DFER (Democrats for Education Reform) is an organization founded by Wall Street hedge fund managers to support charter schools. They believe in privatization; they actively undermine public schools that belong to the community. They believe in high-stakes testing, and they strongly support evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students, although professional associations like the American Statistical Association does not. They love Teach for America, because they don’t like experienced professionals or teachers unions.
Their main function is to raise money for political candidates, which gives them immense leverage. Once a political candidate gets on the DFER recommended list, they can count on money flowing in from friends of DFER around the country. DFER does not have a large membership but it has a very rich following among hedge funders and venture capitalists.
In this publication, DFER tries to demonstrate that “school choice” is a Democratic idea. It lists the Democratic politicians who support charter schools. It trumpets the support of the late AFT leader Al Shanker for charter schools, but fails to mention that Shanker turned against charter schools as he saw them turn into a weapon of privatization to undermine public schools and teachers’ unions. Shanker was all for charters before they existed, but he recoiled when he saw what they were becoming. By 1994, he concluded that charter schools were no different than vouchers, and that both were intended to smash teachers’ unions and privatize public schools. PLEASE STOP CITING SHANKER AS A CHARTER SUPPORTER!
Charter schools today are 90% non-union. Real Democrats are not opposed to teachers’ unions.
Charter schools today are more segregated than real public schools. Real Democrats do not support racial segregation.
Everyone who thinks that charter schools are connected to Democratic Party ideals should read Steve Suitts’ powerful book “Undermining Brown,” which shows that the idea of school choice was created by Southern segregations who were fighting the Brown decision.
The DFER document fails to mention that charter schools enjoy the support of Charles Koch, Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump, ALEC, and every Republican governor. School choice diverts funding from genuine public schools. If DFER put out a publication of the governors and Senators and members of Congress who support charter schools, the Republicans would far outnumber the Democrats.
If, as DFER maintains, charters are “public schools,” why did so many of them apply for and receive millions from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, for which public schools were ineligible? Are they “public schools” or are they “small businesses” or “nonprofits” but not public schools?
The DFER report also fails to mention the staggering failure rate of charter schools. The document lauds the federal Charter School Program, created by the Clinton administration when there were few charter schools, but neglects to mention that about 35-40% of the new charters paid for by the CSP either never opened or closed soon after opening.
To be clear: School choice is not a Democratic Party idea, unless you mean the party of George Wallace and the Dixiecrats. School choice is beloved by libertarians who want to destroy public education (ALEC) and by Republicans who want to privatize public education (Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Jeb Bush).
Diane Ravitch's blog 
From the DFER.org website:
“ Our Principles
We are guided by the values of equalizing opportunity and empowering local communities, anchored in the needs and voices of the communities we serve. We operate in the legacy of leading Democrats — stretching from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to Rosa Parks and Al Shanker—who sought to guarantee a quality public education to all students, especially those low-income students and students of color who were most in need.”
Then support real community based public education, public schools, not segregation.
Exactly. They are among the worst for public education…the epitome of wolves dressed as sheep.
Please excuse me if I missed it, but have you ever written an extended essay on what Shanker meant and intended other than the arguments you have made in your books? Seems to me this is deserving of one published in, perhaps the form of an op-ed response. PLEASE STOP CITING SHANKER AS A CHARTER SUPPORTER! seems like a good headline, but I’d take out the word PLEASE.
Shanker would be turning over in his grave if he could see what his collaborative experiment has morphed into.
It could also be a way to educate people about Shanker. I only had two conversations with him, but they are indelible in my memory.
When did Rosa Parks support charter schools? DFER is revising history. How dare they use Rosa Parks bravery as their fig leaf to sell public school privatization.
Parks’ work on ending Jim Crow began in 1950’s Civil Rights era right after Brown v Board of Ed (1954). Brown triggered southern segregationists to shut down their public schools rather than be integrated. Looking for away to keep their schools all white, the segregationists promoted charters & vouchers as an alternative.
Parks & the rest of the Civil Rights leadership understood that the purpose of charter schools was a way for Dixicrats to bypass the Brown ruling. Jim Crow southerners understood then, as DFER surely understands now, that Charters are segregation academies.
I think we should rename charter schools Jim Crow Schools and re-name DFER, Dixicrats for Education Reform DIXER.
Great point! Coopting historical figures for school names should be banned. Or let them take the names of military bases that are being renamed. Much more appropriate! I am reminded of a recent post here on the Gompers charter school in San Diego. Anybody know what term is more Orwellian than Orwellian?
Yep. The oddly anti-union Gompers charter school.
We desperately need potential President Biden not to be captured by the DFER.
I think he’s close to be completely grasped right now, we need to free him! The truth shall set…etc, etc.
optimism is all we’ve got: he is a dedicated neoliberal, unlikely to grasp why there is a huge disconnect
Biden, DNC and CAP are all captured. Biden’s brother ran a charter school in FL that went bust. It’s critically important that teachers make it clear that we are watching them all carefully. The political class wants schools to open in spite of COVID crisis. Teachers have more leverage now than they’ve had in decades.
The DNC’s platform on education is slippery with weasel words. Biden’s promise to make a teacher his Sec of Ed could easily be a DFER/Broad pick from TFA or the charter network. Duncan & John King were DFER picks. We cannot allow him to steamroll over Public Ed as they did in 2008 and 2012.
Dems know that they have to win this election definitively- no close recounts. If its close, Trump with Bill Barr’s legal acumen & the full power of the Justice Dept will drag out a legal challenge all the way to the Supreme Court. We all know how that will end.
Vote them out. Run for office. They are horrible and traitors to the people. Instead of strengthening the public commons, they seek to privatize them. SNAKES, every single last one of them, and people like Lewis and Parks would not approve of cherry picking weeding out, obsessions with test scores, and profit making off the backs of poor people. Their vision of charters were completely different as was Shanker’s. The Democrats and GOP are NO darn good!!!
And don’t you just love the way the AFT and NEA voted NO for Medicare for All within the DNC platform? Another pair of traitors!
I hope when you said “vote them out”, you meant vote out the DFERs, not vote out all the Democrats, which means voting out AOC and Jamaal Bowman and many other supporters of public schools.
Otherwise, when you wrote: “don’t you just love the way the AFT and NEA voted NO for Medicare for All within the DNC platform? Another pair of traitors!” did you mean that we should vote out the unions and oppose teachers unions because the teachers’ unions are “traitors”??
Will it be good for teachers if we vote out the teachers’ union? Should we ignore all of the good reasons to support them and instead focus only on the bad things to discredit the teachers’ union?
These kinds of sweeping attacks reminds me exactly how that DFER movement and the even worse Republican privatization movement was able to discredit public schools and public school unions. They simply did what you did and focus only what was bad about public schools and public school unions and ignored everything else about what was good about them.
I absolutely oppose DFER. In fact, when Bernie Sanders endorsed the DFER candidate for Virginia governor in the democratic primary, I supported the candidate who supported public schools that DFER wanted to defeat. But the fact is that Bernie’s DFER candidate was very good on other issues. And that’s why Bernie preferred that DFER candidate over the pro-public school candidate. That’s what politics is about. Bernie’s pro-DFER democrat was, in many ways, better than the pro-public education democrat. But Bernie’s candidate was much worse on issues surrounding public education. It’s complicated. But what isn’t complicated is that both Bernie’s pro-DFER democrat and the pro-public education democrat were both significantly better than their Republican opponent on all issues!
Please don’t misconstrue my comment . . .
The teachers unions are not traitors. Their presidents are. They vote against their constituents’ wishes and for the AFT at least, the power structure, delegate system and Unity Caucus that allows Randi to remain as leader year after year is anything but democratic. Have you worked under either of them or have been an educator in a public school system?I have. Not that you have to be a chicken to recognize an egg, but it does add another dimension that has validity.
I have cited this particular aspect of Lily and Randi, so please do not waster your time in spinning it as though I think we should vote out teacher unions are be anti-union. Ridiculous! You’re a lot, lot brighter than that.
There was nothing sweeping here. Please do a David Coleman (ick!) close reading. I have attacked a particular aspect of the certain key Democrats. They were cited in the DFER literature. I do not support the GOP and Trump, and I am compelled against my viscera to support Biden.
Yes, I know it’s complicated. I get it. But the wonderful insurance plans hard won by the teachers’ unions is not so great, and a single payer system would pretty much address all the inequities in a privatized system, something Randi and Lily do not give a crap about because they are able to afford Lamborghini quality healthcare insurance for themselves and their family. I will not speak for you, but I have long woken up to the unneeded “complicated” and “that’s what politics is about” and realized that this is a matter of political will, not capability. And I ain’t ever giving up on that.
Further, it is perverse to not advocate for the single payer system at a time when millions are unemployed and some 22 million people are slated to lose their leases and mortgages and could be out on the street.
I understand your critical thinking and making connections to who Bernie supported. But I am focusing on the here and now and healthcare as an issue and will not distract the process by analyzing how politics work, because – and I think yo’ve noticed – politics do not work so well any more for the vast majority.
No, NYCPSP, I am not relenting on what’s right and how these two leaders should behave, nor am I brushing the entire blue party and unions with a broad stroke. But this is your lens, and it’s not for me to tell you how to apply it. I certainly do not own it.
I have better things to do than to engage . . . .
Saying things like “vote them out” and calling the leaders of the teachers’ union “traitors” counts as “engaging.”
I respect your POV, which is why I wished you would express your important POV without resorting to the kind of attacks that do more harm than good. As a parent, when I read your criticisms of the AFT and UFT, I don’t think “oh that’s just the leadership that is committing treason and I’ll still support the union”. I think “there must be something really corrupt and awful about the union if the teachers in the union are electing “traitors” to lead them and obviously the only way to make the union less traitorous is to make sure to vote against the union”.
“The teachers unions are not traitors. Their presidents are.” “The Democrats are not traitors. Their presidents are.” Once you have established that the leaders of a group are traitors, the solution is to disempower that group by voting to make sure that group has no power at all, even if it means that you empower those who want to quash the union or quash the democrats.
You have every right to criticize the leaders of the teachers’ union for what they do wrong, but isn’t there is a way to do that which takes into account that the issue is complex and the union itself isn’t “corrupt” nor is Randi Weingarten, she is just allowed to be more concerned with teachers who don’t want to give up their union-negotiated health benefits than she is concerned with the teachers who are demanding that their union-negotiated health benefits be replaced with Medicare for All.
If the vast majority of teachers were demanding that Randi Weingarten support Medicare for All, and they made it clear they were willing to trade their union benefits for it, wouldn’t she also support Medicare for All? Maybe the people who need to be convinced are the other teachers in the union. Are you convinced that both union members and retirees would give that up? In fact, do teachers’ union retirees use Medicare right now? If they do, and are happy about it, they would be good spokespeople to convince other union members. But if they don’t, and don’t want to give up their current retiree benefits, then the issue is harder.
I see.
Medicare for All is supported by 85% of Democrats, yet the platform committee voted it down by 125-3. How do you explain that if the Democratic Party is, in fact, democratic? And please don’t talk to me about electability. MfA is supported by 69% of all Americans.
How do Randi, Lily and all the other Democrats justify voting against a system that would guarantee healthcare to all Americans during a pandemic? How do they justify supporting a system that, by design, leaves millions of Americans uninsured and without access to healthcare, again, during a pandemic? And even many those who are technically ensured face bankruptcy and ruin trying to pay the deductibles if they actually do need care (which, incidentally, discourages people from seeking testing and treatment when they, say, have a fever and cough).
How the hell does anyone justify this moral atrocity? Because it’s better than Trump? If nothing less than 100% safety for students and teachers is acceptable for schools to re-open, how is anything less than 100% healthcare acceptable? When people talk about schools re-opening, the retort is “which students or staff are you willing to sacrifice?” Fine, by that logic, if you refuse to support MfA, which lives are you willing to sacrifice?
You are always far more critical of Democrats than of Republicans. You seem to be looking for a reason to discount any alternative to the idiot now called president.
Instead of jumping on the bandwagon bashing AFT and NEA, I wanted to know the reason these unions and others voted no for Medicare for All, and I found this.
“But at least three of the most influential unions NNU named aren’t actually married to Medicare for All: Service Employees International Union (SEIU), with 2 million members, American Federation of Teachers (AFT), with 1.7 million members, and United Automobile Workers (UAW), with nearly 1 million members.
“AFT President Randi Weingarten told ThinkProgress Medicare for All is “one long-term sustainable solution” to ensure people have health care, but the union is “supporting various plans including Medicare for All and Medicare for America.”
‘Any plan that provides more people with the care they need and gets us one step closer to affordable coverage is a step in the right direction,” she added.
https://archive.thinkprogress.org/what-unions-think-about-medicare-for-all-2cffd87d7814/
Then I wanted to know what “Medicare for All” would look like so I did some more research. To be honest, I think Medicare is a lousy health care program that doesn’t cover all of the costs. Since I have 100% coverage with no co-pays through the VA, I do not want Medicare.
And I found this explanation:
“One of the biggest misconceptions about Medicare for All is that there’s just one proposal on the table.
“In fact, there are a number of different proposals out there,” explained Katie Keith, JD, MPH, a research faculty member for Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms.
“Most people tend to think of the most far-reaching Medicare for All proposals, which are outlined in bills sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal. But there are a number of proposals out there that would expand the role of public programs in healthcare,” she said.
Although all of these plans tend to get grouped together, “there are key differences among the various options,” Keith added, “and, as we know in healthcare, the differences and details really matter.” …
As far as the current legislation on the table like the Sanders and Jayapal bills, “the simplest explanation is that these bills would move the United States from our current multi-payer healthcare system to what is known as a single-payer system,” explained Keith.
Right now, multiple groups pay for healthcare. That includes private health insurance companies, employers, and the government, through programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
Single-payer is an umbrella term for multiple approaches. In essence, single-payer means your taxes would cover health expenses for the whole population, according to a definition of the term from the Journal of General Internal MedicineTrusted Source. The objective is for a single publicly funded health system, like that in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
Right now in the United States, multiple groups pay for healthcare. That includes private health insurance companies, employers, and the government, through programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
The system we have right now places America’s health system on an island on its own, away from its peers on the global stage. …
What might out-of-pocket costs look like for different income brackets?
Despite what some online conspiracy theories warn, “under the Sanders and Jayapal bills, there would be virtually no out-of-pocket costs for healthcare-related expenses,” Keith said. “The bills would prohibit deductibles, coinsurance, co-pays, and surprise medical bills for healthcare services and items covered under Medicare for All.”
You may have to pay some out-of-pocket costs for services that aren’t covered by the program, “but the benefits are expansive, so it’s not clear that this would happen often,” said Keith.
The Jayapal bill fully prohibits all cost-sharing. The Sanders bill allows for very limited out-of-pocket costs of up to $200 per year for prescription drugs, but that doesn’t apply to individuals or families with an income under 200 percent of the federal poverty level.
Other proposals, such as the Medicare for America Act from Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), would nix out-of-pocket costs for lower-income individuals, but people in higher income brackets would pay more: up to $3,500 in annual out-of-pocket costs for individuals or $5,000 for a family.
https://www.healthline.com/health/what-medicare-for-all-would-look-like-in-america#10
There is more information on this site about the complex issue of Medicare for All (MfA). Read it before you start bashing AFT and NEA or anyone else that doesn’t support MfA. With so many bills (legislation) for MfA, I think we should slow down and work toward one bill that’s best for everyone before we start bashing anyone.
We need one bill (legislation) for MfA,and we also need the Democratic Party to overwhelmingly control Congress and the White House FIRST!
We are not there yet.
I agree, Lloyd. We need ONE – operative word – bill for single payer. Thank you for your research!
I will say that many plans bargained for by local unions are not so great any more, as the insurance industry is not tightly regulated with almost annual increases in premiums. Unions are ever increasingly faced with having to decide between pay raises and maintaining health insurance plans without increasing premium contributions and co-pays from teachers. My co-pay used to be $10 15 years ago and is now up to $50 just to walk into a street clinic. It’s unjustified.
Randi and Lily head up what remain of a very, very few large and powerful unions. They did not do the right thing here, and while Randi may lean towards an eventual single payer healthcare system, she is playing too many ends against a middle and will not commit to it here and now, and “here and now” in this critical window are important to me and millions of others. There is a difference between acting hastily to get something done and acting in such a politicized way that it drags things out and blows with far too many different kinds of winds. I hold my ground firmly on this one. It’s not a question of me being better than others in either party or being right; it’ a question of pure morality and bringing this country into the 21st century.
There is a keen reason why so many other countries do not have the vast chunk of their healthcare system privatized. It’s not by accident, and having strong ties to France and Italy, my relatives and friends there are by no means aching to immigrate here for better healthcare. Quite the opposite. Randi and Lily are deaf to that notion with regards to their timing and pace. No guts, no gain, no glory, and in this case, no integrity from these two leaders. And it’s on OUR backs. Not acceptable ever . . .
So just to be clear to all (not necessarily to you, Lloyd): I am not painting the Democrats with a broad brush here, but I am calling out the union leaders for their recent position. I am NOT linking this decision to ANYTHING else past, present, or future or to other politicians, situations, arrangements, and models. Nope; not doing so. I am deliberately compartmentalizing it because healthcare is a universal need and it should not need to be politically bargained for based on other unrelated things just because of pernicious and oppressive power plays. And this is not an attack; it’s a legitimate, as we say in French, “bilan” of the union leadership.
Like I said: NOT giving up on this one, and NOT hesitant to call both the pot and kettle black . . .
Correction:
“There is a difference between acting in a timely manner to get something done and acting in such a politicized way that it drags things out and blows with far too many different kinds of winds.”
Here’s the list of DFER’s favorite candidates. (Their endorsement of Jim Clyburn is deeply troubling since he played such a pivotal role in Biden’s nomination.) Joe Biden, Michael Bennet (US Senate, CO), Andre Carson (US House, IN-7), Jim Clyburn (U.S. House, SC-6), Chris Coons (U.S. Senate, DE), Josh Gottheimer (U.S. House, NJ-5), Daniel Hernandez (State House, AZ-2), Woody Koppel (School Board, New Orleans-6), Nolan Marshall, Jr. (School Board, New Orleans-7), Dan McKee (Lt. Governor, RI), Seth Moulton (U.S. House, MA-6), Chris Murphy (U.S. Senate, CT), Kira Orange Jones (State Board of Education, LA-2), Brian Schatz (U.S. Senate (HI), Bobby Scott (U.S. House, VA-3), Steven Sweeney (State Senate, NJ-03)
Ugh, Sweeney has been a thorn in our sides in NJ for quite some time. With “friends” like these, who needs Republicans?
Coons (Sen DE) & Gottheimer (House NJ-5) are both in Wall St’s back pocket. Gottheimer has a primary challenger.
I’m surprised Corey Booker isn’t on this list.
Gottheimer should switch parties. He co-chairs the so-called Problem Solvers Caucus with Tom Reed. He’s republican lite. Coons is slippery eel, which, I guess comes with the territory of being elected in Delaware (yes, yes, I know, Biden), the American Cayman Islands for fictional corporate entities. Coons is working with Tillis to overturn a unanimous SCOTUS decision–opinion written by Thomas, no less–which declared the patenting of genes unconstitutional. So, if they get what they want, companies can patent, for example, a gene that helps cause breast cancer and then profit off of (and veto projects it doesn’t like) therapies on these genes, regardless of who makes them. Isn’t that special?
This brochure is a prime piece of neoliberal propaganda bought to us from the same people that tanked the economy in 2008 due to deregulation. They are also largely responsible to for much of our tremendous inequality in this country which has hollowed out the middle class. Neoliberals are anti-union, and unions helped build the middle class. Today we have one of the lowest rates of union membership at a little over 10% of any industrialized nation. This is no benefit to working families.
The fact that charter schools have enhanced segregation is not mentioned. Neither is the fact that there is no evidence that choice does anything positive for education. Every country that has adopted market based education has found that it does not work. The main people that are happy with choice are those that seek to monetize students and profit from public education as hedge fund managers do.
The DFERS are so WRONG. They are the “ELITE” of the DNC.
I can’t stand those DFERS. They have destroyed public education. For that I will never forget.
Good to see this, because yesterday I received a plea from Nancy Pelosi to give $$$ to the DCCC. No thanks.
With the exception of Rosa Parks and a few others, I’d post most of these people’s pictures on the Privateering Wall of Shame.
After the November election, I am dropping my Democratic voter registration and will no longer be contributing to my union COPE fund. (Randi’s vote against including Medicare For All in the Democratic Party’s plank was the final straw. )
FDR would be rolling over in his grave at what the Democratic Party has morphed into.
Years back, I not so politely asked the caller seeking money for the Democratic Governor’s Fund to remove me from the list because of certain Democratic governors who were out to destroy public education. Also told the caller that DFER was a huge reason I was done with them. They never called again.
I read the report at looked at the references.
Note 15 in the report trashes the work of NPE in exposing charter school fraud.
The section on charter school performance depends only on data conjured by CREDO referring to the statistical fiction of “days of learning” gained, based only on standard deviations in test scores in math and ELA and with those reports having dates from 2013, 2015, and 2018.
The polling data is suspect. One has data from 2018. Another (Note 21) from a telephone survey of only 415 Democratic primary voters had ridiculous margins of error for subgroups.
None of the claims in this report withstand close scrutiny. They are cherry-picked and offered up with a gloss of smiling faces from high-profile Democrats.
I doubt that many people will discern the cherry picking in this report unless they have made of study of charter schools or witnessed their negative influence on local public schools. DEFR endorsements in this publication are a good way to size up who supports public schools and who is determined to privatize them.
Paul Wellstone is being claimed by the DFERs?
This publication reeks of desperation. Who is it aimed toward? The media? The public isn’t going to be swayed because Albert Shanker supposedly like charters. They don’t care if more than 25 years ago Bill Clinton was favorable toward charters because the idea of what “charters” meant in the early 1990s isn’t at all similar to what it means today and that’s what the public is rejecting.
It’s like Republicans claiming Abraham Lincoln to prove that they aren’t racist.
Has anyone ever checked to see if these Wall Street hedge fund managers that started DFER are all registered Republicans or Libertarians?
NYCpsp: as to your comment at 2:51 PM. Fred Klonsky’s Blog (I know a LOT of you, here, read him, & comment. LisaM–good one the other day!) just posted about this very same thing: the leadership of the AFT & the NEA & their failure to vote yes on Medicare for all in the Dem platform (posted 7/29). If someone can put the link up here, it would be great. Anyway, 12 comments on the post, which berated the leadership (who most certainly have theirs–health insurance & benefits, that is, paid for by the rank-&-file), NOT the union members themselves, & they (members) ARE the union!!!
Fred was President of his local for ten years (so served his members really well, kept being reelected), & every year he attended the national NEA Convention–every year he proposed common sense resolutions (only one passed, I think, & that was never put into motion), & every year the leadership rejected them. During the 2016 Dem Primary, the NEA (AFT, too) went ahead & early endorsed HRC (& so many of us were for Bernie) &, you might recall, because she was named an Education Hero in this blog, the head of the MA Ed. Assn., Barbara Madeloni (sp.-?), loudly called foul, as did several other (but not enough, certainly not the IL Ed. Assn.) state chapters. NEA was splashing HRC all over the pages of their national magazine before most of the states had even held primaries.
The national leadership NEVER (& this is true of the AFT, as well) surveyed the rank-&-file as to their preferred candidate. In IL, 2 weeks before the Dem Primary, we (I was part of rank-&-file)were surveyed only because, I think, they figured we had read all their propaganda & bought it, & they could shout from the rooftops that HRC was the clear choice of the locals/members.
Guess what? The results of that survey were never made public. I had called the Springfield office, & no one would tell me who won. Of course, that was because Bernie must have won. Most every teacher I know was going to vote for Bernie.
(At the time, Fred was President of our IEA-Retired local, & I was the V.P., & everyone in our chapter–save for 2 people–were voting for Bernie.) I quit IEA/NEA right after that (& I had been active in my local for years, serving as a Bldg. Rep. at all my schools, secretary, strike coordinator, insurance committee member {for years} & was asked to be president, which I had to decline, living far away & having a toddler at home.)
With all due respect, NYCpsp, you might know a great deal about schools & education from a parent’s perspective, as well as being a well-read, informed & intelligent person, but, if you’ve not been a teacher in a union or an association, you’re not familiar with the layers of bureaucracy, the machine-like running of the organizations (& this happens in any # of unions). The locals/members are not the problem. The leadership, the people at the top, are. Just like elected officials, who often do not represent their constituents, so, too, do the union/assn. leaders, & they’re the ones w/the seat at the table.
Which is why none of us really has a seat at the table.
& getting them out & getting good people (&, Lord, we’ve tried!!) into these positions is like getting rid of WHit. I applaud Robert Rendo for calling traitors,,,well,,,traitors! As aforementioned, Randi & Lily have theirs…
I go one step further & call them callous, selfish & going along to get along.
We could all do with another Karen Lewis (how we miss you, & bless you, Karen), but I believe she broke the mold.
Finally–with all due respect–please don’t bother picking apart & analyzing my comments, because I am not going to respond.
I absolutely agree that I know nothing about the teachers’ union beyond reading the voices on this blog, which I trust. I believe you.
But then, as a parent, what am I to do? You seem to be presenting me with a scenario in which the national union is corruptly doing the bidding of rich folks instead of representing their constituents – the teachers. There are a lot of parallels in the way people talk about the DNC.
I don’t know how to make the DNC “better” or more responsive to progressives, but I do know that empowering those who want to destroy democrats — i.e. the Republicans — is not a very good way to do it. Just like I don’t know how to make the national teachers union “better” but I do know that empowering those who want to destroy unions is not a very good way to do it.
And that is why I worry when I hear rhetoric that paints the very imperfect national teachers’ union (or DNC) in a way that encourages people to believe the right wing propaganda — rhetoric that reinforces the negative falsehoods used to mischaracterize “the union” (or “the democrats”) as corrupt and that can’t be changed without “the union” (or “the democrats”) being completely disempowered by those who want to destroy them!
I agree with your criticisms of the teachers’ union. It is because I support the union that I thought it was important to explain that when parents hear anti-UFT/AFT rhetoric with no nuance, it is less likely that they would support the union. And I want the public to support the union! You should strongly criticize the national leadership when it is wrong. All I ask is that you do it without demonizing the national leadership because I think that hurts the support unions get from the public. If teachers themselves confirm the right wing propaganda about how bad the union is, then it must be true, right?
I know that’s not what you are intending, but there is a real difference from the critical comments that Diane Ravitch makes and what Robert Rendo makes about the union. Diane Ravitch can be critical without calling leaders of the union “traitors”.