Watch this video of the Philadelphia All-City High School Orchestra.
Because of the budget cuts, this might be their last performance.
The governor, the legislature, the business leaders, the foundations of Pennsylvania should hang their heads in shame.
Will this be the year the music died in Philadelphia?
Conservative groups are hoping to cripple teachers’ unions by urging members to “opt out.”
According to the Wall Street Journal blog, “A coalition of 60 groups in 35 states has begun a national campaign to tell workers they have the right to opt out of a labor union, and are providing instructions on how and when to do it.
“The campaign, which launched Sunday, is the brainchild of the Nevada Policy Research Institute, libertarian think tank. The group last year ran a local campaign informing teachers in the Las Vegas area how and when to opt out of the Clark County Education Association, a union affiliate of the larger National Education Association. To opt out, members had to submit a written notice during a two-week window in July, which many did, campaign leaders say.”
A union official in Nevada said: “The real intent of right-wing organizations like NPRI is to strip teachers of their bargaining rights as well as their organization’s political advocacy for public education,” Ms. Elias said.”
Will it improve education if teachers’ unions are destroyed?
Well, let’s see, the nation’s highest performing states–Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut–are highly unionized. Without the collective voice of teachers, it is easy to cut education spending, eliminate the arts, and increase class sizes. Rendering teachers voiceless in their working conditions is not good for students or teachers.
Bruce Baker has a fabulous new post in which he roasts the vapid comments by pundits and others who are utterly ignorant about school funding.
It starts like this and gets better and better:
“On a daily basis, I continue to be befuddled by the ignorant bluster, intellectual laziness and mathematical and financial ineptitude of those who most loudly opine on how to fix America’s supposed dreadful public education system. Common examples that irk me include taking numbers out context to make them seem shocking, like this Newark example (some additional context), or the repeated misrepresentation of per pupil spending in New York State.”
The immediate issue is Philadelphia but the analysis applies across the nation.
Imagine this: an elected official in Pennsylvania who says that budget cuts are not only wrong but completely unnecessary.
Brian Sims is a member of the House of Representatives who knows that Governor Corbett’s $1 billion cut to public education was wrong.
In this post, he explains that the state could raise the needed funds in other ways, for example, by requiring a fair tax on those now exploiting the state’s natural resources (e.g., those who are fracking and making huge profits while paying the state only pennies).
Kudos to Rep. Sims for constructive thinking that truly puts students first.
I recall a few years ago when I learned from Forbes’ columnist Erik Kain that Governor Snyder of Michigan was slashing school spending at the same time that he was cutting state corporate taxes.
This turns out to have been a popular tactic in many states. Governors and legislators have decided to get more jobs now by sacrificing the future of their state’s children.
An analysis of 155 large corporations found that they pay very low taxes.
“For 2011 and 2012, the 155 companies paid just 1.8 percent of their total income in state taxes, and 3.6 percent of their declared U.S. income. The average required rate for the 50 states is 6.56 percent.”
As the big corporations avoided taxes, schools paid the price.
What happens to a society that ignores its children and favors corporations?
I received the following email:
Hi, Dr. Ravitch:
I am a film teacher at a Buffalo Public School (www.cityhonors.org) and one of my students made a video on her own time about the draconian cuts that the Buffalo Public Schools is making with its instrumental music program. This is a direct effect of the per pupil funding that has been instituted in the BPS. I thought you might like to see it. It is interesting that NYS has billions to pay Pearson, but we can’t keep instrumental music programs in place.
Thanks…
Sincerely,
Melisa Holden
Librarian & IB Film teacher
Do you want to know what it really means to put students first?
It doesn’t mean making millions of dollars to promote privatization. It doesn’t mean speaking to corporate titans. It doesn’t mean fighting to strip teachers of all rights and privileges.
This is what it means. It means joining the Moral Monday protests in North Carolina. It means fighting for your students when legislators cut the budget and programs and seek to privatize the schools.
To the teacher who wrote this post, it means: I am ready to be arrested and go to jail for my students. That’s putting students first.
She writes:
Today, June 17, 2013, North Carolinians gathered for the seventh “Moral Monday” protest at the North Carolina Legislative Building. Since late May, thousands have protested the General Assembly’s ultra-conservative agenda and over 450 people have been arrested as part of a growing wave of non-violent civil disobedience. Holly Marie Jordan is a public school teacher from Durham who was arrested as part of today’s protest. Her testimony is below:
As a public school teacher in North Carolina—not an “outsider” that Governer McCrory alleges is at the helm of the Moral Monday protests, but an educator grounded in and devoted to the community of Durham—I am ardent to stand up for the future of my students by getting arrested at Moral Monday.
When I came out of college straight into teaching seven years ago, I believed that teaching English was going to be about, well, teaching English. I thought that my task was to impart in my students a love of, or at least a less fervent dislike for, Shakespeare and To Kill a Mockingbird. Within a few short weeks I learned how mistaken I was. Sure, there was still room for Boo and the Bard, but teaching was really about providing stability, respect, and compassion to teenagers desperate to learn in a system that was failing them. It was about talking to K about why he shouldn’t drop out. It was about visiting J in the hospital after her miscarriage. It was about tutoring 15-year-old T so he could move past a fifth grade reading level. Because that was what my students needed, that’s what teaching became for me. It is what teaching means for thousands of teachers, counselors, teaching assistants, and other public school workers across the state, as we prepare our students for successful futures, not just academically, but in every way. We work long past our salaried hours to create instruction that challenges our students to grow as critical thinkers. We advise clubs where our students can express themselves. We coach sports to promote health and self-discipline. We counsel the crying, laugh with the happy, protect the bullied, and motivate the discouraged. We are honest with our students about their struggles and successes, and about our own. We do all this not for professional gain but because we firmly believe that these children are worth everything we can give them. We do it because what we teachers want is no different than what our students need.
What the General Assembly wants, however, is in stark contrast to what the children of North Carolina need. In their pursuit to destroy public education via budgets that cut funding, school vouchers that favor private companies, and the elimination of master’s degree pay, the legislature shows how little they care about the quality and longevity of those educating our kids. I am a seventh year teacher whose pay is frozen at the second year rung of the pay scale, in the state with the 4th worst teacher pay in the country. I have seen dozens of excellent teachers move on to other professions or other states so they could sustain themselves and their families. At my school, students regularly ask new teachers “will you be here next year?” because they are so used to our terrible turnover rates.
It’s not just education legislation that is bent on destroying our most vulnerable communities through persistent instability. The General Assembly is curbing voting rights, letting unemployment benefits expire, and repealing the Racial Justice Act, all while giving tax breaks to corporate giants. My students aren’t naïve. They know that their communities are being marginalized. Last year, a student at our school was murdered. In the weeks that followed, my students and I cried out in anguish and anger and asked the toughest questions one could imagine: Why did this student end up where he was? What could any of us have done? How can we keep this from happening again? Our teenagers know to ask these critical questions, but the leaders in Raleigh have failed to ask them: How do we make sure justice is served for all North Carolinians? How do we transform struggling communities into havens of health and stability? My students create solutions, like organizing a march to the early voting polls and memorial for their classmate. Meanwhile, politicians ignore humanity and count capital.
Next school year, as I always have in the past, I will tell my students every day that they are important and loved. What I wish I could tell them is that the people in power agreed—that our General Assembly believes in their futures just like I do. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to do that. I will get to tell them, however, that thousands of North Carolinians testified to their worth during the Moral Mondays, and that a movement that believes in them is coming. This movement is not the work of “outside agitators,” as the Governor believes, but the best and bravest that our state has to offer. It’s a movement led by and fighting for the well-being of 9.7 million insiders—the people of North Carolina who desire a healthy, sustainable future in our state for generations to come.
Holly Jordan has been a resident of Durham and an English teacher at Hillside High School for the past seven years. She is a National Board Certified Teacher and a member of NCAE and People’s Durham.
Steve Zimmer, the school board member who beat back a multi-million dollar campaign to defeat him just a few months ago, spoke to his fellow members of the Los Angeles school board at their meeting yesterday.
He talked about the importance of class size. He demolished the claim that teachers want to reduce class size for their own benefit. He explained patiently and eloquently why class size matters.
This is the full hearing.
Philadelphia, which has been under state control for a dozen years, has a massive deficit. Governor Corbettt imposed draconian budget cuts when he took office.
The state’s solution to Philadelphia’s fiscal crisis: strip the schools bare. Lay off thousands of teachers, gut the arts and sports, libraries and guidance counselors. This hurts students. Which suburb would tolerate the gutting of its public schools?
That is not “shared sacrifice,” as Daniel Denvir explains in this article.
He writes:
“The School District is demanding $133 million in labor concessions to plug its $304 million budget gap. That’s more than twice as much as it requested from the city, and $13 million more than what it’s seeking from the state — which cut nearly $1 billion from school funding statewide (that’s you, Gov. Tom Corbett) despite its constitutional obligation to fund public education and, critically, its direct control of city schools for the past decade.”
And more:
“Philadelphia teachers are paid 19 percent less than their counterparts in suburban Bucks and Montgomery counties — counterparts who typically work in schools with less violence and less need. Relentless teacher-bashing paints incompetent educators as the root of big-city school woes, and offers high-stakes standardized tests and union-busting as the only solutions. But this is backwards: It is the failure to value teaching as a first-class profession that makes recruiting and retaining good educators a bigger problem than firing the bad ones. Lower pay will make it all the more difficult for Philly.”
A secret poll conducted on behalf of the Pennsylvania Republican Party found that Governor Tom Corbett is highly unpopular and likely to lose to his Democratic challenger.
Corbett’s biggest vulnerability is on education issues, which voters of both parties consider important. The poll recommends that the governor can improve his image on education issues by attacking the teachers’ unions.
Sixty-three percent of voters across the state disapprove of Corbett’s handling of education issues.
Most voters recognize that the problems of Philadelphia’s schools cannot be solved by Philadelphia alone.
91% believe that the Philadelphia public schools face an extremely serious funding problem.
62% of voters say that the state should provide greater funding to Philadelphia, as compared to 24% who say the district should declare bankruptcy, or 7% who say it should sell bonds.
The pollsters say that the governor should insist on such reforms as 1) allowing public schools to assign and transfer employees based on performance, not seniority; 2) allowing principals more say in hiring teachers for their schools; 3) no more automatic pay raises for years of service or degrees or certification. These are very popular with voters, who also believe that new funding should be tied to adopting these changes. Teacher union supporters agree with the first two, but not the third.
Most voters believe (despite the absence of any evidence) that these three reforms will improve education in the Philadelphia public schools while getting costs under control.
Some voters told the pollsters that these reforms would help “get bad teachers out of the classroom.”
Perhaps influenced by Rhee-style propaganda in recent years, voters think that the intense concentration of poverty and segregation in Philadelphia’s schools, as well as years of harsh budget cuts, can be cured by eliminating seniority and curbing the influence of the teachers’ union.
The pollsters conclude that Corbett can substantially improve his image as an “education reformer” and as someone who leads the battle for “change” by fighting the union.
The pollsters say that education is the wedge issue that Corbett can use to reverse his sagging approval ratings.
Diane Ravitch's blog 