Archives for category: Unions
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Parent to Teachers: Speak Up!

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2012 //
50

This parent in Connecticut is furious that teachers didn’t tell her that the testing had gotten excessive. They didn’t tell her what the overuse and misuse of testing was doing to her children. She understands that they were just doing their job, but she wants them to stand up and shout that what’s happening is wrong. This is a terrific letter. Once the parents and the students begin to understand what is happening, there will be a grand alliance to take back our schools and rebuild education for the benefit of students and our society:

With all due respect to teachers–I’ve been hearing whispered rumblings from educators for at least 8 years (since my oldest entered public schools) that teachers knew/know these tests are a load of crap. Teachers SHOULD have been speaking up louder a long time ago. Look what silence/fear/going-along/intimidation has resulted in for a generation of our children. Instead of hearing whispered, whimpy rumblings, parents should have been hearing forceful denunciations of these useless tests a long time ago. Parents are not in the classroom every day. Parents have no idea how bad these tests are unless teachers make them aware. At least where I live (Connecticut), that wasn’t the case. In fact, the few times I’ve tried to bring up the subject in the past I got averted eyes and a changing of the subject. I get it–this is your livelihood and you have administration to worry about. But these are our KIDS we’re talking about here. Water under the bridge now, I suppose. But now is the time to make up for lost time. Now is the time to speak up forcefully and DEMAND a change to better practices. And if your unions aren’t supporting you in this THEY SHOULD BE. Union management works for YOU. If they aren’t leading the fight in this, hold them accountable!

Categories Connecticut, Parents, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, Unions

Bill Moyers on ALEC

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2012 //
4

Because I was traveling in Texas over the weekend, I didn’t see Bill Moyers’ report on ALEC. I watched it last night, and I hope you will too.

If you want to understand how we are losing our democracy, watch this program.

If you want to know why so many states are passing copycat legislation to suppress voters’ rights, to eliminate collective bargaining, to encourage online schooling, to privatize public education, watch this program.

ALEC brings together lobbyists for major corporations and elected state officials in luxurious resorts. In its seminars, the legislators learn how to advance corporate-sponsored, free-market ideas in their state. Its model legislation is introduced in state after state, often with minimal or no changes in the wording.

Watch Moyers show how Tennessee adopted ALEC’s online school bill and how Arizona is almost a wholly owned ALEC state. Watch how Scott Walker followed the ALEC template.

Moyers could do an entire special on ALEC’s education bills. ALEC promotes the parent trigger, so that parents can be tricked into handing their public schools over to charter chains. ALEC promotes gubernatorial commissions with the power to over-ride the decisions of local school boards to open more charters. ALEC promotes vouchers. ALEC, as he noted, promotes virtual charter schools (Pearson’s Connections Academy and K12 wrote the ALEC model law). ALEC has model legislations for vouchers for students with special needs. ALEC has a model law to allow people to teach without credentials. ALEC has legislation to eliminate tenure protection. ALEC has model legislation for educator evaluation.

It is all so familiar, isn’t it?

ALEC wants nothing less than to privatize public education, to eliminate unions, and to dismantle the education profession.

Categories ALEC, Education Industry, For-Profit, K12 Inc., On-Line Education, Parent trigger, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Tennessee, Testing, Unions, US Education

A Refreshing View of the Importance of the Chicago Teachers’ Strike

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2012 //
4

Here is an excellent article that explains clearly why the strike was necessary. The article appears in the newsmagazine called F, published by the Art Institute of Chicago, a venerable institution.

Mayor Rahm said it was a “strike of choice.”

In this sense, he was right. The teachers could have just kept on teaching under dismal conditions for students, or they could strike and demand better conditions in the classrooms and schools for the students and teachers.

He chose to defend the status quo. The teachers said “no” to the status quo. They said the status quo was intolerable. And that is why they went on strike.

Categories Chicago, Emanuel, Rahm, Unions

Putting a Stake in the Heart of the Vampire

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2012 //
14

On Sunday evening, after I spoke to the joint meeting of the Texas School Boards Association and the Texas Association of School Administrators, and after I spoke to parents and teachers at Eastside Memorial High School, I met Abby Rappaport, who writes for The American Prospect.

Abby knows Texas politics well. She asked me many good questions, and reprinted a slightly edited version of the interview. I boiled down everything I said to TSBA and TASA in the interview. I told her what I thought about high-stakes testing, about the Chicago strike, and about choice.

The only thing with which I disagree in her post is that I was not famous for promoting the “reform movement.” The so-called reform movement of today didn’t exist until about five years ago, and by then I was on my way out the door.

I don’t know if I was famous, but I’d like to think I got to be known among educators for the histories that I wrote, like The Great School Wars (a history of the NYC schools) in 1974; The Troubled Crusade (1983); Left Back (2000); and The Language Police (2003). Those books survive, and none is about testing/accountability/choice/competition.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Unions, US Education

Michelle Rhee’s Plan to Destroy Public Education

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2012 //
33

Michelle Rhee is is a one-person PAC. She is raising hundreds of millions of dollars from rightwing billionaires and foundations and corporations to subsidize her program.

What is her program? Destroy teachers’ unions; eliminate tenure and seniority; privatize public education. Having failed to transform the public schools of the District of Columbia, she now wants to privatize public education everywhere.

When I was in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I learned from a Democratic state senator that Rhee had poured $105,000 into a race between a liberal Democrat and a conservative Democrat. The difference between them? The conservative Democrat supports vouchers. My informant said, “Candidates here will jump through hoops for a contribution of $1,000. Getting $105,000 is unimaginable.” Rhee bought the election. The voucher-loving Democrat won. He added: Most of Rhee’s money goes to conservative Republicans.

She is trying to buy a seat in Connecticut now. A reader writes:

Rhee’s fraud of an organization has nothing to do with students, teaching or learning. It is a political lobbyist group that secretly slithers around the nation passing our billionaire donated cash to influence and bribe politicians. Her dirty donations push the privatization, anti-union, anti-public school, collective bargaining busting, teacher trashing dogma down their throats. Here she is a pariah and getting her money is the kiss of death here in CT:

http://jonathanpelto.com/2012/10/01/michelle-buy-yourself-an-election-rhee-returns-to-undermine-democracy-in-connecticut/

http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/ctnj.php/archives/entry/is_michelle_rhee_trying_to_buy_a_seat_in_the_5th/#comments-31483

Categories Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, For-Profit, Privatization, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Tennessee, Unions, US Education, Vouchers

A Chicago Parent and a Hero of Public Education

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2012 //
1

Matthew Farmer is a parent in the Chicago public school system. He is an articulate lawyer who understands that the children of Chicago have been shortchanged by the city’s leadership.

He is fearless in defending the teachers, defending the children of Chicago, and standing up for better public schools.

You may recall his outstanding cross-examination of the billionaire member of the Chicago Board of education (in absentia).

Matthew Farmer is a hero of public education.

Farmer took offense when Michelle Rhee inserted herself into the Chicago strike issue and sided with Mayor Rahm Emanuel against the teachers’ union.

The strike gave her a new opportunity to lament the woes of American education and blame it on the teachers and their unions.

Matthew Farmer was having none of it. Who is for the children of Chicago, he asks. Who was fighting for smaller classes? Who was on the side of the children, including Matthew Farmer’s?

Not Michelle Rhee. The real object of her article was to drive a wedge between the Democratic Party and labor unions. She would like nothing better, as she makes clear, than to sever any connection between organized labor and Democrats. Odd that she cares, since most of her campaign efforts and public relations have gone to benefit conservative Republican governors.

Categories Chicago, Democrats, Education Reform, Emanuel, Rahm, Honor Roll, Unions

US Dept of Ed: More Millions for Teacher Evaluation

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2012 //
12

The Gates Foundation has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into teacher evaluation programs.

The US Department of Education has used its billions in Race to the Top funding to push for teacher evaluation programs.

The spigot is still open!

The big winner of the latest grants is the District of Columbia, which presumably already has Michelle Rhee’s IMPACT program. But nonetheless, it just won another $23 million of our taxpayer dollars.

Millions more went to Los Angeles and to charter schools. The teachers’ union in LA still has not agreed to accept test-based evaluations. Seems someone there has read the research and knows how useless this stuff is.

Arne Duncan is certainly priming the pump where it matters least.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations, U.S. Department of Education, Unions

Poor Boxoffice for Anti-Union Film

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2012 //
11

The film “Won’t Back Down,” which publicizes the idea that parents should seize control of their public school and turn it over to a charter operator, has been heavily promoted. The movie was shown at both national political conventions by Michelle Rhee; it had a glamorous opening in New York City and extensive publicity as part of NBC’s Education Nation, and full-page ads in major newspapers, as well as expensive ads on network television.

But opening weekend for WBD was a disaster. According to industry sources, WBD had the worst opening weekend of any film in wide distribution (more than 2,500 screens) in 30 years. That’s quite a record.

Pundits can ponder why. Maybe in the midst of a terrible economy, the prospect of seeing a movie in which the union is the villain isn’t all that appealing. Maybe it is time for a movie about heroic teachers in Chicago who stand up to the powerful elites in their city and fight to make sure that their students get small classes, art teachers, social workers, and textbooks on the first day of school. The leading figure could be a brilliant woman who is a chemistry teacher with 20 years of teaching experience. She is articulate; she is unintimidated by the rich and powerful men who try to silence her.

Do you think?

Categories Education Reform, Parent trigger, Unions

My Speak-out in Austin: UPDATE!

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2012 //
14

I spent the last three days in Austin and had a great time. I’ll write about it on the flight home. I’m sitting on the JetBlue flight and the doors will close in 3 minutes.

Thought you might want to see this interview with me and Evan Smith. Only 24 minutes.

I take it back. I posted this as the doors were closing. When I landed, I learned that the link didn’t work. I wrote the producer and found out that it won’t go live until October 18, when the show airs. At that time, I’ll post the link and make sure it works.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Ravitch, Diane, Testing, Texas, Unions, US Education

CTU Votes on Contract Tomorrow

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2012 //
5

Members of the Chicago Teachers Union will vote on October 2 whether to ratify the contact negotiated with the city.

In the press release about the contract, CTU says these are the gains in the new contract for students and teachers:

Should members vote to ratify the contract it will force the Board of Education to:

· Hire over 600 additional teachers in Art, Music, Phys Ed and other subjects – helping to make the school day better not just longer.
· Maintain limits on class size – pushing back Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s attempt to remove all class size limits and threats to crowd 55 students into a class. The CTU also won a small increase in funding to decrease class size and was also able to add a parent Local School Council member to the “Class Size Committee” for every overcrowded school
· Make needed textbooks available to teachers from the first day of work and to students on the first day of school
· Promote racial diversity in hiring at CPS – fighting against the dramatic loss of African American teachers in Chicago’s schools
· Lower the focus on standardized testing by defeating merit pay and beating the percentage of our evaluations from test scores down to the legal minimum. This will allow more focus on teaching rather than high stakes testing
· Provide more attention to students from their school’s Social Workers and Nurses – under new rules to lessen workloads and prevent the growth of paperwork for our already overstretched clinicians.
· Establishes a Workload Committee to investigate work load sizes for social workers, psychologists, SPED teachers, classroom assistants and counselors in schools with high caseloads. It also provides funding to alleviate excessive workloads.
· Spend any new state money to fund school personnel to hire up to 100 additional social workers and clinicians
· Provide new protections for special education students, making class size violations grieveable.

CTU President Karen Lewis will cast her ballot at Dyett High School, a popular school that has been targeted by the district for closure.

Categories Chicago, Education Reform, Unions
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »