Archives for category: Resistance

Jan Resseger explains the history and context of the truly historic teachers’ strike in Chicago that recently ended. She explains it with clarity, as only Jan can do.

This was not a strike for higher salaries. The mayor offered a 16% increase before the strike began, and that is what the Chicago Teachers Union accepted.

This was a strike for students. This was a strike to reverse a quarter-century of disinvestment by Mayors Richard Daley and Rahm Emanuel.

This was a strike against 25 years of austerity in a booming city that had billions for developers but nothing for students and schools.

This was a strike against corporate reform, which starved the public schools for the benefit of charter schools.

This was a historic strike. To understand why, read this post.

Categories Chicago, Class size, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Reform, Injustice, Resistance, Unions

NPE’s Grassroots Network Is Growing!

By dianeravitch

November 1, 2019 //

Marla Kilfoyle, who previously served as national executive director of the BadAss Teachers Association, is now in charge of building the Grassroots Network of the Network for Public Education. She has done a spectacular job in bringing together parents, grandparents, educators, students, and other public-spirited citizens who support our public schools.

Here is the latest report.

Nearly 150 groups have joined. They represent every state in the nation.

Join us and help fight for better schools for all children. Schools open to all, schools that are democratically controlled, schools where students have the resources and conditions they need to thrive and grow.

Categories Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Resistance

Meet Jitu Brown, a Hero of the Resistances

By dianeravitch

October 28, 2019 //

Jitu Brown is a son of Chicago. He is National director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, which has affiliates in 30 cities, where they work for social justice.

Jitu was the driving force behind the community effort to save Dyett High school in Chicago, the last open admission high school in Bronzeville. Mayor Rahm Emanuel had decided to close Dyett, and Jitu organized a campaign to save Dyett. He led a 34-day hunger strike, and eventually Rahm gave up and instead of closing Dyett, he invested $16 million into renovating it as a school for the arts.

Listen to Jitu here, where he is videotaped by videographer Bob Greenberg. Greenberg has created an archive of hundreds of interviews with educators. He is a retired teacher.

In this video, Jitu Brown describes the two teachers who had a profound impact on him and helped him discover his strengths.

In this video, Jitu Brown recites Claude Mckay’s “If We Must Die.”

Jitu belongs on the Honor Roll of this blog.

Jitu Brown is a hero of the Resistance. He is also a member of the board of the Network for Public Education.

He is featured in my new book SLAYING GOLIATH.

Categories Chicago, Emanuel, Rahm, Honor Roll, Resistance

Dedham, Mass.: Teachers Strike!

By dianeravitch

October 26, 2019 //

The teachers of Dedham, Massachusetts, voted overwhelmingly to go out on strike.

DEDHAM — Hundreds of striking teachers took to the streets Friday in this suburban town, holding placards, marching with students and parents, and cheering fresh support from high-profile Democratic politicians. Meanwhile, signs emerged that stalled negotiations could resume this weekend.

The first teachers strike in 12 years in Massachusetts followed an overwhelming vote of 275 to 2 on Thursday to walk off the job despite a state ruling that the strike is illegal. Public schools were closed Friday in this community of 25,000 people, bordering Boston.

Timothy Dwyer, president of the Dedham Education Association, called the strike “a last resort” after nearly two years of failed negotiations over salary increases, health insurance, and other issues such as sexual harassment grievances and cellphone use in the classroom.

Categories Accountability, Massachusetts, Resistance, Teacher Pay, Unions

Oakland Education Association Condemns Violence Against Peaceful Protestors

By dianeravitch

October 24, 2019 //

WHAT AN OUTRAGE! “Reform” strikes again. Literally.

PRESS STATEMENT & PRESS AVAILABILITY

October 24, 2019

Contact: OEA 2nd Vice President, Chaz Garcia, 510-414-3593

Statement from OEA 2nd Vice President Chaz Garcia on Behalf of the OEA Officers on OUSD’s Use of Violence at School Board Meeting

“Last night, OUSD police pushed, choked and clubbed peaceful elementary school parents and educators who were protesting school closures. We hold the OUSD Board of Directors and Superintendent Johnson-Trammell responsible for setting the stage for this violence by erecting barricades, and for the actions of their police force. The Oakland Education Association condemns these acts of policing and violence in the strongest possible way, as we have opposed (and went on strike against) the harm done to our students by school closures, the harm done when a Board member choked a teacher in March, and OUSD’s continued spending of over $6.5 million on OUSD police while underspending on counselors, nurses, and school psychologists that our students need.”

“Oakland students, parents and educators deserve better than what the OUSD Board and Superintendent Johnson-Trammell are giving us. Oakland educators demand that OUSD immediately:

Enact a moratorium on all planned and future school closures;
Issue a public apology to our students, parents and educators for the use of police barricades, over-policing, and violence at last night’s board meeting;
Defund the OUSD police force, and redirect those funds toward the counselors, nurses and other supports our students need; and immediately suspend, investigate and discipline officers for their behavior last night.”

PRESS AVAILABILITY: OEA 2nd Vice President Chaz Garcia, Noon to 2pm today (October 24th); OEA office (272 E. 12th Street, Oakland, 94606)

Categories Accountability, California, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Oakland, Resistance

Teacher Activism: The One, the Only, the Great Karen Lewis

By dianeravitch

October 20, 2019 //

Karen Lewis is the inspiration for today’s teacher’s strikes.

She is one of a kind.

She is a hero, a woman of courage, character, integrity, intellect, and steel.

The Chicago Teachers Union just released this video tribute to Karen.

Karen is a product of the Chicago Public Schools. She went to elite Ivy League colleges, first to Mount Holyoke, then transferred to Dartmouth College, where she was the only African American female in the class of 1974.

Karen returned to Chicago and became a chemistry teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, where she taught for 22 years.

In 2010, an upstart group of unionists called the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) ousted the leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union and elected Karen Lewis as its president. The new leadership cut its own salaries and began building relationships with community organizations and parents.

The city’s political and financial elite rewrote state law in hopes of preventing the union from striking. Assisted by Jonah Edelman of the turncoat “Stand for Children,” the city’s financial elite hired the state’s top lobbyists (so that none would be available to help the union), raised millions of dollars (outspending the unions), and passed a state law saying that teachers could not strike unless they had the approval of 75% of their members. They thought this was an impossible threshold. Jonah Edelman, seated alongside James Schine Crown, one of Chicago’s wealthiest financiers, boasted of their feat at the Aspen Institute in 2011. Surrounded by their union-hating peers from other cities at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Edelman said “If It Could Happen Here, It Could Happen Anywhere,” meaning that with enough financial and political clout, unions could be crushed. (The event was transcribed by Parents Across America and blogger Fred Klonsky copied the video before the Aspen Institute took it down). Edelman subsequently apologized for his candid remarks, but Stand for Children has continued to act as a proxy for philanthrocapitalists. (The Aspen video and Edelman’s apology is here on Fred Klonsky’s blog).

Needless to say, the elites were shocked when Karen Lewis and her team called for authorization to strike and won the support of more than 90% of the union’s membership.

In 2012, the union struck for 10 days and won important concessions, including protections for teachers laid off when Rahm Emanuel closed schools, prevention of merit pay (which she knew has failed everywhere), and changes in the teacher evaluation system. The union had carefully built relationships with parents and communities, and the strike received broad public support.

In 2014, Karen Lewis was urged to challenge Rahm Emanuel in the 2015 mayoral election. She set up an exploratory committee, and early polls showed she was likely to win. But in the fall of 2014, Karen was afflicted with a cancerous brain tumor. She was 61 years old. She stepped down as president of the CTU. She is cared for by her devoted husband, John Lewis, who was a physical education teacher in the Chicago Public Schools.

Karen Lewis exemplified courage, fearlessness, Resistance, leadership, and concern for teachers and children.

Every teacher who took the bold step of striking to improve the conditions of teaching and learning in their school stands on the shoulders of Karen Lewis. Every teacher and parent who wears Red for Ed is in the debt of this great woman.

She is our hero. She should be the hero of everyone who cares about the rights of children and the eventual triumph of the common good.

Watch here to see Karen Lewis before her illness, speaking at the first annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Austin Texas on March 1, 2024. Her speech was preceded by that of John Kuhn, superintendent of a school district in Texas. Karen starts speaking about the 14-minute mark. Both are worth watching.

I interviewed Karen Lewis at the second annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Chicago in 2015. You can see it here.

And this is my account of how I met Karen for the first time and why I love her.

She inspires me every day. I miss her very much.

Categories Chicago, Civil Rights, Courage, Honor Roll, Resistance, Stand for Children, Supporting public schools, Teachers, Unions

Max Brantley: The Waltons Vicious Assault on Arkansas’ Public Schools and Its Teachers’ Union

By dianeravitch

October 19, 2019 //

Max Brantley, the editor of the Arkansas Times, is a journalist who fearlessly stands up to the all-powerful Walton Family in the state they think they own. Brantley is a hero of the Resistance in my forthcoming book SLAYING GOLIATH.

In this post, Brantley describes the Waltons’ efforts to destroy the Little Rock School District and to crush the Little Rock Education Association.

He writes:

They are doing to Little Rock schools what the foundation of the family fortune did to small towns all across America — hollowing them out. It’s a years-long, billion-dollar effort that favors “choice” — privately run charter schools, vouchers for private schools, taxpayer support for homeschoolers and a diminishment of the role of elected school boards. Parents know best, the Walton acolytes assert, even when the studies show little proof that the various choices beat conventional public schools. They are still searching for the magic bullet for the grinding reality of the impact of poverty on standardized test scores, the misleading standard by which “failure” is determined…

Little Rock teachers are…complaining of a mass e-mail from the anti-union Arkansas State Teachers Association last night warning teachers against striking. This group had a $362,000 startup grant from the Walton Family Foundation, no surprise given how notoriously anti-union Walmart has always been. ASTA also has ties to a national anti-union organization founded by like-minded billionaires. Teachers weren’t too happy to be spammed by the group. ASTA also has been peppering state newspapers with op-eds touting their anti-union views. Its leader, Michele Linch, was the lone public voice on the other side of an outpouring of public opposition to the attack on the LRSD and its union by the state Board of Education.

Teachers in Little Rock ARE talking strike. I confess misgivings. There’s not a readily attainable goal as seen in other states, such as a pay increase. Nor is there any realistic hope for a change of heart in the Asa Hutchinson- (and thus Walton-) controlled education hierarchy. As Ernie Dumas wrote this week, racial discrimination and union hatred (tied historically with racist thinking) have always been with us in Arkansas. The recent LRSD takeover was nothing more than a combination of both by the white male business ruling class, with the primary immediate goal of union wreckage.

The Waltons collectively have a fortune in excess of $100 billion. They buy people, they create organizations to implement their evil schemes, they think they can squelch democracy by the power of money.

Those with the courage to stand up to them—journalists like Max Brantley, the teachers of the Little Rock Education Association, the parents and activists of Grassroots Arkansas—are the heroes of our time. They oppose autocracy, plutocracy, and a vast conspiracy to destroy democracy.

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Resistance, School Choice, Unions, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Los Angeles: School Board Committee Rejects Plan to Give Schools a Single Grade

By dianeravitch

October 10, 2019 //

The Resistance won a big victory in Los Angeles.

Thanks to newly elected LAUSD board member Jackie Goldberg, a key committee of the school board rejected a plan to assign a single grade to every school.

The idea of grading schools with a single letter was first hatched by Jeb Bush, in his relentless push to impose test-based accountability on every public school in Florida and to set up those with the worst grades to be privatized.

Several states have adopted the Jeb Bush plan, and in every case, the letter grade was a reliable proxy for students’ family income. The schools where poor students predominated received the lowest grades and were fair game for the charter industry.

Jackie Goldberg has a long history as a teacher, school board member, and state legislator, and she strongly opposed the plan.

Nick Melvoin, who was elected with the help of millions of dollars contributed by Eli Broad and other friends of the charter lobby, proposed the plan.

The Los Angeles Unified school board’s Curriculum and Instruction Committee approved a resolution introduced by board member Jackie Goldberg that calls for the district to suspend implementation of “any use of stars, scores, or any other rating system” for its schools.

The committee’s action includes a shift in support by Kelly Gonez, who says she now opposes assigning single ratings to schools. Gonez last yearco-sponsored a resolution with board member Nick Melvoin that called for creating a school performance framework that would include a “single, summative rating for each school.” The board approved that resolution in April 2018.

Goldberg’s resolution, which is expected to pass when it goes before the full board Nov. 5, would effectively kill the idea to give all schools in the district a single rating, which Melvoin says would allow the district to better identify and help struggling schools…

The three board members on the committee — McKenna, Scott Schmerelson and Gonez — voted unanimously to send Goldberg’s resolution to the full board, where it needs four votes to pass. Board member Richard Vladovic also indicated to EdSource that he supports the new resolution. Goldberg’s expected vote would give the resolution a five-vote majority on the seven-member board…

Goldberg’s resolution says that summative rankings “promote unhealthy competition between schools” and “penalize schools that serve socioeconomically disadvantaged student populations.”

Jackie Goldberg proves that one person can make a difference. She does so by dint of superior experience, knowledge, and intellect.

The billionaires once owned the LAUSD. They bought it, fair and square.

No longer.

Be on alert for the next school board election. The sharks will gather round again.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization, Resistance

Arkansas: Supporters of Public Schools Demand Democracy

By dianeravitch

October 7, 2019 //

Grassroots Arkansas sent out the following alert to friends of public education and democracy:

Friends,

It has been a long, hard five years of state control, and so much of the future of public education in Arkansas will be decided this week. We need YOU to join us, stand up, and speak out. NOW is the time. We all must choose to stand on the right side of history against a district where democratic representation is divided by race and class. We’re up against some of the biggest corporations in the world. The only way we win is together. #OneLRSD #AsaFaubus

We are ABSOLUTELY standing against state, city, county, and/or special interest groups’ control. We want the entire district back with a locally, democratically-elected school board, and we want to have access to all of our resources to create the healthiest structures and develop world-class, equitable, sustainable community schools for every student in every classroom at every school.!

Monday

Join us in our 1,000 calls/tweets/e-mails ASAP to request Governor Hutchinson meets with the Support Our LRSD Coalition on either Monday, 10/7 or Tuesday, 10/8. Contact the Governor ASAP, every day at (501)682-2345, info@governor.arkansas.gov, or @AsaHutchinson on Twitter.

Join us for informational picketing, 5-6pm on MLK over I-630

6pm: Tune in to the Journey4Justice podcast as they host Dr. Anika Whitfield

Tuesday

Share a 1-2 minute live video of yourself, your child/children/grandchild/grandchildren expressing that, “We support our LRSD. We are #OneLRSD who loves #OurLRSD and we will work as long and as hard as we must until we #ReclaimLRSD together! Join us in wearing red for public education and to stop state control!” @Grassroots Arkansas, @AsaHutchinson, @cnnbrk, @MSNBC_Breaking, @adv_project, @j4j_usa. Call/text/email/ message friends, family, co-workers/colleagues, constituents, neighbors, faith community members or share with with them one day during breakfast/lunch/dinner what is going on with the LRSD and request they join us the following 3 days:

The State is dividing our children and the type of resources being provided them by socieconomic class.
The State has taken away our representation, but is steadily collecting our tax dollars.
The State is giving our public schools (that are paid for and maintained by our property taxes) to charter school companies.
The State is threatening to dissolve the LREA (teacher’s and educator’s union). Retirement plans, jobs/employment, bargaining negotiations for contracts and employment conditions will no longer be protected.

Wednesday

Join us for a Community Action Training from 6-7pm at Bishop Leodies & Goldie Warren Community Development Center, 1200 Bishop Warren Dr Suite A and then for a Candlelight Vigil on at Central High School, 7:30pm

Thursday-Friday

Plan on being at the State Board of Education meeting Thursday, 10/10 10am-? and Friday, 10/11 9am-? as the State Board votes to destroy the last teachers’ union in Arkansas.

The people united will never be defeated!

Categories Arkansas, Democracy, Resistance