog Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2020 3:00 PM To: rwieck@hotmail.com Subject: [New post] The Ex-Labor Leader Who Now Fights Teachers’ Unions
dianeravitch posted: “Andy Stern was once a powerful labor leader as head of the SEIU (Service Employees International Union). Since stepping down, however, he has turned against the movement he once led and is an outspoken foe of teachers’ unions. He even joined the board of ” Respond to this post by replying above this line New post on Diane Ravitch’s blog [https://greatschoolwars.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/diane.jpg?w=32] [http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/ab3178722e644a5ea1b695f8d9dcd1b1?s=50&d=identicon&r=PG] The Ex-Labor Leader Who Now Fights Teachers’ Unions by dianeravitch
Andy Stern was once a powerful labor leader as head of the SEIU (Service Employees International Union). Since stepping down, however, he has turned against the movement he once led and is an outspoken foe of teachers’ unions. He even joined the board of the Broad Foundation, which is anti-union and anti-public school. I don’t know Stern, but I have seen one article that describes his change of views.
Stern developed a reputation as a business-friendly union leader, known for striking deals with companies that were often seen as too weak by many in the labor movement. Under the guise of modernization and growth, Stern seemed to lose his connection to the grassroots, radical, people-powered aspects of the union world. In 2010, The Nation quoted one union leader as saying, “Andy Stern leaves pretty much without a friend in the labor movement.”
His post-SEIU years have only intensified this feeling. Stern has spent the past decade serving on corporate boards, touting the idea of a universal basic incomeas an economic solution superior to building labor power, and further ingratiating himself to corporate America as a sort of post-union ambassador to the Aspen Institute world. He also took a seat on the board of the Broad Foundation, a billionaire-funded group that pushed charter schools—raising eyebrows from teacher’s unions, who are often cast as the villain by wealthy reformers seeking to build alternatives to America’s public education system.
Of course, he is not the only labor leader who flipped to the other side. George Parker was president of the Washington, D.C., teachers union at the time when Michelle Rhee became chancellor and started her famous campaign to crack down on teachers. At the end of his term in 2011, he teamed up with Rhee and spoke out against the same issues he had once championed. He went to work for Rhee’s StudentsFirst and joined her campaign for charters, vouchers, merit pay, and test-based evaluation. Now he works with the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
Paul Toner was vice-president, then president of the Massachusetts Teachers Union from 2006 to 2014. After his term ended, he joined the “reform” movement, as a Pahara-Aspen Institute Fellow, a graduate of the Broad Academy, and currently executive director of the Gates-funded Teach Plus, which is generally pro-testing and anti-union (its CEO is John B. King Jr. and its board includes DFER favorite, former Congressman George Miller). For criticism, see here and here.
In 2011, Sam Dillon of the New York Times called out TeachPlus for its role in pushing through policies in state legislatures that Gates favored, but unions did not. Dillon was one of the first journalists to realize that Gates was creating Astroturf groups to advance his agenda:
INDIANAPOLIS — A handful of outspoken teachers helped persuade state lawmakers this spring to eliminate seniority-based layoff policies. They testified before the legislature, wrote briefing papers and published an op-ed article in The Indianapolis Star.
They described themselves simply as local teachers who favored school reform — one sympathetic state representative, Mary Ann Sullivan, said, “They seemed like genuine, real people versus the teachers’ union lobbyists.” They were, but they were also recruits in a national organization, Teach Plus, financed significantly by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
For years, Bill Gates focused his education philanthropy on overhauling large schools and opening small ones. His new strategy is more ambitious: overhauling the nation’s education policies. To that end, the foundation is financing educators to pose alternatives to union orthodoxies on issues like the seniority system and the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers.
In some cases, Mr. Gates is creating entirely new advocacy groups. The foundation is also paying Harvard-trained data specialists to work inside school districts, not only to crunch numbers but also to change practices. It is bankrolling many of the Washington analysts who interpret education issues for journalists and giving grants to some media organizations.
Toner was succeeded at the Massachusetts Teachers Association by firebrand Barbara Madeloni, who led the successful fight to block a Walton-funded referendum in Massachusetts in 2016 to stop charter school expansion.
Just last year, Madeloni wrote an artic
good piece. don’t forget Antonio Villaraigosa, former LA mayor, who was a LA teacher union organizer with UTLA, the LA teacher union, then a pro-public school legislator before he was elected mayor and became avidly pro-charter. He ran for Governor with the backing of several pro-charter billionaires but lost.
An eye-opening article on Villaraigosa’s anti-union and pro-charter positions and the huge money raised for his unsuccessful campaign For Gov. by billionaires, many from out-of-state, is here: https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/governors-race-2018/ After he was elected as mayor, he actually said the union was “the loudest opponent and the largest obstacle to creating quality schools.”
I was involved with LAUSD’s Special Education Community Advosory Committee for many years and attended many, many board meetings, speaking agains charter discrimination. A female SEIU rep (sorry cannot remember her name) became a familiar face at LAUSD board meetings during Villaraigosa’s tenure to speak regarding their issues. One meeting, there was a big public announcement and congratulations to her for being appointed as a liaison to the mayor’s office. I found it odd that she would take a paycheck from both.
That being said, I also am good friends with a woman who has been a 1:1 aide for disabled students in LAUSD for 23 years. A member of the SEIU, she’s seen some egregious administrative wrongdoing and been subject of harassment by administrators for standing up for her kids. Whenever she’s report to the SEIU for support or assistance at the school site: crickets. No one would return calls or make any attempts to help. Many in the SEIU here in LAUSD, especially the aides for disabled students feel ripped off by the organization. They do nothing.
These people are scabs and traitors, I can’t prove it but I would not be surprised if they were promised rewards and substantial pecuniary compensations. They were bought off in exchange for putting the shiv to the unions and the teachers.
Deform and Disruption are great, green, toxic rivers of cash flowing from a few sources into tributaries all around this country. Drinking from these tributaries is very, very attractive. They taste oh so sweet. But they poison people and addle their brains.
Deform and Disruption are very lucrative. Just ask anyone at the Fordham Institute for the Payment of Big Bucks to the Officers of the Fordham Institute.
By the way, the person who wrote the Deformy review of Slaying Goliath in the New York Times mispronounces Mozart’s name in her big TEDTalk. Twice. So, this was no slip of the tongue. I would let that pass, except that she obviously gave the same careful attention to her review that she gave to that TEDTalk.
Righto Bob, but just can’t resist inserting this way-off-topic nugget: throughout my childhood, my mother always snapped “Hendel!” if I called Händel “handle.” I learned recently that Händel chose to be naturalized in England under the name Handel, & preferred the anglicized pronunciation!
LOL. OK. Why couldn’t people find the young Beethoven’s teacher? Because he was Hayden.
Researchers have now found Mozart’s grave. How did they know it was Mozart’s? Because he was decomposing.
And thanks for the off-topic nugget! Fascinating.
It is one thing to switch your principles because of a change of beliefs. It is altogether another to switch your principles because taking the other view is far more enriching.
I notice that the ed reform movement has to pay people a lot of money to spout their views. I would have some respect for this ex labor leader if he had left his union job for a regular job and spoke out against labor unions. But that is not what happened. He didn’t stops working for the union and go out and find a job working 9 – 5 in some corporation. He didn’t start his own company providing a needed service to regular people or manufacturing and selling a product that families could use in their every day lives.
Nope, he took a generously compensated positions underwritten by the Waltons and other right wing billionaires to push their right wing agenda in education.
That’s the difference between selling out and simply changing your views. Plenty of people change their views but Andy Stern is no different than a lawyer who used to defend poor kids for a middle class salary and decided to join a law firm that paid him big bucks to defend corporations that dumped poisonous waste in the water supply of those poor kids and caused a 100x spike rate in cancer for kids there.
Such a person can claim they suddenly got “principles” and decided that poor kids were rotten to the core and they now “embrace” new principles that kids who get cancer at high rates when corporations’ dumping made their community toxic were responsible for their own cancers and they only have this new view “on principle” and it has nothing to do with the fact they are highly paid for spewing it. But no one believes them.
And no one believes a person who claims to have changed their mind when that mind change was so generously compensated. I have no doubt that if the Waltons and Bill Gates and every other billionaire interested in education issues decided that everyone who worked at their think tanks better start saying nice things about teachers unions or be immediately fired, Andy Stern would change his mind again knowing that there would no longer be a generously compensated position if he “stuck to his principles” and kept bashing unions and had to go out and find a job without any of his contacts and connections helping him get it.
NYCPSP, excellent commentary.
best line: “I notice that the ed reform movement has to pay people a lot of money to spout their views.”
I have noticed that the deform movement spews out myriad new organizations, like mushrooms, but all paid staff, no members apparently.
Agreed. I think it would be great on a billboard.
Another ed reform group with no advocates for children who attend public schools, or public school supporters.
They exclude 90% of families right out of the gate, then insist they’re “agnostic” and “inclusive”
It’s a charter and voucher group. Another one. They offer absolutely nothing to any public school student or family.
Go look at the ed reform “school choice” promotions. Try to find a public school student or school. They don’t want “choice”. They want to close all our schools and replace them the preferred privatized model. So what happens to public school students while this privatization project proceeds? They’re the dead last priority.
Why is the FBI investigating the new york city deparrtment of ed? what have they done or rather what are they not doing?
Still looking for something positive for public school students in this latest ed reform venture. Still coming up short.
They look to be a very focused anti-labor union group though. It’s about 90% anti-labor union and 10% promotion of charters and vouchers. I can’t find public school students anywhere.
One again ed reformers seem to have misplaced 90% of students in the country. Excluded.
Many union leaders are not great advocates for their rank-&-file, either, as proven in the 2016 elections.
So glad for people like MA’s Barbara Madeloni, who received a well-deserved mention
(3 pages worth & a picture). Hope she’s doing well!
I will be in conversation with Barbara Madeloni and Maurice Cunningham when I visit a Boston in February 26, 7 pm
Citizens for Public Schools.
Lucky Bostonians (& those in the vicinity)!
“Business friendly union leadership” pretty much describes what Cornell ILR school teaches.
What possible relevance could THAT have?
Paul Toner’s bio at Teach Plus lists him as a member of the Mass. Board of Higher Ed. and the Education Commission of the States.
Travesty and Paul Toner are synonyms
Cornell, another reason to shutter the ivy leagues.
Harvard’s in the news today, not for Roland Fryer, not for all of the faculty associated with Jeffrey Epstein, not for CAP’s slimy Larry Summers and his faculty friend, the architect of Russian privatization (court settlement), but for a faculty chair charged with spying for the Chinese.
Correction-
The harvard Dept.Chair has been accused of hiding from harvard, NIH and the DOD the amount that Chinese funders were paying him.
An FBI agent said a, “cluster of elite universities and research institutes is a target rich environment”. The entitled in private
think tanks funded by the richest 0.1% having difficulty finding an ethical line, what a surprise.
Expected- Lieber got his doctorate at Stanford and self describes as a competitive person.
Charles Lieber, who has received nearly $20 million from the US federal government and did work for the Pentagon and NIH, allegedly lied in grant applications about his funding from a Chinese science “talent” organization accused of stealing intellectual property from US businesses and universities.
Apparently the millions that Lieber received from the US were not enough to satisfy him.
Harvard, which made false claims on grant applications, has claimed they had no idea what Lieber was up to. Just as they had no idea what Epstein was up to. Sure.
Harvard , a PRIVATE school with a $40 billion endowment gets close to $600 million (!!) every year in federal grants.
Perhaps it is time to take a closer look at the applications.
Of course, Harvard will undoubtedly claim ignorance as a defense. Maybe Derschowitz can defend them (and Lieber) in his spare time, while he is not defending Trump or defending himself from charges by Epstein’s sexual trafficking victims.
And by the way, since that nearly $600 million is money that Harvard does not need to get from other sources (eg, from endowment earnings), Harvard can effectively use tax payer money to defend themselves. Fancy that.
The Lover Boys
Lieber is lover
Of money and fame
We’re bound to discover
That Harvard’s to blame
And Epstein was lover
Of girls underage
And gave undercover
To Harvard, the Sage
Linda
Paul Toner was not who I had in mind.
There is a very prominent teachers’ union head who went to Cornell Industrial and Labor Relations school, which goes a long way toward explaining the actions of this person over the years.
Paul Toner, a Pahara Fellow like Soner Tamir, like USC’s Dean of the Rossiter School of Education, and like the Superintendent of Los Angeles Catholic schools.
Randi Weingarten graduated from Cornell ILR school.
Labor is apparently just supposed to remain silent while management does what is best for them — as “management” did when she backed Common Core, testing and VAM, took money from Bill Gates and endorsed Hillary Clinton before the primary without asking “labor” (union members)
I eagerly await her endorsement of Biden before the Democratic convention.
The Weingarten
The wine is very nice
In garden, with some ice
And rubbing elbows too
Is what I like to do
By the way, now that Warren looks like history, Weingarten undoubtedly views Biden as her second (and perhaps last) chance (after endorsing Clinton) to become Secretary of Education.
She ain’t no dummy. she’s a Cornell ILR grad😁
Fox labels Andy Stern as a mentor to Keri Rodriguez who heads the Walton funded National Parents Union. How does Keri not gag when she hears her oligarch funded group described as pitted against “big money interests”, knowing that Keri’s “interested” opponents are funded by money cobbled together from the dues of some of the few remaining middle class workers in America,… knowing those opponents relied on the career route that most women have depended on to reach financial independence…knowing that what she and Stern promote, decimates Main Street and local democracy?
Stern and Rodriguez can go to h_ll and join the soulless. They can answer for the end of public education when the oligarchs decide to pull the plug on Jefferson’s noble plan for the nation.
Linda, it was no accident that the Walton funded “National Parents Union” held its inaugural meeting in New Orleans, the first and only American city typo eliminate every public school while crushing the teachers’ union. This is their corporate dream: no more public schools.
I just finished reading your book-
Slaying Goliath will go down in history as the seminal work in muckraking for the 21st century.
I don’t think your next book can best it…. but, you
should try anyway…. ; – )
The Ravitch legacy is more important to history than that of prior authors like Ida Tarbell and Rachel Carson. To be the best in that company and in so many more arenas is a tribute of singularity.
Linda, thank you!
Please give a copy to a teacher or superintendent or school board member. But only if they promise to read it.,
After opening and reading the first page, you can’t put the book down. It reads like a whodunnit structured with the villains introduced first. The drama is watching the crime unfold and watching how citizen detectives brought them to justice.
I didn’t send a copy of the book to Khan Academy (Gates is on the board) but, I e-mailed the organization and told them to update their muckraking curriculum to include you along side the other greats.
Andy Stern. He laid me off, with some others, because we weren’t bringing in enough new members–a touch job then and now. I was Ohio Council Coordinator for SEIU–stretched way too thin. He was fair to me, though, in the process. Later he made a series of confusing decisions, including naming a union, Unite Here. He damaged the AFL-CIO. It’s all a shame, for at one time–late seventies, early ’80’s he was a shining star in the union movement.
I used to advise fellow unionists not to golf or dine with the boss.
” you fly with the ducks, you start quack”.
As Leonard Cohen sang
“There is a quack, a quack in everything. That’s how the duck gets in”
Part of the problem may be “dining with”, but it’s also the selection process in which heads of unions are hired. The personality profile for an individual who will be a mouthpiece for whomever pays him/her also identifies the lack of leadership requisites – vision and values.
Speculating- Stern and Rodriguez are comfortable with the criticisms leveled against them by those fighting predatory capitalism and their ears are deaf to the libertarian bashing of government benefits for the vulnerable (like autistic kids).
And don’t forget Tony Villar, aka Antonio Villaraigosa, who started as an organizer for UTLA, and became a huge charter supporter. Some teachers were so eager to keep him out of the runoff for governor last year, that we voted for Cox in the jungle primary, because we knew Newsome would beat him easily.