Archives for category: Teachers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Larry Lee: What Matters Most in Education Happens in the Classroom

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2019 //
21

 

Larry Lee reminds one and all that what matters most in education is not what happens in the State House or the think tanks or the conferences, but what happens when teachers meet students.

He writes:

All the battles we wage in the legislature, all the money spent to lobby, all the grand schemes we import from distant think tanks, all the paperwork we choke principals with, all the talk about “data driven”, all the hand wringing because we are not ranked number one in such and such.

Then I visit a school and the world I have just described is a million miles away.  A room of fourth graders could care less about what may happen in the statehouse.  Neither does their teacher.  Once again I am forcefully reminded that there are no classrooms at the state house, in the state capitol, in the think tanks or in the Gordon Persons building that houses the Alabama Department of Education.

I am reminded that education is all about what takes place when a teacher and her students interact.  It is just that plain and simple.

Unfortunately we have hordes and hordes of folks who seem to have forgotten this.  Or did they ever know it?

Categories Alabama, Students, Teachers

California: Summit Charter Schools Fire Three Teachers Who Were Union Organizers

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2019 //
14

 

Three teachers at Summit Public Schools (privately managed charter schools calling themselves ”public”) were terminated without cause. The three were trying to organize a union to improve working conditions and had been offered contracts for next year when they were suddenly informed that they were no longer wanted. No teachers other than these three were fired.

The Summit charter schools are funded by the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative and are noted for their infusion of computer instruction into classrooms.

This is the teachers’ website.

This is their petition on Change.org.

In January, teachers at Summit Public Schools, a group of charter schools in the Bay Area, formed a union, Unite Summit, in order to promote teacher retention, improve student support services, and increase teacher voice in important decisions.

On June 7, the last day of the school year, three Summit teachers and union leaders were fired without cause. We believe this action is unlawful, unethical, and harmful to our students.

In each case, employees were not provided any rationale for their termination beyond “business reasons.” The removal of such outstanding teachers from our school communities not only impacts the quality of education provided to our students, it also shows that Summit is not respecting teachers’ democratic decision to form a union.

Unite Summit has worked to promote the retention of high-quality educators who are invested in our students’ success. Educators have the right to speak out about how to improve their schools without fearing retaliation. The California Educational Employment Relations Act, Section 3543.5.a, states that it is unlawful for an employer to “impose or threaten to impose reprisals on employees, to discriminate or threaten to discriminate against employees, or otherwise to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees because of their exercise of rights guaranteed by this chapter.”

We are therefore calling on SPS leadership to respect Summit teachers’ legal rights to unionize, to own their responsibility to refrain from intimidation, harassment, threats or retaliation, and to immediately reinstate the three fired teachers — Aaron Calvert, Evelyn DeFelice, and Andrew Stevenson.

 

Categories California, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Teachers, Unions

Jan Resseger: West Virginia Teachers Keep Fighting Charters and Vouchers

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2019 //
3

 

Jan Resseger writes an in-depth account of the ongoing battle by teachers in West Virginia to keep charters and vouchers out of their state. 

They struck twice and they continue to fight.

The Republican majority in the legislature is determined to introduce privatization, despite the poor results in other states.

The Republican leadership have added provisions to the pending legislation to prevent walkouts in the future.

”We learned on Tuesday that a poison pill had been added to the Senate’s omnibus bill—to ban strikes by teachers: “Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Trump says an anti-strike provision was amended into an omnibus education bill….  The amendment also says no county superintendent may close school in anticipation of a strike.  And the amendment says that if a strike causes school to be closed then that school can’t participate in extracurricular activities… Democrats in the Senate argued that the provision was retaliatory for the strikes of the past two years.”

What happens next will be decided by the House and Governor Jim Justice.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Resistance, Teachers, Vouchers, West Virginia

California: Teachers in New Haven District on Strike

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2019 //
5

 

Teachers in New Haven, California, have been on strike since May 20. The superintendent is intransigent.

The strike has lasted longer than the Los Angeles or Oakland teachers’ strikes.

For more than two weeks, 585 brave New Haven teachers have been standing united for the schools their students deserve, on strike for as long as it takes to get a fair, student-centered agreement.

Since New Haven Teachers Association (NHTA) first walked off the job and onto picket lines on May 20, New Haven Unified School District’s (NHUSD) superintendent and managers have stomped out of negotiations numerous times and the New Haven School Board even walked out of a board meeting while a student was speaking.

In addition to this disrespectful and downright boorish behavior, NHUSD Superintendent Arlando Smith has refused to listen to reason and work toward a fair, student-centered settlement. Smith even suggested that Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond was not welcome in New Haven in his attempt to mediate an agreement between the two sides.

 

Categories California, Education Reform, Resistance, Teachers, Unions

Peter Greene: Who Is Behind the Effort to Woo Teachers Away from Their Unions?

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2019 //
16

Peter Greene lives in Pennsylvania. He is a retired teacher who spent nearly 40 years in the classroom. He has received postcards urging him to abandon his union. He decided to identify the organizations behind this activity.

You may not be surprised. 

Those postcards, he writes, are the product of the same old network of anti-union far-right folks who have been constantly looking for ways to slap teachers down and put them in their place. A full frontal attack on unions has not been as successful in Pennsylvania as it has been in states like Wisconsin….
 
The good news, so far, is that the post-Janus apocalypse that many unions braced for has not actually happened, and actions by teachers in states like West Virginia have shown that even if you could disempower the union, teachers will find a way to push back if you push them too far. 
 
When you get the card, you’ll see that Williams has provided a handy email address. Feel free to ask him about the time that he angrily gave back the raise that the union negotiated form him, or if, now that he’s retired, he’s planning on doing without that pension that the union won him (actually, he may be well enough paid that he doesn’t need it). But at a minimum, you can safely throw your invitation…in the trash. 
 
Because, look– you will never find me serving as an unconditional cheerleader for PSEA, and local leadership can be a crapshoot. But if a teacher’s plan is to depend on their own negotiating prowess to get a personal awesome contract, or they’re just going to trust folks like the Kochs and the DeVos family to look out for their best interests–well, that’s a bad plan. 
Categories Education Reform, Teachers, Unions

Jan Resseger: Teachers in West Virginia Forego a Pay Raise to Block Charters and Vouchers

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2019 //
5

 

Teachers in West Virginia stunned the nation in February 2018 by going out on strike and staying out while demanding a pay raise and a commitment from the Governor and Legislature not to support charter schools and privatization. Theywon a pay raise and they had a commitment from Governor Jim Justice to veto charter legislation. Justice is a billionaire, the richest man in the state.

A year later, the Legislature was ready to abandon its promise not to introduce privatization. The teachers struck again.

Jan Resseger has the story here. 

The Legislature wants to put the camel’s nose under the tent. Just the nose. Promise. Cross my heart.

Don’t believe them. They are lying. Once the privatization starts, the camel gets into the tent. The tiny voucher program becomes a massive voucher program. The experimental charter becomes a major lobbying industry.

Fight for public education.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Teachers, Vouchers, West Virginia

XPRIZE: $10 Million Prize for Teaching Without Teachers!

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2019 //
33

You knew this was coming, didn’t you?

The XPRIZE awarded $10 million in awards to programs that teach children basic skills without a human teacher! One of the funders of the award was our very own Betsy DeVos, who loves teachers so much that she wants to get rid of them. They cost too much, and they tend to want unions. They even think for themselves, which is dangerous.

The XPRIZE Foundation has announced KitKit School and onebillion as the winners of the $10 million Global Learning XPRIZE.

Launched in 2014 with support from the Merkin Family, Dick & Betsy DeVos Family, and Tony Robbins foundations, Elon Musk, and other funders, the Global Learning XPRIZE challenged innovators to develop scalable solutions that enable children to teach themselves basic reading, writing, and math skills within fifteen months. Each of the five finalists received $1 million to field test their solutions in Tanzania, where three thousand children learned on tablets donated by Google that were preloaded with one of the five solutions. The two winning organizations will share the $10 million grand prize for enabling the greatest proficiency gains in reading, writing, and math. 

According to XPRIZE, two hundred million children globally cannot read or write, while one in five school-age children are not in school. Based in Seoul, South Korea, and Berkeley, California, KitKit School developed a program featuring a game-based core and flexible learning architecture designed to help children learn independently, irrespective of their knowledge, skill, or environment. London- and Nairobi-based onebillion’s software solution merged numeracy content with literacy material to offer directed learning and creative activities alongside continuous monitoring that enables the software to respond to children’s individual needs. 

Selected from among nearly two hundred teams from forty countries, the other three finalists were CCI (United States), Chimple (India), and RoboTutor (U.S.). All five finalists’ solutions are open source and available in both Swahili and English on GitHub. XPRIZE will work to deliver tablets preloaded with localized versions of the finalists’ software. 

The really cool thing about the scripted curriculum is that the designer can not only program skillsbut control content and determine what children learn.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Teachers

David Weigel On Kentucky: Don’t Mess with Teachers

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2019 //
6

 

David Weigel wrote this in the Washington Post. I could not find a link. A great story about the odoriferous Gov. Matt Bevin, scourge of teachers:

 

SHELBYVILLE, Ky. — On Friday night, the three leading Democrats in the race for governor of Kentucky stood under a portrait of Colonel Sanders to answer their state’s biggest political question. Who could beat Gov. Matt Bevin, the Republican who had been making their lives miserable?

“I got in this race because of Matt Bevin’s agenda,” Rocky Adkins, the Democratic leader in the state House, told the hundred Shelby County Democrats who’d gathered in a replica of one of Sanders’s homes.

“We absolutely must beat Matt Bevin this fall, and if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s beat this governor,” said Andy Beshear, the state’s attorney general, referring to a run of successful lawsuits.

“I’m running for governor not to beat Matt Bevin, though it’s a hell of a fringe benefit,” said Adam Edelen, a former state auditor turned solar-energy entrepreneur. “I am running for the opportunity to build a modern Kentucky.”

Bevin, whose years-long battles with teachers and public-sector unions has made him wildly unpopular, is seen as vulnerable despite his party’s political dominance in the state. He has been tied up in court over an attempt to add work requirements for Medicaid recipients and over bipartisan efforts to ban abortion; he earned the wrong kind of national attention after speculating that a teacher’s strike led to a child’s death. He’s facing a primary challenge from Robert Goforth, a state legislator who says Bevin has squandered his opportunities; at the same time, he has presided over Republican gains that replaced a Democratic state House with a GOP supermajority.

Lesson: Teachers are popular. Bevin is not.

Categories Accountability, Kentucky, Teachers
By dianeravitch | Link
May 9, 2019 //
13

 

Peter Greene has a rapier sharp wit, which he wields so deftly that the object of his attention has been beheaded without knowing what happened. If you want to see him at his best, read this mystery: Who is murdering Charter Schools? 

Teachers?

Unions?

Lobbyists?

If you live in the real world, the people fighting privatization are heroic defenders of the commonweal, protecting the public interest against the Waltons, the Koch brothers, DeVos, and other private interests.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Scandals, South Carolina, Teachers, Unions, West Virginia

Oregon: Tens of Thousands of Teachers Walk Out, Closing 600 Schools, to Protest Working Conditions

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2019 //
3

 

Thousands of teachers in Oregon joined the Red4Ed Movement, walking out to protest overcrowded classes and a lack of support staff, including school nurses and mental health counselors. 

Nearly 45% of all reported classes in Oregon have 26 students or more,” said John Larson, a high school English teacher and president of the Oregon Education Association.
Some classes have 56 or more students, he said.
So instead of going to class, many teachers were taking unpaid days off work to flood at least six protest sites across the state.
The mass exodus of teachers has already forced 25 school districts to close 600 schools Wednesday, Larson said.
The biggest district to close, Portland Public Schools, has more than 46,000 students.
“This is historic,” Larson told a sea of red-shirted teachers, parents and students at a riverfront rally in downtown Portland. “This is what we came here for today — is to make sure that we fund our schools.”
It’s not just funding for smaller class sizes. Union members also want:
— More school counselors. Oregon has half the school counselors that national experts suggest. And the shortage of mental health counselors is a big concern across the country — especially after all the recent school shootings.
— More school librarians. Currently, there are only 158 school librarians in Oregon — less than one librarian per district.
— More school nurses. There’s only one nurse for every 5,481 students. That’s four times less than national recommendations, the OEA said.
— A restoration of art, music and physical education programs that have been cut by budget constraints.
— More funding for school supplies. The OEA said 94% of teachers spend their own money on classroom supplies “to make up the difference between what their students need and what districts can provide.”
— The passage of state House Bill 3427, dubbed the “Student Success Act.” The bill would increase funding for K-12 education by 18%.
Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Class size, Funding, Oregon, Resistance, Teachers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »