Northeast Florida, where public education died

Northeast Florida if you wanted to destroy education, knee cap the middle class and do harm to the state you have come up aces. Embrace what you have done; own it, because if we get much more of Wise, Thrasher and Scott that will be about all you do own, it’s definitely all your children will.

Congratulations Northeast Florida, you are the epicenter for the destruction of the state’s public schools. Your recent dogged insistence to vote against you and your children’s interests and for politicians that couldn’t care less about the both of you have signaled education’s death knell. When you voted for Steven Wise, John Thrasher and Rick Scott you may as well as put a stake through education’s heart and forks in our children, because they too like our schools are done.

Steven Wise is no friend of public education and this has been made more evident by his senate bill 736 or what he laughably calls the teacher quality bill. In his bill teachers become at will employees and can be fired regardless of performance. Speak up? You’re gone. The principal doesn’t like you? You’re gone. The principal’s neighbor has a nephew who thinks he might like to try teaching because it would be cool to have summers off? You’re gone. This not increased quality, is what senate bill 736 will allow to happen. It also gets rid of pay increases for advanced degrees. I hope this irony is not lost on you. In every profession we say the more education you get the better off you will be, every profession except education that is, and it also gets rid of seniority and due process, two of the long established tenants of education.

The bill is also another unfunded mandate. School districts will be required to come up with ways to finance the various teacher salary scales and all the increased testing that the bill calls for. Kids will be taught more to the test than ever because now a teacher’s job is on the line more than ever. These tests are not just going to magically appear. They will be developed and scored by educational testing companies who will drain much needed money away from schools coffers and reap millions in profits. Then there will also be teacher evaluation systems that has Michelle Rhee and others salivating. Oh you didn’t know Michelle Rhee has a teacher evaluation system. Why she does, it’s called IMPACT and it has widely been panned in Washington D.C. which means it is probably on the fast track to Florida; after all she is the darling of Rick Scott and Wise.

Steven Wise has cloaked the bill in simplistic easy to please statements like merit pay and reward our best teachers. He doesn’t mention that teachers, who may know better what’s best for them than he does are overwhelmingly against it. His bill is like giving doctors who didn’t ask for it a clump or dirt and saying it’s a cutting edge scalpel and they must use it. Wise also doesn’t mention that there is no study that says merit pay works. Not one! In fact all the studies say it is the equivalent of the luck of the draw. Teacher’s student’s success on standardized tests varies wildly as students enter and leave their classes.
Wise says he wants to improve education, my question is how? Is it by making teachers want to leave and replacements harder to attract because that is what his bill is really doing; hey Jacksonville great job in voting for him.

Then there is John Thrasher who makes no apologies for his distain, no make that hatred for teachers and their unions and he comes from St. Johns County which is the top school district in the state, thank goodness he didn’t come from a county lower on the list. Wake up St. Johns, his way of thinking is going to hurt the schools and kids in your county as well but I guess some of you didn’t think about that while shooting nine at the country club. Would Deborah Giannoulis really have been such a bad alternative? She ran on a platform of doing what’s best for our kids, Thrasher has a history of doing what’s not.

He wants to end collective bargaining and destroy workers rights. He wants to do this by ending payroll deductions for unions but at the same time continue to allow payroll deductions for the United Way and other organizations and by decertifying unions that have a membership of less than fifty percent plus one. Why should multi-million or billion dollar corporations, his friends and supporters be the only one with a voice in government? In the end all his bill amounts to is rewarding his friends and silencing his enemies. Even if you don’t like unions, is this the America you want to live in? Do you want to live in a country where our corporate over loads tell us what to think and feel and limit the earning power of millions of everyday citizens; if so communist Russia would have been the place for you. This is not just a teacher battle here, this is a battle for the future of the middle class and if we are going to have one or not. Way to go St. Johns, you have just destroyed the teaching profession and public education but potentially the middle class as well, talk about a trifecta.

Thrasher and Wise are so concerned about education that instead of demanding Scott rescind his draconian budget, they develop bills that will handicap and set back the profession. No thanks guys and don’t worry about me I’ll try and get somebody to pull the knife out of my and the thousands of teachers back you just put it in.

Then there is Rick Scott, he of the 1.7 billion dollar fine for fraud who won the election with less than fifty percent of the vote, which was more of a referendum against Obama than for him. You have to hand it to him though, while spending eighty million dollars of his own personal fortune he made the election about Washington D.C. not about Florida. I get it that you don’t like Obammacare but how do you feel about gutting social services for the sick, disabled and children. How do you feel about him curtailing protections for the environment and our rivers and how do you feel about him cutting billions from our already resource starved education system? Friends we were already fiftieth in the nation. He and this is adjusted for inflation, wants to send us back to 1976 levels of school spending, you know before all the unfunded mandates and changes to education that siphoned millions away to corporate charter schools, vouchers and education testing companies.

North East Florida voted for this transplant and while hoping to create additional tax breaks for corporations and wealthy individuals in addition to the billions we already give, he seeks to balance the budget on the backs of the working poor and the middle class. Cut your own throat much North East Florida.

He won by saying he would create jobs, well the tens of thousands of teachers and government workers who are about to find themselves unemployed aren’t so optimistic about his plan. And friends we are already a low tax, pro business state without an income tax. If companies aren’t rushing here now do you really thing they are going to do so after we destroy public education, curtail government services and harm the environment?

Northeast Florida once again, if you wanted to destroy education, knee cap the middle class and do harm to the state you have come up aces. Embrace what you have done; own it, because if we get much more of Wise, Thrasher and Scott that will be about all you do, it’s definitely all your children will.

Teachers don't get it, this is about destroying the field

Fron the Providence Journal

by Linda Borg

PROVIDENCE — After two hours of contentious discussion, the School Board voted 4 to 3 Thursday night to send out termination notices to each of the city’s 1,926 public school teachers.

More than 700 teachers jammed a high school gymnasium to tell school officials that their hearts were broken, their trust violated and their futures as teachers jeopardized.

“How do we feel? Disrespected,” said Julie Latessa, a special-needs teacher, before the vote. “We are broken. How do you repair the damage you have done today?”

Every teacher received a certified letter from the School Department on Thursday informing them that they might be terminated at the end of the school year. It also said the School Board would vote on the proposed dismissals at Thursday night’s meeting, which was moved to the Providence Career and Technical Academy to accommodate the huge turnout.

Many of the teachers were caught off guard by Mayor Angel Taveras’ decision to terminate teachers instead of laying them off. Last night, speakers questioned the mayor’s rationale: a $40-million school budget deficit and a March 1 deadline by which the School Department must notify teachers if their jobs are in jeopardy.

“This is a quasi-legal power grab,” said Richard Larkin, a teacher at Classical High School. “You want to pick and choose teachers. Well, we will not be bullied.”


More than 700 teachers turned out for the School Board’s meeting Thursday night at the Providence Career & Technical Academy, at which the board voted to terminate them at the end of the school year. The Providence Journal / Ruben W. Perez
Speaker after speaker demanded to know why they were being fired. Didn’t the teachers union sign on to the federal Race to the Top initiative? Hasn’t the union collaborated with Supt. Tom Brady on new curricula? Isn’t the union working with the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers on a new teacher evaluation?

“I’m feeling disrespected, devalued and marginalized,” said Ed Gorden. “Termination is a career-ender. You are putting a scarlet letter on every one of us.”

Teachers begged the School Board to issue layoffs rather than fire them outright because, under the layoff provisions, teachers are recalled based on seniority. There is no guarantee that seniority would be used to bring back any of the fired teachers. School leaders have been vague about exactly how seniority will play out in the case of terminations.

Before the vote, several School Board members explained their reasons for supporting or rejecting the motion to dismiss:

Philip Gould said he believes that Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith is committed to serious and meaningful school reform, adding that if “we do this, it will be detrimental to the children of this district.”

Nina Pande said the board is faced with an extremely difficult decision and that the board was given only three days to close a $40-million deficit.

Melissa Malone, Kathleen Crain, Pande and Julian Dash voted for the motion to dismiss; Robert Wise, Brian Lalli and Gould voted against it.

Earlier Thursday, Smith called the terminations “an attack on labor and an attack on collective bargaining.”

“This is a back-door Wisconsin,” Smith said, referring to the weeklong protests in Madison by labor unions. “We don’t know why we’re being fired. The mayor says he needs flexibility. Can you buy that? I don’t know of any other district that has done this.”

Thursday night, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called the possible dismissals “shocking,” and said the move will “disrupt the education of all students and the entire community.”

Superintendent Brady has said that the majority of teachers will be rehired but could not give any details until the mayor’s special panel completes its report on the city’s financial status.

Teachers who attended a meeting with Brady on Thursday afternoon left as dismayed and confused as they were when they entered the building. Many said they still didn’t understand why they were being dismissed.

“Everyone is anxious,” said Eileen Finklestein, an elementary school teacher. “We hope the School Board will make a rational decision.”

-- with reports from Richard C. Dujardin, Journal staff writer

HOW THEY VOTED:
Yes: Melissa Malone, Kathleen Crain, Niña Pande, Julian Dash

No: Robert Wise, Brian Lalli, Philip Gould

lborg@projo.com

http://www.projo.com/news/content/PROVIDENCE_SCHOOL_MEETINGS_02-25-11_MCMMBSG_v26.1bd455c.html

It's not as simple as, fire bad teachers, reward excellence

From the Shanker Blog

There is an obvious, albeit somewhat uncomfortable connection between what’s happening in Wisconsin and what’s been happening in education policy discussions.

A remarkably high proportion of the discussion is focused – implicitly or explicitly – on the presumed role of teachers’ unions. The public is told that our school systems are failing, and that teachers’ unions are at least partially to blame because they protect bad teachers and block “needed” reforms such as merit pay. In this storyline, unions are faceless villains that put the interests of adults above those of children.

Wisconsin represents a threat to this perspective in at least three important manners.
First, and most basically, it is illustrating the weakness of one of the most important concepts in our debate – the idea that one can support teachers, but hate their unions. To some degree, the distinction is plausible: Disagreeing with the organization that represents a given profession certainly does not imply animosity towards its members, and not all teachers agree with everything unions do (as is the case in any democratic organization).

But none of this changes the fact that unions are comprised of teachers, led by teacher-elected teachers at the local- and school-level, and virtually everything they do is approved by the vast majority of teachers. Every day in Wisconsin and around the nation, the world is seeing many tens of thousands of teachers and other public employees coming out in their capacity as union members or supporters. They are doing so voluntarily, and with energy and dedication to their cause. Each one of these faces should send a message to those of us in the education debate: Teachers’ unions oppose many reform ideas because, as survey data make clear, teachers oppose them. The attempt to set up unions as autonomous villains that exist independently of teachers depends on a dehumanized perception of labor organizations that does not square with reality.

Second, Wisconsin illustrates something we all know about, but don’t often discuss: The unusual alliances within the large group of “market-based reformers” that dominate our national education debate. I don’t know how it breaks down (and I’m generalizing here), but there is a portion of this group that opposes unions no matter what. According to these people, collective bargaining for teachers should be either illegal or curtailed to the point of meaninglessness, as it is for public employees in 19 states.

But not all opponents of teachers’ unions are anti-union. There is another large portion (many thoughtful) that generally supports labor and collective bargaining, but makes an exception for teachers’ unions. Teachers’ unions, they argue, are different – our children’s educations are at stake.

There is a fundamental tension between support for collective bargaining in general and unremitting hostility toward teachers’ unions. So many of the core policy ideas from this crowd – eliminating tenure and traditional salary schedules, imposing new teacher evaluation systems at the state level, mandating blanket increases in teachers’ share of contributions to health and pension benefits, etc. – are in many important respects assaults on the right of teachers to bargain their own compensation and working conditions.

It’s not about whether these policy changes under discussion are good ideas. Many of them, such as improved evaluations and alternative compensation systems, are perfectly reasonable (at least in my view). It’s about how these ideas are being implemented. In large part, they are happening in a decidedly top-down fashion, with minimal input from teachers and demonization of their unions, using a budget crisis to push things along – as in Wisconsin.

The protesters are only asking for a seat at the table – for a say in what happens to them and their workplaces. If you support that right generally, then making exceptions – determining what should and shouldn’t be subject to input from the people who know the most about what goes in classrooms – is both inconsistent and counterproductive.

Third and finally, the “blame unions” narrative seems to be receiving some disconcerting news as far as public opinion. For the past few years, the “market-based reform” viewpoint has maintained almost complete dominance over the public discourse. They have been incredibly skillful in promoting their agenda – on television, in newspapers, and even major motion pictures – and you have to search far and wide for a non-teacher public voice that speaks out for teachers’ unions. Yet, we learned from Wisconsin that there is considerable public support for letting teachers and other public employees bargain their own compensation and other terms of their employment. More and more people are actually defending teachers’ unions publicly. Maybe – just maybe – when people see the workers and not the “faceless union,” they tend to come down on the side of workers.

This is important. The public reacts favorably to simplistic arguments like “fire bad teachers” or “reward excellence.” We all do. But it may not support eliminating the ability of teachers to have a say in how these slogans translate into actual policies. And that is the primary job of the thousands of local unions that represent teachers. They’re nowhere near perfect – because teachers aren’t perfect. But ignoring or villainizing them is a mistake.

The Wisconsin protesters want to talk this out, and so do teachers all over the nation. Scott Walker doesn’t seem to be listening. We should.

http://shankerblog.org/?p=1958

Wisconsin, the workers Waterloo

From CNN.com

by Rick Fantasia

There should be no illusions. What is unfolding in Wisconsin and a half-dozen other states may be the beginning of the end for American labor.

Both the corporate leaders who are funding these initiatives and their Republican Party valets feverishly trying to push them through state legislatures understand this. The billionaire Koch brothers, for example, have pumped money into the Wisconsin effort; their energy and consumer products conglomerate was a top contributor to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's election campaign.

They must be giddy with anticipation, knowing how close they are to their long-standing goal of removing any significant opposition to their rule in American society. Too dramatic? If anything, it is an understatement.

As anyone following the events in Wisconsin knows, it has not been a matter of public employee unions showing intransigence in the face of a state budget shortfall.

The public sector unions have agreed to the financial concessions Gov. Walker had claimed were necessary to right the fiscal ship. No, the prize he hopes to deliver to his corporate supporters and ideological soul mates is much larger and more important than a simple balanced state budget.

Shock and awe has been the method employed, but just like in the war through which the phrase entered our national lexicon, momentary disorientation can give way to obstinate resistance, and no one anticipated the counter-mobilization that has galvanized workers in Madison, Wisconsin, and elsewhere.

Union labor recognizes that this is it: a Waterloo for the working class in America. Up to now it has been mostly a one-sided class war as private sector corporations have systematically weakened or destroyed their existing labor organizations, while intimidating and firing their workers when they have sought to organize themselves into unions.

For three decades this war has mostly played out beyond the public radar screen, as corporations and their consultants have turned workplace after workplace across the country into battlegrounds over the rights of workers to have some voice in the conditions of their labor.

When Walker and other governors complain that public sector workers receive better pension or health care benefits than do private sector workers in their states, they may be right, but this is because workers in the much larger private sector -- with unionization rates now at about 7%, down from 35% in 1955 -- have already had their pensions, their health care benefits, and their working conditions gutted. (About 35 % of public sector workers are unionized.)

Until now this corporate assault was not aimed at the destruction of public sector unions and the decent jobs and benefits that they were able to negotiate for workers. Public employee unions have agreed to concessions in the face of state and municipal budget problems across the country, as they have in Wisconsin, but asking them for more -- taking away the right to organize and bargain collectively -- tramples Americans' human rights.

Americans may not fully grasp what is at stake here, but we fail to do so at our peril. Unions have made mistakes, but they are the only defense that workers have.

Without viable unions to serve as a counterweight to corporate power, America's working people and their families are at the mercy of the largest and most powerful economic organizations on the planet.

Ironically, while mobilizing to destroy unions here, U.S. corporations have been somehow able to thrive in foreign countries that have much higher unionization rates and where labor movements have much more influence in society.

Unionization rates are about twice as high in Germany and Canada, for example, and as much as five times as high in the Scandinavian countries, but U.S. companies have been able to do their business quite profitably for decades.

Strong unions in these countries mean that their citizens enjoy high quality health care for all without having to pay huge insurance premiums, free or inexpensive child care for working families, university educations that leave no one in debt, five to six weeks of paid annual vacations, and worker standards of living that are mostly equal to or higher than those of American workers.

Socialism? Hardly. The capitalists of Europe and Canada do perfectly well for themselves, thank you, even though their CEO's don't generally expect salaries and stock options reaching into the stratosphere, like ours do.

If there were no labor movement in the U.S., there would be no social security system, no Medicare or Medicaid as we know them (unions regularly provide power and push-back at attempts to privatize or cut back ), no limits to child labor, or hours worked, or safety standards, or any ability to prevent or respond to unfair or despotic treatment by employers.

Whether in unions or not, American workers hold these protections because of unions. How long will they last if the unions are destroyed? Wisconsin is either the beginning of the end or it's a beginning.

Which side are you on?

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/02/24/fantasia.union.wisconsin/index.html?hpt=C2

Why Teacher's and Children need Teacher's Unions

From Education Weeks, Bridging Differences

By Diane Ravitch

As I write, thousands of teachers are staging a protest in the state capitol in Wisconsin. Others stand with them, including the Green Bay Packers, other public-sector workers, and even public-sector workers who are not affected by the proposed legislation, namely, firefighters and police. The teachers and other public-sector employees are speaking out against Gov. Scott Walker's effort to destroy their collective-bargaining rights. Gov. Walker demanded that the teachers pay more for their health benefits and their pension benefits, and they have agreed to do so. But that's not all he wants. He wants to destroy the union.

I wrote an article about this contretemps for CNN.com, not realizing that the teachers had already conceded the governor's demands on money issues. The confrontation now is solely about whether public employees have the right to bargain collectively and to have a collective voice. Monday's New York Times made clear, both in a column by Paul Krugman and in its news coverage, that the union is fighting for its survival, not benefits.

It's time to ask: Why should teachers have unions? I am not a member of a union, and I have never belonged to a union, but here is what I see. From the individual teacher's point of view, it is valuable to have an organization to turn to when you feel you have been treated unfairly, one that will supply you with assistance, even a lawyer, one that advocates for improvement in your standard of living. From society's point of view, it is valuable to have unions to fight for funding for public education and for smaller class sizes and for adequate compensation for teachers. I recently visited Arizona, a right-to-work state, and parents there complained to me about classes of 30 for children in 1st and 2nd grades, and even larger numbers for older students; they complained that the starting salary for teachers was only $26,000 and that it is hard to find strong college graduates to enter teaching when wages are so low.

I have often heard union critics complain that contracts are too long, too detailed, too prescriptive. I have noticed that unions don't write their own contracts. There are always two sides that negotiate a contract and sign it. If an administration is so weak that it signs a contract that is bad for kids, bad for the district's finances, or bad for education, then shame on them.

The fight in Wisconsin now is whether public-sector unions should have any power to bargain at all. The fight is not restricted to Wisconsin; it is taking place in many other states, including New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Illinois. The battle has already been lost in other states.

I have been wondering if advocates of corporate school reform, such as Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and Michelle Rhee will come to the aid of the teachers in Wisconsin. I have been wondering if President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who were quick to applaud the firing of teachers in Central Falls, R.I., will now step forward to support the teachers in Wisconsin. I have been wondering if Secretary Duncan, who only a few days earlier had led a much-publicized national conversation in Denver about the importance of collaboration between unions and management, will weigh in to support the teachers. I am ever hopeful, but will take care not to hold my breath.

If there is no organized force to advocate for public education in the state capitols of this nation, our children and our schools will suffer. That's the bottom line. And that's why I stand with the teachers of Wisconsin. I know you do, too.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2011/02/i_stand_with_the_teachers_of_w.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BridgingDifferences+%28Education+Week+Blog%3A+Bridging+Differences%29

In Wisconsin, the future of public education is at stake

From CommonDreams.org

by Sara Jerving

Momentum continues a week into the protests in Wisconsin, as the capital city’s public schools were closed for the fourth day and protestors prepare for the reconvening of the State's Assembly.

Demonstrations against governor Scott Walker’s proposed bill to eliminate collective bargaining for public employees reached a peak level of some 80,000 Saturday, and included a counter Tea Party rally with a few thousand people. The night before, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Jr. addressed a crowd of several thousand, telling them that they were living a ‘Martin Luther King moment’.

Protesters outside the capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin over the weekend. What has become clear to the protestors over the last week is that beyond an assault on unions; Walker's bill is part of a wider attack on working families and public education. According to a statement released Sunday by the Teachers Assistants Association TAA, one of the primary organizers of the protests on the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s campus, “The Assembly is expected to pass the union-busting budget repair bill, even as tens of thousands of people demonstrate against the anti-worker provisions in the bill. “

The State Democratic Senators who left the state last week in boycott of Republican attempts to hurriedly push through the bill, still remain in Illinois. The Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald indicated that the Senate will meet Tuesday to pass non-fiscal measures, which can be done without the Senate Democrats, putting additional pressure on the Democrats to return to Wisconsin.

What has become clear to the protestors over the last week is that beyond an assault on unions; Walker's bill is part of a wider attack on working families and public education.

"The second reason that this fight matters is the future of public education,” The Nation’s Chris Hayes said. “What's driving it is the ultimate aim of permanently scrapping the model of public education that has sustained this country for years. Teachers unions are the stewards of preserving public education, which is the core element of our civil life.”

Walker’s track record illustrates his lack of support for public education. Before he was governor, he was the executive of Milwaukee County where the nation’s first mass-scale private school voucher experiment was implemented. He then campaigned for governor on expanding these vouchers, Hayes said.

Under the widely disputed bill, local police, fire and state patrol would retain their collective bargaining rights, unions that generally supported Walker during his campaign. Teachers unions, who sided with Democrats in last fall’s election, and other public workers would lose that process.

The proposed bill, according to Walker, is intended to balance the state’s budget and avoid layoffs. But despite an offer by public workers to give financial concessions instead of dropping collective bargaining, the governor refuses to drop the plan.

Democratic State Senator Jon Erpenbach said in a statement this weekend that the offer made by public workers was "a legitimate and serious offer on the table from local, state and school public employees that balances Gov. Walker's budget."

The denial of this offer shows that "Gov. Walker's only target is the destruction of collective bargaining rights and not solving the state's budget," Erpenbach said.

Teaching assistants have planned a ‘teach-out’ for Tuesday to permit their students to join them at the Capitol building to protest the Assembly’s meeting. They also helped organize ‘teach-ins’ over the weekend at the campus’s main library to further explain to students how this bill will affect them.

Graduate student assistants teach 85 percent of discussion sections and nearly 20 percent of the lectures on the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s campus. The proposed bill targets both their benefits and their ability to bargain over tuition remission. This is no small matter: A statement released by the TAA Saturday said that tuition remission is the university’s strongest recruitment tool for graduate students and ending collective bargaining in this area would impact the quality of the teaching and research brought into the university.

Over the last week, groups of students migrated from other state campuses to participate in the protests in Madison. Rachel Matteson, a member of Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, came down Sunday to rally at the Capitol building.

“Attacking teachers assistants and teachers directly affects the quality of our education. Students realize this. Many of us will be graduating soon and entering the public sector, so this is also an attack on our own rights,” Matteson told The Nation.

Some 260 faculty members at UW-Madison signed a letter opposing the bill, "We recognize that the state faces a severe budget shortfall. We have already taken wage and benefit cuts to help address that problem and expect to make more sacrifices in the future. But eliminating collective bargaining will not address this shortfall. We urge you not to allow this crisis to undermine our state's strong traditions of democracy and human rights."

Public school teachers from around the state have been protesting at the Capitol building for the last week. On Sunday, after a four-hour debate on how to balance maintaining their opposition to the bill with their responsibilities to teach, Madison public school teachers decided to return to work on Tuesday.

Not only are public school teacher’s collective bargaining rights threatened, but public education is also expected to be reduced by nearly $500 annually per student.

Simultaneously, and also causing a stir, is a proposal expected to be included in Walkers budget that involves splitting the University of Wisconsin-Madison from the rest of the state’s university system. Some officials worry this could cause tuition to skyrocket.

For more, check out John Nichols' coverage from Madison, Wisconsin.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/02/21-4

The Attacks on Teachers and Unions Should Concern Everyone

From Lilly's blackboard

by Lilly

Fifty years ago saying you were a “poor teacher” was redundant. Teachers were mostly women who wanted to teach, not to get rich, but because they loved kids.

However, 50 years ago, teachers and education support staff such as school secretaries and lunch ladies were expected to be polite and obedient and accept what they were given. They had no power to come together and bargain a better salary with administrators, who were, coincidently, mostly men. They were constantly exploited and underpaid.

Wisconsin, 50 years ago, became the first state in the country to do something about that.

They gave public employees, like teachers, the right to come together and negotiate for something better. When you negotiate, you have to work within a budget; you don’t get everything you want, but it stopped the exploitation of individuals. It meant that teachers and school support staff could move into the middle class and be treated with respect. Wisconsin should be proud of that.

And Wisconsin should be ashamed of a governor who threatens to reverse that proud history.

Governor Scott Walker says it’s all about the budget. But that doesn’t make sense. The teachers and support staff and their unions have already agreed to sit down and work together for what schools need, acknowledging that it will have to fit within an austere budget. They’re not at impasse. No unreasonable demands have been made.

This is about politics and payback. This is about punishing people who didn’t support his election, and it’s shameful.

Teachers today are still mostly women. They are still modestly paid. They still become teachers because they love kids. But because they have had a voice in education issues, they have become a powerful force in making Wisconsin public schools some of the best in the country.

What possible good can come from silencing that voice?
And all of us, whether in a union or not, should care about what’s happening here. In fact, maybe it’s more important for those who don’t have a union. The ability of modestly paid people to collectively bargain something better has helped build the great middle class of our great country, even among non-union members.

Because of the collective action of unions over the past 50 years, all of us enjoy a 40 hour work week, overtime, a weekend! We have a minimum wage. We have health and safety protections in our work places and protections against discrimination because of our age, our gender, our religion or our race. Who will provide the balance – the check – to the power of politicians if our unions are silenced?

Many with corporate and political power supported Governor Walker. Many of these powerful supporters don’t like unions. They don’t like the check and balance unions provide for the middle class on their power.

They believe they have found a pretext to destroy it by gutting unions that have been the most powerful voice standing up for the middle class. Laugh when these politicians tell you it’s about the budget. Wisconsin has balanced tight budgets before without destroying the rights of ordinary people to come together. This is a partisan attack. This is about punishing certain unions for having the temerity to speak truth to power.

In Wisconsin, the good people who work for public schools will never give up their responsibility to challenge the powerful when they are wrong. We will never give up our responsibility to fight for a better life for our children and our communities’ children.

We may seem an easy target to powerful politicians. We are mostly women. We work with children. We are not wealthy. But we have a treasure worth fighting for. We have each other. We will never give up our collective voice to speak the truth.

http://lilysblackboard.org/2011/02/wisconsin-teachers-union-struggle/

Why does John Thrasher hate teachers unions?

From the Miami Herald

by KATHLEEN HAUGHNEY

TALLAHASSEE -- - A leading Senate Republican has filed a bill that could strip unions of some of their political strength, barring payroll deduction for union dues and prohibiting dues from being used for political activity without written consent.

“I think it’s a freedom issue for people who now are conscripted to having their money taken out of their paychecks,” said Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine. “I think it’s more of a thing where they can volunteer to decide what they want to do.”

But at least one union – the teachers’ union – sees it as political payback for its opposition to one of Thrasher’s top legislative priorities last year, a bill that would have drastically reformed teacher pay, partially basing salary bumps on student test data. The bill, also a pet project of former Gov. Jeb Bush’s education foundation, received major pushback from teachers who showed up in large numbers to the Capitol to protest the proposal.

Gov. Charlie Crist ultimately vetoed the bill, citing concerns about fairness to educators, particularly special education teachers whose students might have trouble with a standardized exam. The veto gave Crist a huge amount of support from teachers in his unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate, but it enraged GOP lawmakers, including Thrasher, and marked Crist’s departure from the Republican Party.

“These actions are nothing more than retribution directed at FEA and other labor organizations for using our democratic right to support or oppose legislation in Florida, particularly last year’s SB 6,” said FEA President Andy Ford in a statement. “Of course, we will oppose this measure, which is aimed at silencing our members and punishing them for opposing proposals supported by legislative leaders.”

Payroll deduction for dues membership is negotiated through a local school board’s collective bargaining process and many school districts have been doing so since the 1970s. Despite the collective bargaining process, Thrasher said he still doesn’t believe that there is enough choice for employees.

“I think this would give them a choice,” he said. “I don’t think it is now.”

The unions remain one of the last bastions of Democratic power in the state of Florida, pouring money into Democratic candidates’ campaign coffers. They strongly supported Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink, who lost to Gov. Rick Scott in a razor-thin election in which other Republican candidates rolled easily to victory.

Unions have also been able – at least when they had a sometime ally in Crist - to effectively rally their members over controversial legislation, such as Thrasher’s bill, even though many of their members are not Democrats.

Under the bill filed by Thrasher, who recently finished a term as chair of the Republican Party of Florida, unions would not be able to use member dues for political purposes, such as campaign contributions, unless they receive written consent from members. A member can also revoke his or her consent at any time.

Thrasher’s bill is just one of many legislative attempts around the country to revamp union laws.

Across the Midwest many governors have publicly been at war with unions, which are losing strength in numbers. According to a recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report, in 2010, 11.9 percent of workers were union members. In 1983, the first year for which comparable data is available, that number was at 20.1 percent.

Thrasher said in an interview with the News Service on Monday that the bill (SB 830) was in no way payback for the ultimate defeat of his merit pay bill last spring.

“If I was doing that, I would have filed it when Charlie Crist was here,” he said.

A spokesman for Senate President Mike Haridopolos said little about the bill’s chances, simply noting in an e-mail that it would receive three committee hearings, like all other pieces of legislation.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/02/08/2055881/top-state-lawmaker-wants-to-limit.html#ixzz1DP9Ns2Az

Will the legislature and Rick Scott listen to the superintendents and teachers?

From the St. Petersburg Times

By Tom Marshall

TAMPA — Some two dozen Florida school superintendents and union chiefs gathered Wednesday to find common ground in the contentious debate over improving the state's education system.

Hillsborough County officials, who organized the conference, said districts shouldn't leave the job to state legislators.

"We can't sit back and watch what comes down the road from Washington and Tallahassee," said superintendent MaryEllen Elia. "We have to lead the way."

Of Florida's 67 districts, at least half planned to send at least two representatives — one from labor, one from management — to the conference, which was funded with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The meeting comes nearly a year after Florida legislators tried to mandate aggressive changes, including merit pay for teachers and the abolishment of tenure for new teachers. Then-Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed that effort, Senate Bill 6, but Gov. Rick Scott has said he will sign such legislation if it reaches him.

Jean Clements, president of the Hillsborough teachers' union, said the meeting is very much a response to Scott's call for teachers and unions to "come up with a plan" of their own.

"And I wish he were here to see it," she said, referring to Scott, who declined an invitation to speak. "I was so looking forward to spending time with him. I want to meet him."

Randi Weingarten, national president of the American Federation of Teachers union, said conflict has been the norm lately in discussions about how to fix public schools.

"There's always someone on the sideline yelling, 'Fight fight fight!,'" she said in a keynote address. "But it doesn't work in schools."

Hillsborough officials point with pride to the decades of labor-management collaboration that helped them land a $100 million Gates Foundation grant last year to overhaul their teacher evaluation and support systems.

But in many Florida districts, the conversation between districts and teachers unions often comes down to a much simpler issue: money. And with tight budgets, it's often not very pretty.

"We've done a pretty good job of beating each other up," said Pat Santeramo, president of the teachers' union in Broward County. "We're at subzero right now."

Around 1,300 of his teachers were laid off as the district grappled with the loss of tax revenues. While many were later rehired, he said the sorts of issues being discussed at the Hillsborough conference, such as performance pay and peer mentoring, seem pretty remote compared to such problems.

"But if the Legislature is looking to impose their will on us, it would make more sense for the district and union to do something," Santeramo added. "I'm always willing to try."

Tom Marshall can be reached at tmarshall@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3400.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/school-superintendents-gather-in-hillsborough-to-plan-reforms/1146351

Teachers Unions must accept responsibility

With full disclosure, I believe in teachers unions, I am a member of Duval Teachers United and I have never been more disappointed in teachers unions than I am right now.

At a recent Union meeting I arrived ready to talk about the firestorm that is brewing around teachers and teachers unions however the old bait and switch occured. Instead of discussing strategies to combat the rampant disinformation being put out there, the union instead wanted to discuss a membership drive. They even flew in some guy from San Diego to lead the session. He had also just come from meeting with several other teachers unions throughout the state. At our tables they asked us to role play scenarios that would help us attract new members. I and many others sat dumbfounded.

Where of course we want the union to be strong, Rick Scott, Jeb Bush, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckenberg, none of whom were every teachers by the way, connected only by their vast fortunes, Michelle Rhee and several others already have teachers unions in their cross hairs and what at least my union doesn’t get, is that they are going to come after the teachers unions whether membership is sixty percent or one hundred percent. It doesn’t matter. Furthermore this group of super rich, with their marketing machines and cherry picked stats are way ahead of teachers in getting their message out and the message they are selling and that many people are buying is that the unions are bad for education and thus children and that our schools are staffed with lazy teachers unconcerned about their students education, just riding it out until they can retire. They are selling the bad teacher narrative and business for them has been good.

As I looked around the room my morale began to sink as I realized, now hopefully not to late, was the union just beginning to wake up and it dawned on me that the teachers unions were at least partly responsible or the hole teachers currently found themselves in; that they may have been one of the architects of their own destruction.

You see the union sat back and allowed standardized testing to be perverted into the end all be all of education.

The union shrugged its shoulders as districts began to gut discipline and insist teachers socially promote children without the skills they need to be successful at the next level.

Whatever, the union said, as districts began eliminating the teaching of trades, skills and the arts and started forcing all children regardless of aptitude, ability or desire into a one size fits all curriculum.

The union also turned a blind eye as teachers became inundated with mountains of paperwork that at best only had a peripheral relationship with students learning and teachers teaching.

The union turned its back as creativity and initiative were practically legislated out of teaching.

They did nothing about these problems despite the fact teachers all over the district and the nation new they were wrong and set back both kids and the profession. Instead the teachers unions were content to fight for a little extra time off here or a little extra money there, ignoring the real issues that teachers and students faced everyday in their classrooms; issues that have led directly to the abysmal state that our education system currently finds itself in. The teachers unions may have not created the problems above but through their omission they allowed them to fester and grow and now that the chickens have come home to roost, I thought to myself, all they are interested in is boosting membership!?!

For now the Teachers Unions seem content to sit back and allow the super rich and politicians, people for the most part who were never teachers (Michelle Rhee had a cup of coffee as a teacher) and never in schools; who themselves more often than not send their children to private schools that emphasize teachers experience, small classes and receiving a well rounded education with the arts, things they say aren’t important in public schools, tell their story, the bad teacher narative without an opposing voice. In doing so the unions are allowing them to further erode public education and the perception the public has of teachers. In the last year teachers have gone from respected and valued members of the community to borderline pariahs responsible for the ills of society. The Unions wanting to build membership first, is almost like somebody complimenting Nero’s fiddle playing as Rome burned down, sure the music might have been nice but the people at the time had slightly more pressing problems.

I get it though; the more members a union has the stronger it is and I want it to be strong too. It allows teachers to bargain collectively and it protects teachers right to due process, not bad teachers, as some would have the public believe. However every day the teachers unions and teachers sit back and allow the powers-that-be spread the myth of the bad teacher, every day we allow them to ignore factors like poverty, arguably the number one factor in determining a child’s success in school, every day we allow the public to be spoon fed the myths of charter schools which despite the fact they don’t have to play by many of the suffocating rules that public schools do, studies show for the most part perform no better and often perform worse, every day we allow the policy makers, parents, politicians, the students and the public, all equal shareholders in the problems we are now facing to get a pass, ignore their culpability in the problems we have, is one more day teachers get weaker and weaker, more marginalized, demonized and demoralized. Every day we wait for the teachers unions to wake up and fight back teachers’ get farther and farther behind.

Teachers, which I remind you, the vast majority of who are professional, work hard, sacrifice and do a good job. Teachers who deserve better from both their unions and those who would seek to belittle and marginalize them.

Why wear red to support education

From the SOS million teacher march Facebook page

A conversation has popped up questioning our choice of color, red, for Tuesday's showing of support for public education. It seems that some are concerned because red is the color that Tea-Partiers and Republicans wear. They are afraid that when Rick Scott looks out at a sea of red on Tuesday as he is being inaugurated as Florida's newest governor, he and the news cameras will see nothing but support. I understand this argument but do not agree with it.

First, why should we let those who disagree with our views control what color we wear to voice our opinion? Haven't we let others do the talking for us for far too long? Haven't they been able to pick the colors, the policies, the laws, and newspaper headlines long enough? I, for one, am tired of letting others make my decisions for me. It is time that normal, red-blooded Americans take back this country, and I see no better place to start than with the color red. Why should "they" get it? Because "they" say so? Because the media says so? Because history says so? I say it's time to rewrite history.

Red is the color my skin turns when I see reforms put into place that punish teachers and hurt students . Red is the color I bleed when injured, and right now I feel as if I've been being injured again and again as a teacher, a parent, and a citizen. When I see red I stop, just as those currently making the decisions about public education need to stop destroying it and stop leaving common Americans out of the decision-making process. Red is one of the colors I see when I look at our nation's flag and wonder, will there come a day when I am no longer proud to be an American? When party lines decide what color I will wear to support my cause, when public education turns into something that no teacher with morals can remain a part of, when being an American means doing what you're told instead of telling our government there's a better way to do it?

Red can stand for many things, some of which I would proudly stand to support and others which I would earnestly stand to argue against. Red can stand for many things because red is just a color. I, on the other hand, can only stand for what I believe in because I am a person. But I am just one person, and it will take many more to stand with me on January 4th and beyond to say we believe in public education, that it can be saved by fairly funding all schools instead of just some, that it can be saved by including all opinions instead of just a select few, that it can be saved by returning it to the public and letting us decide what is best for our children instead of laws being made that require teachers to teach to a test instead of to their students.

So I ask that you stand with me across America on Tuesday, January 4, 2011 wearing your brightest red and exclaiming in your strongest voices, "We support public education because we support ALL of America, the red, the white, and the blue!"

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/note.php?note_id=169631993079229&id=114683658572227

The Education Narrative

There is an education narrative being rammed down the people’s throats by the powers-that-be. Prominent citizens like Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee, Jeb Bush and their proxies are telling it. Like most snake oil salesmen they weave a smooth tale using cherry picked facts and figures and enticing sound bites blurbs and promises to get their way message across and in doing so have made teachers and their unions the boogey men of the story. Watch out parents, they shout, teachers and their dirty unions are robbing your children of a proper education and destroying America to boot

The truth however is a bit different. They are using these self serving stats and figures to try and convince, make that to try and scare Joe and Judy public into believing their story. If we could just get rid of five percent of the bad teachers we could have dramatic improvements but we can’t because the teachers unions sole reason for being is to protect bad teachers.

They whisper seductively into the publics ears, we want to give vouchers to all parents so they can have school choice but the teachers unions are against them too, that means teachers and their dirty unions are against parents having parents have the abi;ity to make decisons for their children's future and the money to help out too. We want to reward the top teachers with merit pay, it’s unbelievable that the unions are against more money for their best members but they are. Our education ranking in the world has also steadily dropped over the last quarter century, it must be because we have bad teachers. Why can’t we be more like Finland? On and on they go. Well friends not since a snake convinced a naive young girl to take a bite of an apple has their been such a masterful con job been perpetrated.

Until the recent recession you couldn’t give a teaching job away as there were always openings. Does anybody remember how they were advertising in Canada and India to find teachers, does anybody remember the push to get people from the business world to enter the classroom? I do. Of course we want our best and our brightest in the classroom but you know what else we want, we want the willing to be there too. Are there teachers that should be replaced, yes of course there are just like there are people in every profession that would serve them best by not being in them. Where is the call to get rid of the worse five percent of police officers firemen and doctors?

Unions however are not protecting bad teachers they are just making sure that all teachers get due process and in my home town that only kicks in after teachers have proved themselves for three years. That’s right at any time during a teachers first three years at the end of one they can be let go. But say we did somehow identify and get rid of the worse five percent, not the five percent the admin doesn’t like because they more often than the worse are the ones targeted for removal, they are the ones who suffer the consequences of speaking up or being innovative, who would we replace them with? Teaching is no longer a career for so many as less than half of all first year teachers make it to year five and the reasons they give for leaving the profession are rarely, the children or the money.

Another stat the ant-teacher mongers like to throw out is that education draws just under a quarter of our top graduates, which I guess means they are saying that the most of our kids are being taught by someone other than a teacher with a high college grade point average. First I am not sure if straight G.P.A. should be a factor but why is this a bad thing? Are 23 percent of the nations top grads entering law enforcement, or medicine or business or any other field? I don’t think so and if the stat is right that means over a fifth or our supposed best and brightest are choosing education over the thousands and thousands of other careers out there. But instead of celebrating that, it’s used as an indictment against the entire teachering profession. Teachers can’t win at the top, not enough of the best grads enter education and they can’t win at the bottom because the unions are protecting bad teachers.

Then the weavers of the story compare America’s education system to industrialized countries like Finland that have zoomed past us in the international education rankings. This to must be the teachers and their union’s fault they scream because they are protecting all those bad teachers and resisting reforms. They don’t tell you that if we factor out kids that live in poverty our ranking zooms all the way to second or about the countries they are comparing us to. Finland may have the best education system in the world and does draw the vast amount of its staff from the top third of college graduates but the ed deformers fail to mention that teachers in Finland are paid substantially more than their American counterparts, there classes are very small, they play a role in policy and curriculum and are one of the most highly unionized groups around. They fail to mention that Finland as a country decided to make a huge commitment to education where here we have decided to blame the teachers for the problems. Comparing teachers in both countries is not like comparing apples and oranges it’s like comparing apples to a five-course meal, with America being the apple.

What about vouchers the ed deformers ask? How can people who really care about children and education be against them after all they give parents the choice to do what they feel is best for their children. Sounds pretty seductive right, especially in Florida where they are promising parents five thousand five hundred dollars in education accounts. The problem is charter schools and their private school counter parts despite the fact that they can pick and choose who they allow in or keep and who don’t have to play by the same rules as their public school counter parts (having to have certifyed teachers, take standardized tests etc.) but haven’t been found to do any better. In fact study after study has said the vast majority do the same or worse. Furthermore the proposed universal voucher system in Florida will really be a welfare for the well off program costing the state 1.7 billion dollars as the five hundred thousand kids already in private school will now get this free money.

Then what about the consequences of siphoning much needed money and resources away from already cash starved public schools, where most of the children already attending them will still be attending them because the money in the education acounts won't cover the cost for most private schools. Now the children who remain in the public schools and their teachers will have even fewer resources. Furthermore we don’t get to pick our police, our fire department, our military. our meat inspectors and so many other things but for some reason the powers-that-be will have you believe it is better to abandon public schools. Isn’t a better answer to improve our public schools rather than dismantle them?

You want proof unions are against education reform those spinning the anti-teacher narrative ask. Well look at merit pay, how can they be against merit pay for the nations best teachers. The thing with merit pay is like school choice it sounds very enticing but like school choice often becomes no choice merit pay can be very misleading. The one-year I received merit pay I knew there were a dozen teachers better than me that didn’t. The one-year I didn’t receive merit pay I knew there were a dozen teachers worse than me that did. So often it comes down to whom the principal likes or whatever perception he or she has but worse than that it there is no relationship between those who receive merit pay and their children doing better. That’s right friends studies show kids whose teachers don’t receive merit pay do just as well as kids with teachers that do. Extra money is great but you know what would be better? Counselors and social workers to get to the root of the problems some of our children have and to provide wrap around services. So often why kids act up at school has nothing to do with schools. Legitimate after school and summer school programs, and busses, at my school we don't have after school detention and one of the reasons I was given was because there was no way for the kids to get home.

The anti-teacher narrative has more holes in it than a colander and the arguements seem self serving desighned to fill the pockets of some of thse making them but despite this somehow it is gaining traction and teachers have gone from valued members of society to borderline pariahs holding the country back. Teachers who I remind you, the vast majority of work many hundreds of un paid extra hours, donate their time and resources to other peoples children as often theirs wait in extended day or in front of the television why they take home papers to grade or lesson plans to write. Teachers who give so much and frankly throughout time have received so little have become the bad guys of the narrative while the policy makers, politicians, Joe and Judy public who want a caviar education system on a spam budget, absentee parents and children raised without a sense of respect or a willingness to work get a pass.

Furthermore it’s even worse than all that. Do you know where Mayor Bloomberg and Jeb Bush and many of those selling the anti teacher story sent their children? They sent them to private schools, which tout teachers experience and smaller class sizes as selling points, two things the ed deformers have recently been minimizing, a first year teacher can be as good (and cheaper) than a tenth year teacher and class size doesn't matter if the teacher is good enough, they say.

Jeb Bushes family and Bill Gates have made millions and stand to make millions more on the education reforms they are selling (standardized tests and virtual, computer based, schools). Also do you know how many of the people selling the teachers union bad, teachers substandard story have never been teachers or actually in classrooms? Of Florida Governor Rick Scott’s education team only one is a teacher and he works at a virtual school. Of the leaders mentioned in the opening only Michelle Rhee was a teacher and she came up through Teach for America which some have renamed Teach for a while because of the staggeringly high amount of participants who serve their two years and then leave. This is who is writing the education narrative, those that have had nothing to do with teaching and those that would seek to profit off of it.

Teachers are not against reform. Teachers unions are not in the business to protect bad teachers and there is not an epidemic of bad teachers destroying America. Get the story straight.