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Arizona: Why Teachers Plan to Walk Out

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2018 //
2

 

Dana Goldstein writes in the New York Times about the looming teachers’ strike (walkout) in Arizona, a right to work state, where most teachers do not belong to the Arizona Education Association. The state has cut $1 Billion out of the K-12 education budget since the 2008 recession, and is currently among the lowest-spending states in the nation on education. The tax-cutting Governor Doug Ducey has promised a 20% raise by 2020, but has offered no new taxes or revenue source to back up his promise. The New York Times is fortunate to have Dana Goldstein working the education beat because she is knowledgeable, having written “The Teacher Wars,” a history of the teaching profession in the U.S.

She writes:

Arizona educators voted late Thursday in favor of a statewide walkout, as teacher protests over low pay and school funding continued to sweep across the United States.

The spread of the protests to Arizona from West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky, all Republican-dominated states with weak public sector unions, signaled the depth of frustration from teachers and parents over years of education budget cuts.

The movement first arose in West Virginia, where teachers walked off the job in February, winning a $2,000 raise. In Oklahoma, the threat of a walkout garnered a $6,000 raise for teachers, but they still picketed the Capitol for nine days, calling for additional school funding that mostly did not come. In Kentucky, teachers have rallied outside the State Capitol to protest changes to their pension plans and to demand more money for schools.

“It’s clear that our educators are inspired by what they’ve seen in West Virginia and Oklahoma and Kentucky,” said Joe Thomas, president of the Arizona Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union. “They see educators rising up and lifting their voices for their students, and doing so in a way that can’t be ignored.”

The vote in Arizona followed weeks of protest across the state and promises from the governor to raise salaries. The Arizona Education Association and Arizona Educators United, a group of teachers who organized independently on Facebook, said that 78 percent of the teachers and school workers who cast ballots supported a walkout.

The groups said the walkout would take place on April 26 if legislators and the governor did not meet their demands, not only for a raise for teachers but also one for school support staff. They also called for an end to tax cuts until Arizona’s per-pupil spending reaches the national average.

Unlike West Virginia and Oklahoma, Arizona has never before had a statewide teacher walkout, and has experienced only a handful of districtwide strikes over the past four decades.

The state has cut approximately $1 billion from schools since the 2008 recession, while also cutting taxes. It spent under $7,500 per pupil annually in 2015, the last year for which census data was available; only Utah and Idaho spent less.

As in the other states where teachers have picketed, many districts in Arizona are facing teacher shortages in subjects like math, science and special education, with principals reporting that staff members are moving to deeper-pocketed states to earn up to $20,000 more per year, or to work in better-funded classrooms.

Noah Karvelis, an elementary school music teacher and the founder of Arizona Educators United, said he was sympathetic to the disruption that widespread school closings would cause students and parents. But, he said, that should not forestall a walkout.

“If we maintain the status quo, that is way worse than missing a couple of days of school,” Mr. Karvelis said at a news conference outside the union headquarters in Phoenix. “The biggest disservice any of us could do for our students right now is to not act in this moment.”

Across Arizona, tens of thousands of teachers, parents and students, clad in red, participated in protests outside schools on April 11. Gov. Doug Ducey said he was “impressed” by the movement, which calls itself #RedForEd. He promised to provide teachers with a 20 percent raise by 2020, and to restore school budgets to pre-Recession levels over the next five years. He said he could do so without raising taxes, because the state’s economy is improving and existing state programs could be cut.

But many teachers rejected that plan, or said they distrusted Mr. Ducey, a first-term Republican.

“You don’t rob Peter to feed Paul,” said Kassandra Dominguez, who teaches kindergarten and first grade in the Pendergast school district, near Phoenix. “That’s so wrong, and I wouldn’t want that money.”

Alternate proposals for raising school budgets include increasing an education sales tax from six-tenths of a cent to one cent, or closing corporate tax loopholes.

The average teacher salary in Arizona is about $47,000 per year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But starting salaries are much lower, and many teachers leading the protest movement are in their 20s and 30s.

Ms. Dominguez, 27, earns $38,250 per year, and says that because of low education budgets, she has had to pay out of pocket, or raise money from private donors, to buy her students science supplies, chairs and snacks. She voted in favor of a walkout. Her district had lost a total of $1.6 million over the past five years because of budget cuts, according to administrators, and the school board had come out in favor of the #RedForEd movement.

In San Tan Valley, an exurban area an hour southeast of Phoenix, Mary Stavely, an elementary schoolteacher, said she had also voted in favor of a walkout. Ms. Stavely, 34, earns $36,800. Thirteen of 38 teachers at her school, Circle Cross Ranch K-8, are planning to resign at the end of this academic year, she said, because of factors like low pay and a lack of rental housing in the area.

“It directly affects students” when teacher turnover is high, Ms. Stavely said, because children “lose morale and the connections that were made” with caring adults. Ms. Stavely, a single mother, is currently living with her parents, and said she has considered looking for a higher-paying job. Still, she said she had spent her spring break going door to door to recruit parents to enroll their children at her public school. Arizona has aggressively expanded charter schools and private school vouchers in recent years, leading to enrollment declines — and potential budget cuts — for some traditional schools.

More than 57,000 educators filled out a ballot in the Arizona walkout vote. There are approximately 90,000 certified teachers in the state, but only 20,000 members of the Arizona Education Association, the union. As in the other red states that have had recent teacher protests, union membership is optional for Arizona educators, and labor organizing is new for many of them.

Among those who oppose a walkout is Jim Segar, 64, a colleague of Ms. Stavely’s at Circle Cross Ranch K-8 and a physical education teacher.

Mr. Segar said the proposal from Mr. Ducey was the best teachers could realistically hope for. “You can’t get everything at once after years of neglect,” he said. “I think people would be crazy to walk or strike now.”

Categories Arizona, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, Resistance, Teacher Pay, Unions

FLASH: Arizona Teachers Approve Statewide Walkout!

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2018 //
17

Arizona teachers have voted overwhelmingly to walk out in response to state budget cuts over many years. Here is news from Linda Lyon, president of the Arizona School Boards Association. 

Arizona, like West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Kentucky, is a “right to work” state.

Here is the press release from the Arizona Education Association.

“Today, the Arizona Education Association (AEA) and Arizona Educators United (AEU) announced in front of AEA headquarters, that 78 percent of 57,000 Arizona educators voted to walk out of Arizona’s schools – citing 10 years of drastically underfunded schools resulting in overcrowded classrooms, crumbling infrastructure, and low wages for educators. Facebook video | YouTube video

“After years of starving our schools, some classes are stuffed with kids, while others sit empty because there isn’t a teacher to teach,” says AEU organizer and Littleton elementary music teacher Noah Karvelis. “The #RedforEd movement has provided educators the opportunity to voice what action they want to take in an historic statewide vote.”

“This vote was not an easy decision for educators,” says AEA Vice President and Isaac Middle School teacher Marisol Garcia. “As I turned in my ballot today, I thought about my son, my colleagues, and my students. By voting today, I am standing up for my son and all students in Arizona and the public schools they deserve.”

“We’re using textbooks from the 1990s because there’s no money for books. That’s just one of the reasons we’re fighting to make Arizona’s kids, schools and educators a higher priority in the governor’s office,” says AEA President and Mesa government teacher Joe Thomas.

“As educators, the students are at the center of everything we do. Every student deserves a chance at a quality education, and access to services like nutrition, health, and after school programs.

“The decision to walk out also comes on the heels of weeks of #RedforEd walk-ins and a disingenuous budget proposal from the governor that claimed a raise that excluded support professionals like counselors, bus drivers and cafeteria workers – and was not supported by actual funding.

“Education isn’t just a job, it’s a calling. That’s why we’re walking out,” said Noah.”

Categories Arizona, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, Resistance, Teachers

Massachusetts: Charter Advocates Review Why They Lost State Referendum

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2018 //
11

 

A secret memo commissioned by the Walton Education Coalition sought to analyze why the well-funded charter advocates were beaten handily in a Massachusetts referendum in 2016 on expanding charter schools.

The memo says the opposition trusted teachers more than the governor. The opposition had a simple message: charters are funded at the expense of the local public schoools. The charter lobbyists thought they could threaten a referendum, and the legislature would cave and lift the charter cap to avoid a referendum. But the anti-charter forces refused to compromise and took it to the public.

Families for Excellent Schools, the hedge funders group, thought that the aggressive tactics they had used successfully in New York would work in Massachusetts. They didn’t, and FES was fined nearly half a million dollars for campaign finance violations (concealing the names of its donors) and banned from the Bay State for five years (FES disbanded soon afterwards).

What the analysis doesn’t acknowledge is that Massachusetts was a terrible choice to launch a charter campaign. On NAEP, it is the most successful state in the nation. It has a strong tradition of local control. Families are very attached to their town schools. Threaten the funding of the local public school, and you hit a hornets’ nest.

The pro-charter campaign was hurt too by the public recognition that it was fueled by out-of-state funding.

The opposition to charter expansion was well-organized and grassroots. The two national teachers unions spent millions, enough to stay competitive, but we’re outspent by the charter supporters by many more millions. Without their financial help (no dark money!), the charter industry would have owned the airwaves.

The Massachusetts Teachers Association, led by Barbara Madeloni, organized teachers and collaborated with school committees to fight off the charter invasion. Almost every school committee in the state opposed Question 2.

Volunteers, parents, and activists turned out to defend public schools.

The only towns that voted to expand charters were affluent communities that expected they would never get a charter. Where charters already existed, the opposition ran strong because they knew there was less money for their town schools.

The defeat of Question 2 in Massachusetts was a very important milestone in the fight against privatization.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Dark Money, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Massachusetts, Privatization, Resistance, Walton Foundation

Rick Hess: The Pendulum Is Swinging Against the Bush-Obama “Reform” Era

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2018 //
45

 

Although I often disagree with Rick Hess, I think he is the most insightful of the reformers and the nicest as well. He has a code of civility, and he never descends into mud-slinging or name-calling, unlike others in the reform camp.

In his latest article, I was surprised and delighted to see his acknowledgement that the pendulum is swinging away from the Bush-Obama reforms. He tacitly admits, as few other reformers do, that the era of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top has failed, and (as John Merrow said in his latest post) “the air is humming,” and something great is coming. The current federal law (Every Student Succeeds Act) is a stripped-down version of NCLB, still insanely test-focused, in my view. Under ESSA, despite its grandiose name, there is no hope, none, that “every student will succeed.”

Rick looks at the wave of teachers’ strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Kentucky (with more likely to happen) and draws five lessons.

First, “Teachers are immensely sympathetic actors. For all the gibes, harsh rhetoric of the accountability era, and tsk-tsk’ing occasioned by polls in which people say they don’t want their kids to be teachers, the reality is that people really like teachers. In surveys, no matter how much talk there is about “failing” schools and problems with tenure, teachers are trusted and popular.” Although he doesn’t say it, I will: People trust teachers more than hedge fund managers or billionaires.

Second, “The Trump era has made it tougher for GOP officials to plead “fiscal restraint.” For years, GOP governors and legislators have said there is no more money, but the national GOP has just added billions to the defense budget, over a trillion dollars to the national deficit, and cut taxes for corporations by more billions.

Third, the reform movement must shoulder a significant part of the blame for demonizing teachers, demoralizing them, and building a reservoir of rage. “Along the way, teachers came to look and feel like targets, rather than beneficiaries, of “school reform,” which may be why bread-and-butter demands from teachers are ascending as the guts of Bush-Obama school reform are sinking to the bottom of the “discarded school reform” sea.”

Fourth, teachers’ strikes and walkouts are succeeding because they have broad appeal.

Fifth, he sees the current moment as a good time to rethink compensation, pensions, and staffing. In the minds of reformers, this could be converted into their usual mindset: merit pay, performance pay, replacing pensions with savings plans, etc. As the Kentucky walkout showed, teachers will not sit still while their retirement benefits are whittled away. Part of the appeal of teaching is the expectation that one will not retire to a life of penury after a career of low-paid service.

This is one of the most hopeful articles I have recently read about the pendulum swing that almost everyone knows is coming.

 

 

Categories Corporate Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Failure, Hope, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Resistance, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Pay, Teachers

Colorado: Teachers’ Protest Launched Today

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2018 //
20

Hundreds of teachers mobbed the State Capitol, demanding better school funding and salaries.

DENVER — Hundreds of public school teachers swarmed the Colorado state Capitol on Monday, shuttering one suburban Denver school district to demand better salaries, as lawmakers were set to debate a pension reform measure that would cut retirement benefits and take-home pay.

With the demonstrations, Colorado educators join peers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona who have staged strikes or high-profile protests in recent weeks to draw attention to what teachers unions see as a growing crisis in the profession.

In Colorado the need is especially stark – and apparently at odds with a state economy that ranks among the nation’s best. The average teacher salary – $46,155 in 2016 -ranks 46th among states and Washington, D.C., according to the latest figures from the National Education Association.

By another metric, Colorado’s dead last. The Education Law Center, an advocacy group, said this year that Colorado’s teacher salaries are the worst in the nation “when compared to professionals with similar education levels.”

Teachers rallied in and outside the building Monday, holding signs and chanting slogans including “You left me no choice. I have to use my teacher voice.” They drew honks from passing cars before heading inside, where their cheers and songs resonated throughout the Golden Dome, drawing lawmakers out of their respective chambers to investigate the noise.

 

 

Categories Colorado, Education Reform, Funding, Resistance, Teacher Pay

#WhyIRefuse: A Brief History of the Contemporary Testing and Opt Out Movements

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2018 //
3

Deborah Abramson Brooks, a parent activist and lawyer in Port Washington, New York, wrote this excellent overview of the testing movement and the backlash to it. She originally wrote it in 2014, but updated it to the present.

Brooks is a co-founder of Port Washington Advocates for Public Education; and a member of the board of New York State Allies for Public Education and the National Parent Coalition for Student Privacy.

You will find this interesting and informative.

Read the entire document here.

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Opt Out, Parent Groups, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Resistance, Testing

Colorado: Teachers Plan to Walk Out, Descend on Legislature to Demand Higher Pay, Better Funding

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2018 //
5

 

The Denver Post reports that some teachers in Colorado plan to assemble at the State Capitol today to air their grievances, namely, low salaries, which have contributed to teacher shortages.

Inspired by walkouts in other states, teachers will meet with legislators to make their case.

“Earlier this year, 100 CEA members told lawmakers about a survey of more than 2,200 CEA members that showed the average educator spent about $656 a year out of their own pockets for student needs. Many CEA members presented invoices to the General Assembly for the past due amount.

“The CEA said educators in Colorado have had their pay cut by more than 17 percent when adjusting for inflation. A recent study from the Education Law Center, a group that advocates for more school funding, ranked Colorado dead last in the competitiveness of its teacher salaries.

“The typical 25-year-old teacher at the beginning of his or her career in Colorado makes just 69 percent of what a peer with a similar education level who works similar hours earns, the Education Law Center said….

”The CEA on Monday will lobby lawmakers to restore and increase education funding — K-12 public schools in Colorado are underfunded by $828 million in the current school year — and to secure a stable retirement program, CEA president Karrie Dallman said.”

It remains to be seen whether Colorado teachers will enlarge the protest and close down schools across the state. Public schools have been shortchanged by the Legislature.

 

Categories Budget Cuts, Colorado, Education Reform, Funding, Resistance

Why I Am Supporting Cynthia Nixon for Governor of New York

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2018 //
42

 

If you read the previous post, you know that Governor Andrew Cuomo declared war on public schools and their teachers in his 2014 campaign. He continued to lash out at teachers and the UFT as selfish and greedy even after he was re-elected. In 2015, after his election, he told the editorial board of the New York Daily News that the union (the United Federation of Teachers) had turned the public schools into a “teacher employment program.” He echoed the talking points of the charter sector, saying that 250,000 children were “trapped in failing schools” because of the greedy teachers’ union and the rest of the “education establishment.” He declared himself the champion of the state’s charter schools, which enroll about 5-6% of students, as opposed to 90% in the public schools. Cuomo gets large donations from hedge fund managers and Wall Street executives who have been the financiers of charter schools. His $30 million campaign chest consists mainly of donations from the same people who back privatization of public schools.

After Mayor DeBlasio was elected in 2013, he wanted to charge rent for the use of public school space to charters that could afford it. However, Cuomo persuaded the legislature to require the New York City Department of Education to provide free space to charter schools, to allow them to expand as much as they wished, and to pay the charters’ rent for private facilities if they could not find suitable public space.

Cuomo made his contempt for public schools clear in 2014, and nothing he has done since then has changed his image as a foe of public education. He insisted on a 2% cap on local taxes for public school districts that need to raise their revenues; a district can’t raise its own taxes unless the increase is approved by a supermajority of 60%. Cuomo’s hand-picked State University of New York charter committee authorizes charter schools, including Success Academy; it has been extremely lax in holding its charter schools accountable.  Only months ago, it voted to allow Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy to certify its own teachers, without benefit of the professional preparation offered by education programs at SUNY or elsewhere.

Cuomo has cynically helped Republicans retain control of the State Senate. In 2014, he won the endorsement of the Working Families Party by promising to help Democrats get elected to the Senate (a bizarre commitment by a Democratic governor). The day after he won the WFP endorsement, Cuomo broke his promise and continued to support the Independent Democratic Caucus, a group of eight “Democrats” in the Senate who caucus with the Republicans. This is not the behavior of a progressive Democrat.

Even now, Cuomo is bullying unions and progressive groups to support him “or else.” The UFT, which Cuomo ridiculed three years ago, has joined Cuomo’s efforts to marginalize small progressive groups or other unions that dare to support Cynthia Nixon. The leader of the Working Families Party said that Cuomo told small activist groups—Citizen Action, Make the Road and NY Communities for Change— that if they don’t support him, they can “lose my number.” Meaning, don’t bother ever to call me in the future. He pressured the unions to stop funding them, deriving them of needed income to survive. These are not the words or deeds of a man with a commanding lead in the polls (currently, 40 points ahead of Nixon). Or a man who knows how to live with dissent.

I will vote for Cynthia Nixon, who is challenging Cuomo in the Democratic primary and now has the endorsement of the Working Families Party. I admire her willingness to step away from a very successful career as an actress to run against Cuomo. Unlike Cuomo, she is a public school parent, and she understands that urban schools in the state have been shortchanged. She has also criticized the insular atmosphere in Albany, where “three men in a room” make all decisions. She has promised an open and ethical government.

Four years ago, law professor Zephyr Teachout ran against Cuomo. Teachout had no money, no name recognition, no media exposure, and a threadbare campaign. Cuomo refused to shake her hand or even to look at her when they came face to face. When they met at a parade, he turned his back to her. Teachout nonetheless won 34% of the vote in the Democratic primary and swept large swaths of upstate New York, which is in deep economic trouble. Teachout, an ethics expert, is now the treasurer of the Nixon campaign.

Cynthia Nixon is fearless. When a journalist asked her why she was qualified to run against Cuomo, she responded, “My chief of staff was not convicted on three counts of bribery. That’s number one.”

A few days ago, Cynthia Nixon blasted Cuomo as a “corporate Democrat.” 

“The time is up for corporate Democrats, for politicians who campaign as Democrats but govern as Republicans,” Nixon said to a gathering of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee in Washington, D.C.

“It can’t just be business as usual anymore,” Nixon said. “I know that our country can do better. We have to turn the system upside down.”

Nixon, who is challenging Cuomo for both the Democratic and Working Families Party nominations, attacked Cuomo for “taking charter school hedge fund money and making education policy accordingly.” She vowed to halt the flow of public funds to charter schools.

Music to my ears, after eight years of watching Obama, Duncan, Jerry Brown, Dannel Malloy, and other prominent Democrats do flip-flops for campaign money from hedge funders.

To those who say Nixon is unqualified because she has not previously run for political office, I say that I would rather vote for an inexperienced candidate who shares my values than for an experienced politician who does not.

Cuomo is likely to get a lot of union endorsements because the unions want to be on the side of the likely winner. They are afraid to cross Cuomo. They know they will pay a price if Cuomo wins and they don’t endorse him. He gets even.

I am not a union member. I am one person. I am free to cast my vote for the person who has the best ideas and the best vision for improving life in New York State for everyone.

Call it a protest vote. Call it a vote of conscience. It is my vote and I will cast it for the person I hope will be the next Governor.

That is Cynthia Nixon.

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, New York, Resistance

The Guardian: Secret Rightwing Strategy Guide to Discredit Teacher Strikes

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2018 //
14

 

The Guardian published a document prepared by a rightwing group that offers messaging advice to states about how to undercut teacher strikes. 

Peter Greene reviewed the “messaging guide” here. He writes: “The ‘messaging guide’ is only three pages long, but it includes specific ideas about how to fight back against these crazy teachers and their desire to be paid a decent wage and also work in decent facilities.”

The Guardian writes:

“The “messaging guide” is the brainchild of the State Policy Network (SPN), an alliance of 66 rightwing “ideas factories” that span every state in the nation. SPN uses its $80m war chest – funded by billionaire super-donors such as the Koch brothers and the Walton Family Foundation that flows from the Walmart fortune – to coordinate conservative strategy across the country.

“Another financial backer of SPN is the billionaire DeVos family of the Amway empire. Betsy DeVos is the current education secretary in the Trump administration.

LSPN’s previous campaigns have included a plan to “defund and defang” public sector unions. Now it is turning its firepower on the striking teachers.”

It doesn’t suggest an attack on collective bargaining because all the affected states are already “right to work.”

It doesn’t suggest attacking unions because not only are these states “right to work,” but the leadership of the strikes is grassroots.

It does say that state leaders should emphasize that children were being hurt, especially poor children. (So touching to hear this from rightwingers who fight the minimum wage and the expansion of Medicaid, which hurts the families of poor kids as well as the poor kids, ).

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Dark Money, Education Reform, Koch Brothers, Propaganda, Resistance

Kentucky: No Teachers, No Schools, Walkouts Grow

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2018 //
17

 

The teacher walkouts continued and grow larger in Kentucky, where teachers are massing by the thousands in the State Capitol to protest changes to their pensions. The two largest districts in the state are closed.

“School districts across Kentucky will once again shut down as teachers plan to flood the state Capitol on Friday to rally for public-school funding and protest newly signed changes to public pension programs.

“As of Thursday afternoon, at least 36 districts had decided to close Friday, citing teachers calling in sick or the likelihood that they would. The closures include public schools in Louisville and Lexington ― the two largest school districts in the state….

“That frustration began to boil over last year when the Legislature, fully in Republican control for the first time in nearly a century, passed a bill to allow charter schools in the state.

“The issue was the potential “diversion of public money into charters,” said David Allen, a former president of the Kentucky Education Association…

“That laid the groundwork,” Allen said.

”Then, in January, Bevin proposed drastic cuts to schools and public education programs, even though funding was already tight. In inflation-adjusted terms, Kentucky’s K-12 budget was down 16 percent since 2008, according to the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.

“Bevin’s proposal prompted dire warnings from school superintendents around the state, who said some cuts would push Kentucky’s poorest school districts to the brink of insolvency….

”Many Kentucky teachers, meanwhile, have come to believe that Bevin’s approach to education isn’t driven by the interests of taxpayers or its public schools. They see it as part of a broader movement, led by U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, to further privatize education by deliberately undermining public schools.

“It’s a dismantling, step by step by step, of public education,” said Pam Dossett, a teacher in Hopkinsville. “So they can sit back and say, ‘Our public schools, they’re not working.’ And then they can replace them all with charter schools.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding, Kentucky, Pensions, Resistance, Teachers
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