During last spring’s historic teacher walkout in West Virginia, which closed every school in the state, Governor Jim Justice promised to block charter legislation.
He lied.
The legislature is set to pass both charters and vouchers.
Trachers in charters won’t need certification. Vouchers will include home schooling. Both bills mean less funding for the state’s underfunded public schools.
Gov. Justice could veto the bill but would it have gotten this far without his support?
He lied.
Republican legislators in West Virginia want to tie pay increases for teachers—which they were promised when they went on strike last year—to the introduction of charter schools and vouchers. They think that school choice will raise test scores, which it won’t.
Governor Justice said he won’t support charter schools. The state can’t afford it. Presumably he won’t support vouchers either, which not only reduce revenues but lower test scores.
Governor Justice comes out against one W.Va. big education bill
THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ARTICLE YOU WILL READ TODAY. SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR SCHOOL BOARD, YOUR LOCAL MEDIA, YOUR ELECTEDS. TWEET IT. POST IT ON FACEBOOK.
In the states where teachers have engaged in walkouts and strikes, public education has been systematically starved of funding. Typically, corporate taxes have been cut so that funding for education has also been cut. The corporations benefit while the children and their teachers are put on a starvation diet.
Who are the corporations and individuals behind the efforts to shrink funding for public schools and promote privatization?
It begins like this, then details a state-by-state list of corporations and billionaires backing the cycle of austerity and school privatization.
“The ongoing wave of teacher strikes across the US is changing the conversation about public education in this country. From West Virginia to Arizona, Kentucky to Oklahoma, Colorado to North Carolina, tens of thousands of teachers have taken to the streets and filled state capitals, garnering public support and racking up victories in some of the nation’s most hostile political terrain.
“Even though the teachers who have gone on strike are paid well below the national average, their demands have gone beyond better salary and benefits for themselves. They have also struck for their students’ needs – to improve classroom quality and to increase classroom resources. Teachers are calling for greater investment in children and the country’s public education system as a whole. They are also demanding that corporations, banks, and billionaires pay their fair share to invest in schools.
“The teachers’ strikes also represent a major pushback by public sector workers against the right-wing agenda of austerity and privatization. The austerity and privatization agenda for education goes something like this: impose big tax cuts for corporations and the .01% and then use declining tax revenue as a rationale to cut funding for state-funded services like public schools. Because they are underfunded, public schools cannot provide the quality education kids deserve. Then, the right wing criticizes public schools and teachers, saying there is a crisis in education. Finally, the right wing uses this as an opportunity to make changes to the education system that benefit them – including offering privatization as a solution that solves the crisis of underfunding.
“While this cycle has put students, parents, and teachers in crisis, many corporations, banks, and billionaires are driving and profiting from it. The key forces driving the austerity and privatization agenda are similar across all the states that have seen strikes:
“*Billionaire school privatizers. A small web of billionaires – dominated by the Koch brothers and their donor network, as well as the Waltons – have given millions to state politicians who will push their pro-austerity, pro-school privatization agenda. These billionaires lead a coordinated, nationwide movement to apply business principles to education, including: promoting CEO-like superintendents, who have business experience but little or no education experience; closing “failing” schools, just as companies close unprofitable stores or factories; aggressively cutting costs, such as by recruiting less experienced teachers; instituting a market-based system in which public schools compete with privately managed charter schools, religious schools, for-profit schools, and virtual schools; and making standardized test scores the ultimate measure of student success.”
Keep reading to learn about the interlocking web that includes the Koch brothers, the Mercers, the Waltons, the fossil fuel industry, their think tanks, and much more, all combined to shrink public schools and replace them with charters and vouchers.
By the way, rightwing billionaire Philip Anschutz of Colorado was the producer of the anti-teacher, anti-public education, pro-charter propaganda film “Waiting for Superman.”
The spring of 2018 may well be remembered as the beginning of a mass movement by working people against the domination of corporations and the 1%.
The leadership in red states and the federal government have tilted the tax system to favor the very wealthy, while demanding sacrifices from the powerless majority.
The teachers in West Virginia were first to say “Enough!”
But they are far from last.
The ALEC-inspired Republican legislatures killed collective bargaining, and the Supreme Court in expected to hobble labor unions with the Janus decision.
But that’s not going to stop working people from organizing and demanding a fair share of the bounty that they produced.
For all of Facebook’s sins and transgressions, it has nonetheless created a way for voiceless people to organize and act. Teachers and others created collectives on Facebook and used them to mobilize for mass actions.
The teachers’ strikes were organized by grassroots efforts that began on Facebook. Powerless teachers discovered that by acting in concert, they became powerful. They have used their numbers to demand fair pay and benefits and have stood up courageously to legislatures known to be in the pockets of the oil and gas industries and other malefactors of vast wealth.
Piece by piece, day by day, as they lead us, we will recover our democracy. We will rebuild the institutions now under assault by Trumpism and its variants. The names of the leaders are not well-known. They won’t be on the covers of magazines or interviewed by late night TV hosts. They are ordinary citizens who have stepped forward to demand justice, equity, and fairness and to revive our democracy.
Teachers in many districts in Kentucky closed down public schools in response to the Republican attack on their pensions.
Schools in eight Kentucky school districts were closed Friday as teachers across the state protested Republican changes to their pension system, CBS News reports.
In Lexington and Louisville — the state’s two largest school districts — hundreds of teachers took sick days or refused to show up for work after state lawmakers passed a bill changing the structure of pension benefits for future teachers.
The strike may be hard for reformers and the libertarians in the GOP to understand: the teachers in Kentucky are not striking for themselves but for their profession.
This wildcat strike follows weeks of protest by teachers to the Legislature and the Governor.
CNN says that the legislature pulled a bait-and-switch, dropping the original bill against which teachers were protesting and putting the changes into a bill about sewage services. Was that a direct insult to teachers?
The action in Kentucky follows the wildcat strike in West Virginia and precedes the likely walkout in Oklahoma, scheduled for Monday April 2. Teachers in Oklahoma demand higher pay (pay in Oklahoma is at or near the worst in the nation despite a booming energy industry in the state that gets huge tax breaks).
These strikes and walkouts are happening in states where unions are not strong. In fact, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Oklahoma are “right to work” states.
Note to reformers: If the Janus decision goes against the unions, you will still have to contend with the power of organized teachers. No matter what law is passed, teachers who are underpaid and disrespected have the power to walk out. There are not enough TFA scabs in the nation to replace them all.
No teachers, no schools.
Stephen Singer writes about the current Age of Ignorance.
He writes:
“All-in-all, it’s been a crazy news cycle.
“If one thing was made clear during the last seven plus days, it’s this:
“Many people have no idea what a school should be.
“Take West Virginia, the site of a recently resolved statewide teacher strike.
“After years of watching the cost of living rise while wages remained stagnant, educators took to the streets to demand enough money that they wouldn’t have to quit their teaching jobs and look for work elsewhere.
“It’s a reasonable request.
“Imagine if we didn’t pay doctors enough to afford to practice medicine. Imagine if we didn’t pay lawyers enough to afford to practice law.
“Teachers just wanted enough money so they could focus on educating the next generation and still get perks like food and shelter.
“However, West Virginia is a self-confessed conservative state where self-identifying conservatives unashamedly explain that a full-throated expression of their conservative values includes the idea that you shouldn’t have to pay people a living wage for a hard day’s work.”
Scalawag is a new progressive Southern journal. Its reporter Rachel Garringer talked to the strike leaders and learned how they were able to organize a statewide wildcat strike in a right to work state.
She writes:
“While the work stoppage has ended, the decentralized, 55-county-wide, cross-sector strike in the heart of ‘Trump Country’ offers crucial insight into the contemporary South and the future of labor organization. What does it mean for a state that voted Republican in the most contested national election in decades to lead one of the largest labor uprisings in recent United States history? What can we learn from the ways in which teachers organized themselves across a mostly rural, geographically isolated state? How did they communicate with one another after they refused to follow statewide union leadership? How does this strike fit into a long history of radical labor organizing in West Virginia? And what were the personal motivations driving teachers, from the coalfields to the eastern panhandle and every county in between, to risk their jobs fighting for justice?
“In their own words, teachers explain why they went on strike, how this fight was about more than education, and what it means for a largely socially conservative state to tap into its deep roots of radical anti-corporate organizing.”
This is MUST reading.
With the statewide teachers’ strike settled, and the strikers gone home, the GOP in the West Virginia Senate introduced a bill to eliminate the State Department of Education, to lower standards for new teachers, and a host of other mischievous revenge actions, including the possible elimination of a program to feed poor students.
Those who have hatred in their heartsl never slumber nor sleep.
Teachers: Remember in November.
An article in the Daily Beast asks the question that is the title of this post.
Another question: Where was President Obama and Secretary Arne Duncan when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker stripped away collective bargaining, and union members encircled the State Capitol in protest? Answer: absent.
They did, however, find time in March 2011 to fly to Miami to join Jeb Bush in celebrating a “turnaround school” whose staff had been replaced. (A month later, the same high school was listed by the state as a “failing school” slated for closure, but the national media had moved on.)
Teachers in West Virginia struck across the state, demanding a 5% pay raise. Today, the strike was settled, and teachers won the 5% they sought.
“West Virginia lawmakers unanimously approved 5 percent pay raises for teachers and troopers on Tuesday after the governor reached a deal to end a teacher walkout that shuttered the state’s schools for nine days.
“A huge group of teachers crowding the Capitol’s hallways cheered their victory.
“With striking teachers looking on, the House of Delegates passed the pay raise for teachers, school service personnel and state troopers on a 99-0 vote, and the Senate followed, voting 34-0.
“I believe in you and I love our kids,” Gov. Jim Justice said.”
Unfortunately, the legislators plan to pay for the raise by cutting the budget, including Medicaid, instead of raising taxes on corporations that just got a big refund on their taxes from the GOP Tax bill last December.
Diane Ravitch's blog 