A study conducted by Yale researchers found a significant partisan divide in COVID death rates after vaccines became available.
A team of Yale researchers has found that Republican voters in two U.S. states had more excess deaths than Democratic voters after vaccines for COVID-19 became widely available to counter the disease. The discrepancy didn’t exist prior to the vaccines.
Jacob Wallace, assistant professor of public health (health policy); Jason L. Schwartz, associate professor of public health (health policy); and Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, assistant professor at the Yale School of Management conducted the research using a novel linkage of political party affiliation and mortality data to assess whether there were differences in COVID-19 excess death rates between Republican and Democratic voters. The authors estimated excess death rates as the percentage increase in deaths above expected deaths due to seasonality, geographic location, party affiliation, and age.
The study found that overall, the excess death rate for Republican voters was 5.4 percentage points, or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democratic voters. After COVID-19 vaccines became widely available, the excess death rate gap between Republicans and Democrats widened from 1.6 percentage points to 10.4 percentage points.
“The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only materializes after vaccines became widely available,” the authors said in the study.
The study’s findings were recently released as a working paper by the researchers in collaboration with the National Bureau of Economic Research. The findings have been reported extensively in national media including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NBC News.
Schwartz said the findings amplify the critical importance of vaccines.
Helen Gym is running to be the Mayor of Philadelphia. She is the only progressive in the race. Helen is a friend of mine. I love her courage, her convictions, and her tenacity. She fights for the underdog. She knows that the state of Pennsylvania has shortchanged the students and public schools of Philadelphia for years. She knows the bleak conditions of the public schools. She has tirelessly fought for students, parents, teachers, and communities. She has stood strong against privatization of the schools. She has made enemies in the Establishment, which stood by as the city’s once-proud public schools were allowed to crumble and were closed to make way for charter chains.
The primary elections are May 16.
Helen Gym is my candidate. I have donated to her campaign. I hope you will help her with a contribution of any size—$10, $20, $30, $50, $100 or more. She needs our help!
The story below raises the question of whether Philadelphia can tolerate a mayor who fights for the weakest, most marginalized members of society, or whether it prefers someone as mayor who doesn’t take sides.
It was June 2021 and the Philadelphia City Council member was blocking the doors of the Pennsylvania state Senate alongside activists demanding more funding for public schools.
“Shame on the unjust funding of our school kids!” Gym shouted as police handcuffed her. She was issued a citation, then released.
The day encapsulates the duality of Philadelphians’ impression of Gym. Her supporters saw a champion — a longtime schools advocate who would stop at nothing to call attention to injustice, and someone who has backed up her rhetoric with tangible action.
But her critics saw a performance — a moment ripe to be used in a future campaign. They describe her as a populist, and someone who speaks the language of social justice but hasn’t always lived up to it.
Through three decades in Philadelphia, Gym has evolved from a teacher into a leader of the city’s social justice movement and now a mayoral candidate running as a “tough Philly mom.” The question is whether she’d be a mayor with the elbows-out posture of a longtime activist — and if that’s what the city wants in its next chief executive.
Gym has become a polarizing political figure, in part because she occupies a clear lane as a progressive in the mayoral field. It could also be because she has so often described herself in fighting terms. And fighters have opponents.
She fought the state takeover of Philly schools and fought against planned school closures. As a legislator, she fought for a defense fund for immigrants, fought for legislation to benefit hourly workers, fought for novel legal protections for people facing eviction.
In many cases, her approach worked. She won concessions as an advocate, and while she ruffled plenty of feathers in City Hall, she was a productive lawmaker for seven years on Council.
Asked if her style translates to the Mayor’s office, where she’d lead a workforce and be responsible for keeping a bevy of department heads happy, Gym rejected the notion, saying her vision for the city is larger than keeping people comfortable.
“I’m trying to lead us on a common mission,” she said, “to transform people’s lives.”
Lessons learned, from Ohio to Philly
Gym, 55, lives in Philadelphia’s upscale Logan Square section today, but she grew up in a suburb outside Columbus, Ohio. The daughter of Korean immigrants, Gym was a bookish teenager with little interest in politics.
She studied history and economics at the University of Pennsylvania, but she likes to say she graduated from The Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper. Her first job was at a tiny paper in Mansfield, Ohio, a manufacturing town.
There, she interviewed a steel worker who’d lost his legs in an accident, and she assured him he could “probably find another job.” He explained that he had an eighth-grade education and couldn’t find work that would pay what he and his family were worth.
Gym was mortified.
“I never forgot what he said,” she recalled, “and I never forgot how I felt.”
She returned to Philadelphia in the early 1990s and took a job at a community center in Olney, then became a teacher at James R. Lowell Elementary School in the neighborhood.
Gym felt there was pent-up energy to improve schools in underserved neighborhoods, but not many solutions coming from institutions. She cofounded a news organization to cover education, and after leaving her district job in 1997, fell deeper into community-based work.
She fought against a baseball stadium in Chinatown in 2000 (she’s said she is “skeptical” of the proposal for a Sixers arena in Center City). And as she was raising her children, Gym cofounded Parents United for Public Education, fighting the state’s takeover of Philadelphia schools and advocating against the expansion of for-profit charters.
For years, she lobbied Council, spoke at school board meetings, and took the mayor to task for what she saw as a divestment of public education.
“Our society sometimes is not that patient to young people,” Wei Chen, one of the students, said recently. “They always see the young people as troublemakers. But Helen Gym doesn’t feel that.”
In 2013, when the state-controlled School Reform Commission voted to close some two-dozen schools, Gym rallied hard against it.
“You want Helen to be in the trenches with you when you’re in a fight,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who was arrested protesting that plan. “And that’s the kind of mayor you want: Somebody willing to be in the trenches, somebody who can walk the walk with parents and with workers and with kids.”
Gym became one of the district’s staunchest critics — earning her new scrutiny amid the reform movement. Charter school advocates questioned her motives, pointing out that her children attended a charter that Gym cofounded in the early aughts. The school, the Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures charter, was established in Chinatown after the stadium battle and when the district was under state control.
The school wasn’t intended to be “in lieu of public education,” Gym says, but a “supplement.”
“It felt really important to prove that we could build a school that would lift our values,” she said. “Many charter operators open schools they would never imagine sending their own kids to.”
Her critics say her advocacy against expanding the charter-school footprint rang hollow.
David Hardy, the cofounder of Boys’ Latin Charter School who has long opposed Gym’s education positions, said she presents as a “feisty fighter” for families, but has hampered their ability to choose a charter over traditional school.
“She’s created this character, and a lot of people in this town buy into that nonsense,” he said. “They make it seem like they’re for public education, but you don’t see a whole lot of success for poor children in this city.”
‘She will not let up’
With the backing of the city’s teacher’s union, Gym came in fifth in the 2015 Democratic primary for an at-large Council seat — only the top five vote-getters continue on — and became the first Asian American woman on Council.
Gym learned to legislate through the lens of a broader progressive movement, said Wilson Goode Jr., a former Council member and son of the former mayor. He handpicked Gym to succeed him on the board of Local Progress, a national organization for local officials.
He said her leadership flourished after Donald Trump was elected president. Gym rallied thousands at the airport in 2017 to protest his travel ban.
“[Trump’s election] changed the way we view politics, and I think changed people’s expectations of Council people,” Goode said. “She performed well in Council in terms of crafting a legislative agenda, but at the same time rose to a different level of leadership.”
But she turned off some Council colleagues, who have said publicly and privately that Gym could be rigid during negotiations.
William K. Greenlee, a former Democratic Councilmember who served with Gym, described her as rarely veering from her positions, but also capable of compromise.
Greenlee, who is backing Cherelle Parker in the mayor’s race, recalled that Gym revised her 2018 Fair Workweek legislation — which requires predictive scheduling for workers — after business community opposition threatened its passage. It was a sign she could make an agreement.
Where Greenlee said he takes issue with Gym’s campaign is posturing — which he said is espoused mostly by her supporters — that she’s “above the fray.”
“We’re politicians, and I’m sure Helen made agreements on things, or to get things, that’s what we all did,” Greenlee said. “My only problem with that is that I admit that.”
Gym says she worked to win over colleagues of different political persuasions. She said the issues she took on, like unsafe drinking water in schools, may seem popular — but solutions were rarely simple.
“The status quo for Philly politics is that people acknowledge that there are really important issues and they’re popular, and yet nothing ever gets done,” Gym said. “I never accept half-assed ideas to solve really big problems. And if that rubs somebody the wrong way, I think that reflects more on them.”
When Gym ran for reelection in 2019, she proved to be one of the city’s most popular politicians, winning more primary votes than any Council candidate in decades.
That year, she angered Democratic party leadership when she endorsed Kendra Brooks, who ran for Council as a member of the liberal Working Families Party. Gym tweeted that “in a time of corporate Dem shills and keyboard warriors acting as pseudo progressives, Kendra has walked the walk.”
Brooks won, as did Democrat Jamie Gauthier, who beat a West Philadelphia incumbent. The three made up a progressive bloc on Council that was far from a majority, but wielded real influence. They pushed for a program to cut evictions by diverting landlords and tenants to mediation, and advocated for behavioral health providers to respond to mental health calls instead of police.
Toni Damon, the ex-principal at Murrell Dobbins Career and Technical Education High School in North Philly, said Gym’s work went beyond legislation. When Damon had one counselor and one assistant principal serving 500 students, Gym advocated to secure one more of each.
“She came when we needed her,” Damon said. “People say the squeaky wheel gets the oil. She doesn’t back down. She’s persistent. And she will not let up.”
What comes next
On Jan. 30, Gym stood at City Hall and accepted the endorsement of the Working Families Party, saying that together, they’d lift up the people ignored by “career politicians, austerity bureaucrats, and too much of the wealthy and privileged in Philadelphia.”
She wrapped up the news conference, hopped on her bicycle, and rode away.
Hours later, she visited the Union League, the ritzy private club she’d denounced days earlier because it honored Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. She made the stop in the midst of a well-publicized campaign against the club that was led by Black clergy and officials.
Her attendance at the event, hosted by the General Building Contractors’ Association, drew criticism and questions about authenticity. A group of Black ward leaders said “her blatant hypocrisy draws significant concern.”
She apologized. But some remain deeply bothered. Blondell Reynolds Brown, a former Democratic Council member, said recently it was a poor show of character.
“When people like Helen Gym show you who they are, believe them,” she said.
Gym’s campaign has said it’s “moving forward.” They say she should be evaluated based on her track record and her plans to improve public safety, education, and economic opportunity.
Helen Gym, Mayoral candidate, is walking around Clark Park getting signatures for her petition to be on the ballot in Philadelphia last month.Read moreTyger Williams / Staff Photographer
Her biggest advantage may be that her supporters are loyal. After the Union League flap, there was little sign of a crack in her base. She continued to win endorsements from well-organized groups that say she’d be one of the nation’smost progressive big-city mayors.
And she was defended by the teachers’ union, which sees an opportunity to elect a close ally. They’ve backed winners before — but this would feel like one of them.
Damon said Gym’s critics have overblown the Union League visit, saying: “People who know her know the work that she’s done.”
“You can’t take center stage,” Damon said, “if you weren’t there from the beginning.”
A reader named Rcharvet wrote the following about his career as a teacher in an impoverished district in California.
All I know is for nearly 30 years, I taught the kids no one wanted. Back in the day, AWNOLD S wanted to have merit pay for teachers based on test scores (results). I turned and asked the kids, “Have I provided you with materials that you need? Have I stayed after school to help you? Have I helped with just about anything? Then why don’t you do your work? They replied, “I don’t know; there are always better things to do.” I said, “So if I am going to be evaluated on my “merits” then I am screwed, right?” I know they meant well, but just had no family support. At one school, we were testing and I said, “Just do your best.” The young student turned to me and said, “I don’t even understand the directions.” Meanwhile (our school was rated at a 1 out of 10) the other school was in the wealthy area (10) and didn’t even sweat the test. “What test?” Far too many had the stress levels of 34 year olds; translated for parents in the court system; made dinner and lunch for their siblings — they had more important things to do. Even though I would be deemed a “bad teacher” for not getting the kids to be “10s”, my son said that I was making a bigger difference in their lives than at the comprehensive high school. I stuck it out with “my kids” because they needed someone to believe in them; a hug; a ride home; food and water and clothes; and someone to remind them, “Without you, the world would be a darker place. You are meant to change the world whether you know it or not. And it will be the little things you do that with create the biggest change, not memorizing some facts for a test that you forget a week later. But, I guess that doesn’t count when looking at the analytics. Needless to say, for most teachers, why would they work at a place with kids who score low on tests? In the end, my tombstone would say, “He helped everyone and those who needed him the most.” Sad for those kids.
Sara Stevenson served for many years as a middle school librarian in Austin, Texas. Texas, like Florida and many other red states,is suffering a moral panic about the books in public school libraries and in public libraries. She addresses the question: who should review the books?
As a former public school librarian in Austin, I have serious questions about this bill. By no later than Sept. 1, 2023, each book vendor selling library books must submit a list of every book it sells that is either “sexually relevant” or “sexually explicit.”
The first problem is, book vendors, the intermediaries between publishers and libraries, are basically salespeople. They’re not publishers, they’re not librarians and they’re not ratings agencies. None of this is in those companies’ business plans, and they will not be ready by the deadline. It’s like asking a shoe repairman to make you a dress.
Professional librarians, on the other hand, have always been entrusted to select reading materials that align with the curriculum but also include books for reading pleasure. School librarians use selection aids and other resources when choosing the best library materials for their community schools. And Texas law requires us to have a master’s degree and at least two years of teaching experience.
Even for us, the bill is complicated and confusing. “Sexually explicit” books are banned, but “sexually relevant” books require a parent permission slip. The definitions for each are vague and subjective. According to the bill, a “sexually relevant” book is acceptable if it is included “directly” in the curriculum, and therefore relevant.
But what counts as being included in the curriculum? In the middle school where I worked, the English curriculum includes free, independent reading. Students check out books they are interested in. Does that mean that all books that contain any sex can be loaned without a permission slip because any library book a student chooses to read is the curriculum?
The bill, as written, is full of ambiguities and doesn’t take into consideration age, maturity levels or different values within communities in our large and diverse state. There’s a big difference between what’s appropriate for elementary and high school students and between liberal and conservative areas. Sometimes a book contains sexual content, but the book as a whole has redeeming social value for teens, and most — but not all — parents of high school students would approve.
How will the many different vendors selling to Texas libraries know the curriculum of every grade level at every school in Texas well enough to discern if the work is “sexually relevant” or not? In contrast, librarians know their school’s curriculum intimately.
Decisions on whether a given book is appropriate for a given student are subjective and based on personal and family values, which is why the saving grace of libraries is that they encourage free selection. Nothing is compulsory. Parents can already review the library’s holdings: Some school library catalogs, accessible to the public online, already contain short reviews and suggested grade or age levels from professional review sources — the same professional review sources that librarians consult to select books. (Parents can also use other resources, such as commonsense.org, for more detailed information.)
These examples demonstrate the confusion and second-guessing librarians and vendors will go through in order to comply with this law. Fear will be the guiding principle. Librarians won’t be trusted to practice our vocation: giving kids access to the books they want to read so they will read more.
Instead, this bill bypasses our role and places the responsibility for making these judgments on book vendors. Why assume parents will trust a vendor’s ratings more than the judgment of their local school librarians?
I also fear this bill will drastically slow down the process of purchasing books. Children clamoring for the latest book in a favorite series will have to wait. And wait.
In an age of TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, librarians encourage students to read. Reading for pleasure is critically important because the more students read, the more their reading comprehension, attention, writing skills, academic achievement, test scores and empathy grow.
While some parents complain about the inclusion of particular titles in the library collection, school districts already have clear, established book challenge and reconsideration policies in place. They need only follow them. Please trust the professional librarians to do their jobs and protect the freedom to read in our school libraries.
Sara Stevenson, a former middle school librarian, was Austin ISD’s first Librarian of the Year in 2013.
Parent activist Leonie Haimson has a weekly radio show called “Talk out of School.” Tomorrow, Sunday, she will interview Cong. Jamaal Bowman, who has introduced legislation to change the federal mandate of annual standardized testing. Cong. Bowman was a middle school principal before he ran for Congress. He understands the daily work of educators.
Join us tomorrow Sunday at 7 pm EST on WBAI for #TalkoutofSchool when we’ll ask Rep. Jamaal Bowman about his new bill #MoreTeachingLessTesting & 2 PEP members, Tom Sheppard and Jessamyn Lee, about why they voted no on DOE budget at last week’s PEP meeting; also please call in!
The principal of the Classical Charter School in Tallahassee was told to resign or be fired after a parent complained that a sixth grade art class saw a “pornographic” photograph of a sculpture. It was a picture of Michelangelo’s masterpiece “David.” Considered one of the greatest sculptures in the world, “David” is a massive piece of marble that is the centerpiece of the Accademia Gallery of Florence (Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze) in Florence, Italy.
The Tallahassee Classical Charter School follows the Hillsdale College curriculum, supposedly based on the classics. The “David” is certainly a great classical work of art.
I tend to think of a classical education as being the mode in the 17th, 18th century, where you study the Greeks and Romans, and Western civilization is central. A tutor or teacher is the expert, and that teacher drives the curriculum. You’re describing something where it seems the parents drive the curriculum. How does your classical education differ from the classical education as I think of it?
What kind of question is that, Dan? I don’t know how they taught in the 17th, 18th century, and neither do you. You live in New York?
Virginia.
You’ve got a 212 number. That’s New York.
I lived in New York when I got the cellphone, many years ago. Now I live in Virginia.
Well, we’re Florida, OK? Parents will decide. Parents are the ones who are going to drive the education system here in Florida. The governor said that, and we’re with the governor. Parents don’t decide what is taught. But parents know what that curriculum is. And parents are entitled to know anytime their child is being taught a controversial topic and picture.
Parents choose this school because they want a certain kind of education. We’re not gonna have courses from the College Board. We’re not gonna teach 1619 or CRT crap. I know they do all that up in Virginia. The rights of parents, that trumps the rights of kids. Teachers are the experts? Teachers have all the knowledge? Are you kidding me? I know lots of teachers that are very good, but to suggest they are the authorities, you’re on better drugs than me.
Please read the full interview.
I would like to give credit for the meme below. I found it on the Twitter feed of “Trump is Putin’s Puppet.” The person who posted it said was time to add Art to the list of bans.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been an outspoken crusader against the rights of LGBT people. He has made his campaign to eliminate them the centerpiece of his unannounced run for the 2024 Republican nomination. He is pinning his hopes on the belief that the Republican party hates gays as much as he does.
When he passed his “Parental Rights in Education” bill, it was widely described as the “Don’t Say Gay” act because it prohibited any teaching about LGBT people in grades K-3. Since then, he has expanded the forbidden zone all the way through twelfth grade. Books and instruction about anything LGBT is forbidden in schools; he has also insisted on scrubbing the schools and colleges and universities of teaching about race or racism, other than as a positive story that reflects well on the nation’s history. His government is demanding that public colleges produce all data and costs of any programs dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion. These efforts by the DeSantis administration are part of his war on anything WOKE, meaning any show of concern for the well-being or suffering or needs of others.
The Walt Disney Corporation soon fell afoul of DeSantis; it denounced “Don’t Say Gay,” under pressure from its gay employees. DeSantis struck back by threatening to take away the tax advantages of Disney’s “special district.” Disney is the single largest employer in Florida.
The legislature stripped Disney of its self-governing status and put its operations under a 5-member board appointed by DeSantis. This gave the governor strutting rights, and strut he did, claiming that he had take on a big corporation and tamed it. After he signed the legislation, he boasted, “Today, the corporate kingdom finally comes to an end. This is what accountability looks like.”
Here is Disney’s answer: It announced that it will host a major conference promoting the rights of LGBT in the workplace and will be joined by some of the nation’s biggest corporations.
What will Ron do?
The Walt Disney Company will host a major conference promoting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in the workplace in Central Florida this September, gathering executives and professionals from the world’s largest companies in a defiant display of the limits of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign against diversity training.
Disney’s decision to host the conference this fall comes amid a yearlong dispute between the company and the Republican governor, who signed a law that ended decades of autonomy at the Disney resort. It was seen as punishment over the company’s opposition to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education legislation, known widely as the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which prohibits any discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in classrooms before fourth grade. Disney has had a longstanding relationship with Out & Equal, the organization behind the event, and is listed on its website as one of its most generous sponsors.
The Florida resort has committed to hosting the conference this year and next, which will coincide with the presidential election campaign in 2024. DeSantis is widely expected to challenge former President Donald Trump for the Republican nomination.
Michael Chamberlain, chief marketing officer for Out & Equal, confirmed to McClatchy that the conference would be held at The Walt Disney World Resort, Sept. 11-14. Last year’s summit was held in Las Vegas.
Dozens of iconic American companies — including Apple, McDonald’s, Uber, Walmart, Hilton, Amazon, Boeing, Cracker Barrel and John Deere — are sponsoring the Out & Equal Workplace summit, which over 5,000 people are expected to attend.
Several agencies, including the State Department and the CIA, are listed as government partners and will have booths at the conference. The conference comes after DeSantis declared victory over Disney in February when he signed a law that gave him the power to appoint a five-member board overseeing government services at the Disney district near Orlando.
Our reader Carolmalaysia received a letter from the Indiana State Teachers Association, protesting two bills to undercut public schools, teachers and librarians. She signed the petition.
1.] TAKE ACTION: Tell legislators to prioritize public schools and reject private school voucher expansion in radical state budget
All kids, no matter where they live, should be able to pursue their dreams in a great public school. However, the currently proposed radical budget increases spending on private school vouchers by 70%, while increasing traditional public school funding, where 90% of Hoosier students attend, by only 5%.
The current budget would provide more than $1 billion for wealthy families making up to $220,000 to attend private school for free, while neighborhood public schools continue to struggle to provide enough resources for students and pay hard-working educators a competitive salary.
Urge lawmakers to prioritize public education and oppose this huge expansion of unaccountable private school vouchers in the budget. Ask them to increase their commitment to public schools.
2.] TAKE ACTION: TELL LEGISLATORS TO OPPOSE A BILL THAT WOULD REMOVE LEGAL PROTECTIONS FOR TEACHERS AND LIBRARIANS 02/17/2023
SB 12 is yet another culture war bill furthering a false narrative about our public schools. Rather than locally addressing issues over content, the bill would open teachers and librarians to criminal prosecution over educational materials. The bill would remove existing legal defenses schools and school libraries may use when locally determining educational materials. These matters will end up in litigation without administrative steps.
This bill has passed out of the Senate and is now under consideration by the House. Tell your representative to oppose SB 12.
Conservatives won a smashing victory in their efforts to smash public schools and gut teachers unions. The Republican-dominated in the legislature passed a bill for universal vouchers, with no income limitations. After this bill passes the upper house and is signed by Governor DeSantis, every student in the state will be eligible for a voucher for any school.
Students in voucher schools do not take state tests. voucher schools are norms required to have credentialed staff. Voucher schools get public money but they are free from accountability and transparency required of public schools.
Typically, in every state that offers vouchers, 75-80% are claimed by students already enrolled in private schools. This legislation is a subsidy for affluent families.
The Republican-controlled House on Friday passed a measure that would make every Florida student eligible for taxpayer-backed school vouchers, as Democrats and other critics slammed the expansion as a “coupon for millionaires.”
House members voted 83-27 along almost straight party lines to pass the bill. The Senate could consider a similar bill (SB 202) as early as next week. The proposals have sailed through the Legislature, and Gov. Ron DeSantis has pledged that he would sign a vouchers expansion.
Opposition to the House bill centered, in part, on eliminating income-eligibility requirements that are part of current voucher programs. Families would be eligible to receive vouchers under the bill if “the student is a resident of this state and is eligible to enroll in kindergarten through grade 12 in a public school in this state.”
Rep. Marie Woodson, D-Hollywood, echoed many other opponents Friday when she criticized the possibility that wealthy families would receive vouchers.
“This bill is an $8,000 gift card to the millionaires and billionaires who are being gifted with a state-sponsored coupon for something they can already afford,” Woodson said.
Josh Cowen is a Professor of Educational Policy at Michigan State University. He has spent many years as a voucher researcher and recently concluded that vouchers are a failed experiment, based on a multitude of research studies.
As soon as anyone becomes a critic of charter schools or vouchers, the choice lobby attacks them and claims they are paid by the teachers’ unions. I know this from personal experience. A few years ago, a choice lobbyist accused me of taking union money to buy the house I lived in; I assured her that I paid for my home all by myself.
Funny that the shrill well-paid lobbyists act as though unions are criminal enterprises, when in reality they have historically enabled poor and working class people to gain a foothold in the middle class, to have job security, health benefits, and a pension. They also give public schools a voice at the table when governors propose larger classes, lower standards for new teachers, or decreased funding for schools. I believe we need unions now, more than ever. Whenever I hear of a charter school unionizing or of workers in Starbucks or some other big chain forming a union, it makes my day.
Josh Cowen has undoubtedly been subject to the same baseless criticism from the same union-haters whose salaries are paid by plutocrats. He shares his thoughts here about teachers’ unions.
Here in Michigan, the Democratic legislature just re-affirmed our state’s longstanding commitment to working families by removing anti-labor provisions from state law. The move doesn’t apply to teachers and other public employees, because the conservative U.S. Supreme Court sided a few years back with Right-wing activists in their efforts to hinder contributions to public sector unions, but it’s still good news for the labor movement overall.
And I wanted to use their effort—alongside Republican efforts in other states to threaten teachers for what they say in classrooms—to make a simple point.
We need teachers unions. Other folks more prominent than me, like AFT’s Randi Weingarten, have made this point recently too. But I wanted to add my own voice as someone who has not been a union member, and someone who—although I’ve appeared with Randi on her podcast and count many union members as friends—has never been an employee or even a consultant.
If you want to talk dollars, The Walton Family Foundation once supported my research on charter schools to the tune of more than $300,000. Arnold Ventures supported my fundraising for a research center at Michigan State–$1.9 million from them. And the US Department of Education awarded my team more than $2 million to study school choice—while Betsy DeVos was secretary.
Think about that when I say school vouchers are horrific. And understand, I’m getting no support from teachers’ unions.
Instead it is I who supports them.
I’ve been studying teacher labor markets almost as long as school vouchers. Mostly my research has looked at teacher recruitment and retention. But I’ve also written about teachers’unions specifically. There’s a debate among scholars on what unions do and whether their emphasis on spending translates into test score differences. In the “rent seeking” framework economists use, the concern is that dollars spent on salaries don’t have direct academic payoffs.
There is no question that spending more money on public schools has sustained and generational impacts on kids. Research has “essentially settled” that debate, according to today’s leading expert on the topic.
But I want to branch out from dollars and cents and test scores to talk about teacher voice.
And I want to do that by raising a few questions that I’ve asked myself over the last couple years:
Why should the voice of a billionaire heiress from Michigan with no experience in public schools count for more than the voices of 100,000 teachers in my state’s classrooms every day?
Why should the simple fact that they work with children made by other people mean that teachers surrender their own autonomy and judgment not just as professionals but as human beings?
Why should educators have to work under what amounts to gag orders, afraid to broach certain topics or issues in the classroom? Some states are setting up hotlines to report on teachers as if they’re parolees, and a bill in New Hampshire would essentially give the fringe-Right Secretary of Education subpoena power to haul teachers in front of a special tribunal for teaching “divisive concepts.” This, after a Moms for Liberty chapter put out a bounty on New Hampshire teachers who were likewise divisive on an issue. Read: an issue of race or gender.
It’s not just threats to teacher employment. We know this. There are threats to teachers’ lives. How many teachers have died alongside their students—other people’s children—over the years in school shootings?
Why does the Right claim to trust teachers enough to arm them with guns in response to those shootings, but not enough to let them talk about race, gender, or any other “divisive concept?” Even some conservative commentators have worried publicly that we’re asking teachers to do too much. Why are we asking them to be an armed security force too?
‘In her recent history of “The Teacher Wars”, The New York Times’ Dana Goldstein noted that teachers formed unions, and fought for teacher tenure, to protect themselves not just professionally but personally. For free speech. To prevent harassment from supervisors—then as now, teachers were mostly professional women—and to keep from being fired for pregnancy or marital status.
So really, attacks on teachers are nothing new. Instead, teachers seem to be one of the few professions that it’s still acceptable in political conversation—even a mark of supposed intellectual sophistication in some circles—to ponder the shortcomings of the educators who work with our kids every day.
There’s nothing sophisticated about attacking hardworking, thoughtful, and dedicated people. And the only result of doing so will be the further erosion of our public, community schools. And that’s really the point. Just a few days ago, we learned that the big data that I and many others have gotten used to working with finally caught up to the on-the-frontlines warnings of educators everywhere: teachers are exiting the profession at unprecedented rates.
I’ve taken no money from teachers’ unions for any of the work I do. I’ve never been a member of a union—teachers’ or otherwise. Until now. Because after writing this today, I made a donation to my state’s primary teachers’ union and became a general member: a person “interested in advancing the cause of education…not eligible for other categories of membership.”
There’s a word for that in the labor movement. You hear it a lot here in Michigan, where I grew up and now teach future teachers in a college of education. That word is Solidarity.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/pmn/XSARWTPRKNGJZEV56XGBESF6U4.jpg)
Diane Ravitch's blog 