Randi Weingarten and Vicki Phillips of the Gates Foundation have jointly written an article bout teacher evaluation.
At a time when teachers and the teaching profession and teachers’ unions are under attack in states across the nation, how important is teacher evaluation?
What do you think?
This is a stunning analysis of the relationship between labor unions and the Democratic Party.
It is a must-read.
Many in education have been baffled by the bipartisan consensus around Republican ideology. Micah Uetricht is not baffled. He says without hedging that “Democrats have swallowed the Right’s free market orthodoxy whole. Much of the party appears to have given up on education as a public project.”
Teachers unions, he writes, have been unable to articulate a coherent response to their abandonment.
That is, until last September, when the Chicago Teachers Union went on strike. He writes:
“The union has been unafraid to identify the education reform agenda pushed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his party nationally as an attempt to exacerbate inequalities within the education system, strip teachers of power and erode their standards of living, and chip away at public education as an institution, and to call such Democrats enemies. Rather than continuing an insider strategy that has netted so little for the rest of labor over the years, the CTU has entered into open opposition with the neoliberal wing of the party.”
This is an important development. And this is an essay you must read.
For more than a week in September, the nation was astonished to see thousands of Chicago teachers on strike.
The media treated it as an old fashioned dispute over wages and hours, which it was not.
Many of us who follow education issues knew that the teachers were striking against nearly 20 years of nonstop ill-considered “reforms” imposed on teachers by politicians and uninformed policymakers.
The bottom line: Enough is enough.
This excellent article explains the teachers’ strike and puts it into a larger context.
The UNO charter chain has been in the news lately and not for good reason.
Its number two official resigned amid accusations that he steered contracts worth millions to relatives–his own plus relatives of lobbyists who managed to help UNO get a $98 million state appropriation for three new buildings.
Now UNO is in the news again.
It has decided that it will allow its teachers at its 13 charters to join a union, if they want to.
Here is the funny line in the article:
“Typically, privately run charters hire non-union teachers, which supporters say allows them to be more innovative and successful.”
Have you noticed how innovative and successful the schools are in the states than ban collective bargaining? You know, like the Deep South, and now the Midwest?
Some states have never had unions, but they don’t seem to be the most successful or innovative.
A teacher in Douglas County, Colorado, reports that the school board and superintendent are determined to wreck the public school system for which they are responsible.
The teacher writes:
I can’t begin to tell you how your sharing the information about the LA school district victory for kids is boosting the morale of fighters for public education in Douglas County, Colorado. We’re in a fight for our public school life here too. The school board elections in November will determine the future of our public schools.
The school board was elected, partly in 2009 and partly in 2011, by money from sources outside of the district and heavily connected with the GOP and ties to ALEC. The purpose seems to be to conduct a corporate experiment to on an affluent, not broken, school district south of Denver.
The school board in turn has proudly broken all ties with the union. While the union still exists there is no collaborative, working relationship, or no collective bargaining agreement between the district and the union. And it seems that every time someone disagrees with them, these opponents are called “union thugs.” If this weren’t so serious, their tactics would look downright silly. At the last board meeting, the BOE supporters dressed up as Grinches in their interpretation of the union, and passed out inaccurate pamphlets about the union.
The school board hired a corporate reform superintendent in 2010. Some of her first contacts with the community involved traveling to community public schools to praise the charter school movement and the important of choice. If you want to listen to her speak, contact the Milton Friedman Foundation. http://www.edchoice.org/Foundation-Services/Speakers/Elizabeth-Celania-Fagen.aspx
The school board has also forced a voucher program currently tied up in litigation thanks to the group, Taxpayers for Public Education- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Taxpayers-for-Public-Education/165645363470905?fref=ts. The lawsuit is on its way to the Colorado Supreme Court. The community voted down funding for merit pay, but they have still spent the money from elsewhere to implement a merit pay program that is basically behavior modification for teachers. And they are extremely proud of the fact that they have reduced the teachers’ salary in this district. Polls show teacher morale at an all time low.
More about the voucher program. The right wing of our Republican party is now going after the head of our public libraries for his participation in supporting the lawsuit. http://www.ourcoloradonews.com/castlerock/news/douglas-county-commissioners-push-for-library-changes/article_11d11136-850d-11e2-9323-001a4bcf887a.html
And now they are moving on with a new era in charter school relations. http://www.9news.com/news/article/321642/222/Douglas-County-Schools-signs-unique-charter-school-deal?fb_action_ids=10200721010176750&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_ref=artsharetop&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%5B499626156739696%5D&action_type_map=%5B%22og.recommends%22%5D&action_ref_map=%5B%22artsharetop%22%5D
They have an $83 million reserve while students sit in unheated classrooms; parents have to pay for student busing, among other things a free public education is supposed to provide. http://strongschoolscoalition.org/dougco-finances-crystal-ball/
And just like the LA elections, the corporate reformers are continuing to spend money on commercials, and the Republic party headquarters here has no qualms about spending over $1 million on November’s elections. The air here is thick with propaganda.
But just like LA, and so many other areas in this country, we have a brilliant and dedicated community that wants its public schools back. Here are just a few of the very information blogs and organizations created by our communities. http://douglascountyparent.com/ and http://strongschoolscoalition.org/ While we don’t have their money, we can only hope that the truth will also prevail here in Douglas County.
When I heard about Strongsville, I thought I was reading a children’s storybook about a wonderful, all-American city, a city where all the families are happy and have nice houses, and the children play in well-equipped playgrounds, and go to wonderful schools.
Think of it: Strongsville. It evokes Wheaties and Jack Armstrong, the all-American boy, the town where everything is just fine.
But then I got this letter from a teacher:
My name is Christina Potter and I have taught in the Strongsville City Schools in Strongsville, Ohio for the last eight years.
When I was hired in Strongsville, a great community with excellent schools, many other teachers said I was lucky, and they were jealous of my new job, and during the first two years, they were right; things were great with all sides working together,and we earned Ohio’s highest ranking, Excellent with Distinction.
As time went on a division started to occur between the administration and the teachers. During our 2010 contract negotiations the school stated that times were difficult and they needed the teachers to make concessions. In good faith, and promise of a levy, we agreed to an additional two year pay freeze on top of the three years we had already taken. We also increased our medical expenses, took on an additional duty period, and agreed to work two days unpaid. Times were tough, but everyone was striving to make Strongsville great.
Then, everything went haywire. With the ink still drying on our contract, the Board tried to take the levy off the ballot but failed, so instead, they informed the community to vote the levy down. Then we learned that while the district cried broke in 2010, it spent $500,000 to hire an attorney who publicizes himself as a union breaker. Every school district in this area that has hired him has either gone on strike or threatened to. Needless to say, the teachers, who negotiated in good faith, were outraged.
When our contract ended in June 2012, the district asked for extra time before negotiating to get its finances in order, so on July 19th, the first negotiation session took place. Upon walking in, their attorney put a contract down on the table and told us it was a take it or leave it offer and refused to negotiate one item at a time. After months of failing to negotiate a contract, our Education Association declared an impasse, and a Federal Mediator came in to oversee negotiations. Here is the timeline of recent events:
1. On February 15th, 2013 the teachers of the Strongsville Education Association (SEA) overwhelmingly passed a strike authorization.
2. On February 22nd, SEA submitted a 10-day notice of our intent to strike.
3. On March 1st, I had to hand in my I.D. badge and keys and have all of my personal belongings out of the building by 3:15 p.m. After 3:15, the doors would be locked, and anyone still on school property would be arrested even though we had not taken a final strike vote; we also had another negotiation session scheduled for Saturday morning. For all intense purposes we were not on strike yet but we were being locked out of the buildings, our email accounts and our grade books.
4. On March 2nd, both negotiating teams and the School Board members met with the federal negotiator. At that time the school gave its final offer which was only slightly different than their original.
And that takes us to where we are today, on strike. Many of my fellow teachers are also Strongsville residents, who have children in the system. They fear we are destroying our great public schools by trashing the teaching profession within them, instead of working toward a settlement. They feel the Board has chosen to waste tax payer money and painted teachers as greedy; meanwhile, it has forked over another $500,000, for a total of $1 million, to an attorney instead of using the money for books and technology.
Why are we striking in the cold, wind, and snow from 5:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. We, the Strongsville teachers, feel we are not just standing for the SEA, but for all of our fellow public school teachers in the Ohio and across the nation during this statewide/national epidemic of privatizing our public schools. If this contract goes through other school districts may soon go after their teachers, and we cannot in good conscience allow that to happen. As a teacher and a parent of two, I believe in public education and its hard working teachers, who too often are the brunt of undeserved bashing.
The teachers of Strongsville will hold a rally this afternoon at 4 pm in the center of Strongsville, at the gazebo, at the corners of Pearl Rd. and Rt 82.
Randi Weingarten and other protestors were arrested and hauled off in handcuffs while demonstrating against school closings in Philadelphia. Neither the Mayor nor the School Reform Commission was willing to meet with Weingarten.
After her release from custody, said the article in the Huffington Post,
“Weingarten said she sees the school closure plan as siphoning money away from public schools, since the plan doesn’t touch charter schools. “This was really a plan to eliminate public education,” Weingarten said. “This is not about how to fix public schools, but to close them — not how to stabilize but to destabilize public schooling.”
“Weingarten called the closings immoral. “When the powers that be ignore you and dismiss you, then you don’t have any choice but try to resort to civil disobedience to try to confront an immoral act,” she said.
“So she joined parents and union activists to form a group of 19 people who blocked the entrance to the meeting. She said she intentionally told Philly teachers not to join, lest they lose their teaching certification, and discouraged parents who are undocumented immigrants from participating.”
I just received a press release from the Chicago Teachers Union, alerting the public that CPS plans to close schools and to increase class sizes. To call this “reform” is outrageous. The children in Chicago needs smaller classes, not classes of 35-40. A teacher who is a “high-quality” teacher in a class with 24 students will not be a “high-quality” teacher if placed in a class of 35-40 students. Many of the students will have disabilities, or language learning issues, or behavioral problems. Instead of instruction, the teacher will spend most of his or her time on classroom management. This is just more of the corporate reform babble; neither Bill Gates nor Michael Bloomberg ever put their own children in classrooms with 35-40 students. Why do they want to do that to other people’s children?
Below is the CTU press release:
CPS Target of 30 to 40 Students in a Classroom is a
Dangerous Benchmark for Utilization ‘Crisis’
If 80 schools are shuttered class sizes will balloon
CHICAGO—The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) opposes the larger classroom sizes that Chicago Public Schools (CPS) targets as “ideal” in its threats to close 13 percent of the city’s neighborhood schools by the end of this school year. Both research and teacher experience indicate that smaller class sizes, particularly at lower grade levels, contribute to increased learning and optimal classroom activity as teachers are better able to modify instruction to meet the needs of individual children and better communicate with their parents.
A recent press report indicated that the so-called “utilization crisis” manufactured by CPS is based on the assumption that 30 the ideal number of students for an “average class size.” Because the typical Chicago classroom has far fewer than 30 students, raising the target figure to 30 made it easier for CPS to manufacture a utilization crisis and use that as justification for closing scores of public schools.
“What CPS has done is damaging on two fronts,” said CTU President Karen GJ Lewis. “First, they’re misleading the public with this space ‘crisis’ they’ve created using their own benchmark, and second, the benchmark they’ve set is much higher than the city and state average and what we know provides the best environment for our students to succeed.”
CPS class sizes are already among the highest in Illinois. Last year, early grade classrooms in the city were on average larger than those in 95 percent of the districts in the rest of the state. Classrooms in CPS high schools had the fifth highest class size compared to other districts in Illinois. Many high schools and elementary schools slated for turnaround actions in recent years had multiple oversized classrooms.
Tennessee’s Project STAR (Student Teacher Achievement Ratio) found that smaller class sizes had positive effects at the early childhood level (k-3), across all school locations (rural, urban, inner city, suburban), on every achievement measure and for all subjects (reading, mathematics, science, social science, language, study skills).
The study also found that students assigned to small classes of 15 students in early grades graduated on schedule at a higher rate (76 percent) than students from regular classes of 24 (64 percent). The same students also completed school with an honors diploma more often than students from regular classes and dropped out of school less often (15 percent) compared to the regular classes (24 percent).
“Smaller class sizes are a proven school policy that works, narrows the achievement gap and is manageable for both our teachers and students,” said CTU Research Director Dr. Carol Caref.
Echoing education reformers Bill Gates and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, CPS Communication Director Becky Carroll was quoted in the press saying that a teacher of high quality “could take 40 kids in a class and help them succeed.”
Lewis said, “This just evidence of what we’re dealing with at City Hall and CPS–insults and untested hypothesis. This is the result of having decision makers who are completely out of touch—or just plain ignorant—when it comes to what’s going on in the classroom.”
Philadelphia columnist Will Bunch couldn’t believe the onerous, mean-spirited proposal made by school officials to the city’s teachers. They are asked to accept a cut in pay and benefits, larger classes, a longer work day, and, adding insult to injury, no copying machines or supplies, no water fountains or parking facilities, not even desks.
Students will be in larger classes, in schools with no libraries, no librarians, no guidance counselors, and a corps of beaten-down teachers.
Way to go, School Reform Commission! I am reminded that the best corporations in the United States pamper their employees and make sure they have excellent working conditions. They want their employees to have high morale. In Philadelphia, they want to crush their teachers’ morale. The school officials are not employing a business model, unless they have in mind the 19th century idea of treating workers like scum.
If ever there were conditions for a strike against witless, cruel management, this is it.
Bear in mind that Philadelphia has not had an elected school board in over a decade. The School Reform Commission is appointed by the governor and mayor.
Will they care if there is a mass exodus of teachers? Will they happily employ scabs? Do they care about the quality of education? Or is driving down the cost of teachers more important than anything else?
Philadelphia’s Broad-trained Superintendent William Hite offered the district’s employees an insulting contract: pay cuts up to 13%, benefit cuts, longer school days, and no pay increases until 2017. After 2017, any increases would be “performance-based,” dependent on the principal’s recommendation. Seniority would be abolished, as well as any payment for advanced degrees. See here and here
In addition, schools with more than 1,000 students would not be required to have libraries or librarians. No more counselors. No limits on class size. The district would no longer be required to provide teachers lounges, water fountains, etc.
This is the most insulting, most demeaning contract ever offered in any school district to my knowledge. The terms seem more appropriate to a prison than to a school, although it seems that both teachers and students are treated as wards of a cruel, harsh state. Who would want to teach in such a district that cared so little for students and teachers?
Is this what Dr. Hite learned at the Broad Superintendents Academy? Crush the workforce?
Didn’t anyone ever tell him that teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions?
Leaders of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers said his members would never accept such demeaning terms and predicted many would leave for districts where they were treated with dignity.
District officials defended their proposal:
“Deputy Superintendent Paul Kihn said he could not comment on ongoing labor talks, but said that the school system “actually values teachers as the most important resource in our district. We are committed to providing teachers with a set of working conditions…that will actually in the long run make Philadelphia a place that people will want to come and work.”
“Under the district’s opening proposal, issued Friday, the PFT’s 15,000 members — 10,000 teachers, plus nurses, counselors, secretaries, aides and others — would take pay cuts ranging from 5 percent for those who make under $25,000 to 13 percent for those who make over $55,000.”
Who will want to teach in a district that offers less pay, fewer befits, longer hours, no libraries, no counselors, no place to sit and rest between classes?
There was no discussion of reducing the pay of the superintendent, William Hite, who is paid $300,000 yearly and is surrounded by a coterie of six-figure assistants, including Deputy Superintendent Kihn ($210,000),
On another topic, Superintendent Hite plans to close 29 schools. A new study shows that the receiving schools perform no better than the closing schools. The closings do nothing to improve education for the students. Are they intended to save money or to make room for more charters (even though many of the charters in Philadelphia are low-performing or are under investigation for financial irregularities)?
With this contract and the proposed closings, the School Reform Commission and Superintendent make clear that their goal is to end public education in Philadelphia.
Diane Ravitch's blog 