Today in Labor History-June 18

June 18, 1918 - The American Federation of Teachers issued a charter to the St. Paul Federation of Women Teachers Local 28, and then, one year later, the issued a charter to the men’s teachers’ local. Both locals participated in the first organized teachers’ strike in the nation, in 1946. (From Workday Minnesota)

Assassination of Kurt Wilckens in the Penitenciaría Nacional.

June 18, 1923 – A nationwide General Strike took place in Argentina in protest of the assassination of the anarchist Kurt Wilckens in his prison cell. Two workers were killed in the strike as police tried to raid the offices of the anarchist union (FORA (Fédération Ouvrière Régionale Argentine). (From the Daily Bleed)

June 18, 1954 – The US-CIA supported coup against Arbenz in Guatemala was completed.  (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History--April 15

April 15, 1834 –"Bloody Week" ended in Lyon, France, with a blood bath against insurgent silk workers. Several hundred were killed. (From The Daily Bleed)

A.Phillip Randolph

April 15, 1889 – Birth of A. Philip Randolph, organizer and president of the African-American Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. According to Randolph "The labor movement traditionally has been the haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, and the poor." Randolph believed in permanent social change, but not without the direct participation of those affected, including mass demonstrations.  Initially, no African-American newspapers supported his fight to unionize the Pullman porters. (From Workday Minnesota and The Daily Bleed)

April 15, 1902--A peasant uprising in Russia led to the ceasing of wealthy estates and the assassination of the head of the secret police (from the Daily Bleed).

April 15, 1908—L’Ecole Renovee, the Journal of the International League for the Rational Education of Children, debuted in Paris. Its founding members included Spanish anarchist educator Francisco Ferrer, creator of the first Modern Schools, as wells as Anatole France, Peter Kropotkin, and biologist Ernst Haekel.

April 15, 1915 – The IWW union Agricultural Workers Organization formed in Kansas City, Mo. (From the Unionist)

April 15, 1916  – The American Federation of Teachers was created in Chicago. (From the Unionist)

April 15, 1919 –  The first women-led union, the Telephone Operators Department of IBEW began what would ultimately become a successful six-day strike across New England. (From the Unionist)

Sacco & Vanzetti

 April 15, 1920 – Two men rob and kill Frederick Parmenter & Alessandro Berardelli, employees of the Slater & Morrill Shoe Company, in South Braintree, Massachusetts, making off with the $15,776.51 payroll they were carrying. The anarchists Sacco & Vanzetti ultimately were blamed for the robbery, convicted by a kangaroo court and executed. (From The Daily Bleed)

April 15, 1934 – Transport Workers Union was founded. (From the Unionist) 

April 15, 1947--Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play in the Major Leagues in the modern era. African Americans had played in the 19th century, before the league had become segregated. (From Workday Minnesota)

April 15, 1951 – The first strike wave against fascist Spain began in the Basque country and spread to Catalonia. Over 100,000 workers from a number of different industries & cities defied the government's order to return to work and risked prison or death. (From The Daily Bleed)

April 15, 1961--CIA arrived at the Bay of Pigs, Cuba, in order to bring unions and workers' rights to the so-called Workers' Paradise.

April 15, 1969--Thousands of welfare recipients marched in New York City to protest cuts to their benefits (from the Daily Bleed).

April 15, 1981--Guatemalan soldiers murdered 69 people in Quiche province (from the Daily Bleed).

April 15, 1982--Guatemalan soldiers murdered 100 children and 73 women in Baja Verapaz (from the Daily Bleed).

Weingarten Takes a Dive for Capitalism

Last week, Valarie Strauss (Answer Sheet) interviewed American Federation of Teachers (AFT) boss Randi Weingarten about why she went to Philadelphia and got arrested. Weingarten correctly noted that the people of Philadelphia, who had asked for a one-year moratorium on school closures, have been repeatedly ignored by the mayor. She also correctly pointed out that the push to close the schools is largely the initiative of the mayor, the city’s School Reform Commission (SRC) and an outside consulting firm, Boston Consulting Group (BCG). “When the powers that be ignore you, and dismiss you,” she told Strauss, “then you have no other choice than to resort to civil disobedience to confront an immoral act.”

The problem is that there is nothing immoral about it. While the majority of schools to be closed are in low income communities of color, the motivation to close them is not wicked, sinful, nor is the goal to harm poor black kids. Rather, the proponents are capitalists exploiting an essentially legal method to crush the Philadelphia teachers union and transfer public K-12 tax dollars to private charters and online schools. Calling it an immoral act merely obfuscates the financial motives (and legal methods) behind it, undermining teachers’, parents’ and students’ ability to successfully resist it.

Another problem is that a single arrest at one high profile public meeting is essentially just a publicity stunt. It is not an organized or effective strategy for reversing a large-scale public giveaway to private business.

One justification for the closures is the school district’s perennial budget problems. Yet the district voted to spend $1.4 million to hire BCG, according to Workers World. BCG Partner Sanjeev Midha is a trustee for KIPP Philadelphia (an online charter school) and BCG members serve on numerous other KIPP boards, as well. Not surprisingly, BCG promotes online education and stands to profit handsomely from the closures by offering online courses to students displaced by the closures.

Other BCG alumni include Mitt Romney, Benjamin Netanyahu, hedge fund manager John Paulson, and GE CEO Jeff Immelt, as well as hedge fund manager and Democrats for Education Reform[er] Whitney Tilson—all cheerleaders for charter schools and teachers’ union-busting. SRC members include Feather Houstoun, a former president of the William Penn Foundation (which donated additional money to hire BCG) and Pedro Ramos, who currently sits on the board of the United Way (which also coughed up funds to hire BCG).

BCG was also hired by the Transition Planning Committee (TPC) of Memphis to oversee their mass transfer of students out of the public school system and into private charter schools and has been involved in the post-Katrina plundering of the New Orleans school system, as well as pro-charter and anti-teachers’ union activities in Cleveland, Seattle, Chicago and Dallas. According to Diane Ravitch, their goal in Memphis is to increase charter enrollment from 4% to 19% of all students by 2016, which will effectively transfer $212 million from the public school budget to private charter schools.

Union-Sanctioned Union-Busting

If the school closures go through, the district will lose dozens union jobs. According, to National Educators Association president Dennis Van Roekel, the NEA, alone, has lost 150,000 unionized teaching jobs over the last three years. The AFT has lost thousands, more. If Weingarten wants to save her own job (and her more than $600,000 per year income) she needs to maintain membership levels, not let them shrink further. However, to do this requires mobilizing Philadelphia’s teachers, who are affiliated with the AFT, to do far more than protest at school board meetings. They need to engage in concerted and ongoing job actions and civil disobedience, something neither Weingarten nor any other major union leader wants to do.

The paradox is that while union bosses depend on their members’ dues to pay their salaries, they depend on the good graces of the ruling elite to exist in the first place, graces that have been granted to them in exchange for keeping the system running smoothly. The quid pro quo is that if they keep their members quiescent and on the job, the unions are tolerated and minor concessions are sometimes granted them. The bosses will even tolerate the occasional angry rant, arrest or otherwise uncivilized act by union leaders if it helps them to keep the rabble in line. Consequently, union leaders have been relying more and more on legal and political action than on strikes and other job actions, a strategy that has, at best, merely kept the decline in union membership from occurring any faster than it has. An occasional high profile arrest, while doing nothing to improve teachers’ job security, working conditions or compensation, does help boost union bosses’ street credibility by making them look like tough, self-sacrificing fighters, rather than parasites.

 
In order to keep members in line (and maintain the good graces of the ruling elite), union leaders need to convince the rank and file that alternatives to strikes and other job actions will be effective. In the case of the Wisconsin state house occupation, the unions argued that they could best reverse their state’s union-busting legislation at the ballot box and convinced everyone to go home.

In the case of Philadelphia’s school closings, Weingarten has similarly distorted the issue, ignoring the impact on job security and collective bargaining power and focusing on political corruption. She described events in Philadelphia as a strong “statement” that the mayor, governor and SRC are not on the side of the people. In other words, the school closures are an attack on democracy (an immoral act?)—a politically popular concept that is likely to appeal to community members’ sense of patriotism, but not one that is likely to save teachers’ jobs or stop the closures. Indeed, if the problem is merely the product of bad politics, as she has implied, then the solution is supposedly to fight back in the political arena, thus squelching any movement for workplace actions.

Why Weingarten Got Arrested

This week, Valarie Strauss (Answer Sheet) interviewed American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten about why she went to Philadelphia and got arrested. Weingarten correctly noted that the people of Philadelphia, who had asked for a one-year moratorium on school closures, have been repeatedly ignored by the mayor. She also correctly pointed out that the push to close the schools is largely the initiative of the mayor, governor, the city’s School Reform Commission (SRC) and an outside consulting firm, Boston Consulting Group (BCG). “When the powers that be ignore you, and dismiss you,” she told Strauss, “then you have no other choice than to resort to civil disobedience to confront an immoral act.”

What Weingarten did not say was why they want to close dozens of schools (i.e., open up space for private charter schools to set up shop) or whether she was planning on engaging in ongoing civil disobedience to achieve her goals. The fact is that a single arrest at one high profile public meeting is nothing more than a publicity stunt. It is not an organized or effective strategy for reversing a large-scale public giveaway to private business.

One justification for the closures is the school district’s perennial budget problems. Yet the district voted to spend $1.4 million to hire BCG, according to Workers World. BCG Partner Sanjeev Midha is a trustee for KIPP Philadelphia (an online charter school). Not surprisingly, BCG promotes online education. Other BCG alumni include Mitt Romney, Benjamin Netanyahu, hedge fund manager John Paulson, and GE CEO Jeff Immelt. SRC members include Feather Houstoun, a former president of the William Penn Foundation (which donated additional money to hire BCG) and Pedro Ramos, who currently sits on the board of the United Way (which also coughed up funds to hire BCG).

If the school closures go through, the district will lose dozens union jobs. According, to National Educators Association president Dennis Van Roekel, the NEA, alone, has lost 150,000 unionized teaching jobs over the last three years. The AFT has no doubt lost thousands, as well. If Weingarten wants to save her own job (and her more than $600,000 per year income) she needs to maintain membership levels, not let them shrink further. However, to do this requires mobilizing Philadelphia’s teachers, who are affiliated with the AFT, to do far more than protest at school board meetings. They need to engage in concerted and ongoing job actions and civil disobedience, something neither Weingarten nor any other major union leader wants to do.

The paradox is that while union bosses depend on their members’ dues to pay their salaries, they depend on the good graces of the ruling elite to exist at all, graces that have been granted to them in exchange for keeping the system running smoothly. The quid pro quo is that if they keep their members quiescent and on the job, the unions are tolerated and minor concessions are sometimes granted them. The bosses will even tolerate the occasional angry rant, arrest or otherwise uncivilized act by union leaders if it helps them to keep the rabble in line. Consequently, union leaders have been relying more and more on legal and political action than on strikes and other job actions, a strategy that has, at best, merely kept the decline in union membership from occurring any faster than it has.

 
Weingarten described her action in Philadelphia as a strong “statement” that the mayor, governor and SRC are not on the side of the people. In other words, the school closures are an attack on democracy, which is a politically popular concept, but not one that is likely to save teachers’ jobs. If the problem is merely the product of bad politics, as she has implied, then the solution is supposedly to fight back in the political arena, thus squelching any movement for workplace actions. 

Ultimately, Weingarten's got arrested because she needed to look tough to her constituents. It was a relatively painless and cheap way to win points among parents and teachers, but not an effective strategy for ending the school closures or saving union jobs.

The AFT is Finally Fighting Testing (Not)

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is expanding its drive “against excessive testing” with a pithy and pathetic new campaign called “Learning Is More Than a Test Score.”

AFT President Randi Weingarten said the campaign is intended to de-emphasize testing and bring back arts and physical education. However, according to the Washington Examiner, she conceded (as she has always done) that testing has a crucial role to play. Indeed, Weingarten has supported legislation and helped broker contracts with school districts that promote the use of student test data to evaluate teachers (see here, here, here, here and here).

The AFT is not really opposed to high stakes tests. The name of the campaign, “Learning is More Than a Test Score,” implies that the union accepts the tests as one aspect of learning, while its reference to “excessive” testing implies that it simply wants less of it. Either way, the union has accepted the inaccurate and discredited assertion that high stakes tests improve learning outcomes and capitulated to the corporate education “reformers” attempt to rationalize and profit from public education (i.e., testing is big business for the test and textbook publishers).

From a purely selfish perspective (the only perspective a fighting union should take since its purpose is supposedly to improve the working and living conditions of its members), all high stakes tests should be opposed since they can only tell us how well students answer multiple choice questions compared with their peers, under timed and stressful conditions—not where, when or how they learned to do this. The fact that test scores (and student achievement) correlate more strongly with students’ socioeconomic backgrounds than with teaching ability (see here, here and here) should draw into question their validity as a measure of teacher skill in the classroom. Furthermore, the data show that the tests cannot an accurately or consistently measure performance for the majority of teachers and may only be accurate for those at the extremes, and only if averaged out over three years—something that is rarely done.

However, even from the perspective of a public servant (the perspective usually taken by the unions, since they are terrified of being accused of putting their own wellbeing above that of their students), the tests should be opposed. Test administration takes considerable class time away from actual learning (as much as 2-6 weeks, depending on the school). The drastic consequences for schools compels many to sacrifice even more class time for test preparation, sometimes even to the extent of slashing entire programs (e.g., physical education, art, music, science). The tests are stressful and anxiety-provoking for children, yet serve no educational purpose (i.e., children cannot learn anything useful from the tests). They also make school seem even more boring and meaningless, contributing to students’ sense of alienation from learning and disdain for school.

Even from a taxpayers’ perspective all tests should be opposed, as they cost billions of dollars and suck revenue out of the classroom, where it can benefit children, handing it over to test and textbook publishers. In California, alone, it is estimated that the new Common Core Standards (CCS) exams will cost $1 billion to implement (most of it going toward new books, test design, and computers and software to administer the tests). Yet there is no evidence that any high stakes standardized test has improved learning.

Indeed, the real impetus behind the testing mania is corporate profits, not improving the learning or wellbeing of children. In California, where $20 billion has been slashed from K-12 education over the past 4 years, the state Board of Education voted to adopt the CCS two years ago, knowing even then that it would cost more than $1 billion and that the state would have to borrow or slash further to get the money. Yet California already had among the toughest standards in the nation. There was no educational benefit from changing the standards, no potential for it to significantly improve learning, graduation rates or the achievement gap.

To a rational, fiscally conservative person, no need plus no money should have equaled no new test. Instead, heavy lobbying by the educational publishers convinced the board to spend money it did not have on a test it did not need, thus further impoverishing California’s schools. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, with Governor Jerry Brown’s supposedly balanced budget and promise not to make any further cuts in K-12 funding. (Proposition 30, while doing nothing to restore the $20 billion cut over the past 4 years, was supposed to hold K-12 funding steady, but it is not yet clear whether the cost of CCS has been factored in).

More is Less?

Rather than opposing more testing, AFT and NEA have come out in support of CCS (see here), arguing that the CCS tests will be better and more meaningful than the previous ones, even though the tests have not yet been created and it is impossible to know how they might differ. By most accounts, though, the new CCS exams will not significantly decrease the amount of class time lost to testing, anxiety for children, pressure on schools to improve at all costs, or cuts to “nonacademic” programs.

To be fair, the AFT has made a statement in support of Seattle’s Garfield High School teachers who are boycotting Washington’s MAP test. This is a unique and positive step, as neither the AFT nor the NEA have supported this kind of teacher civil disobedience in the past. The unions’ historical perspective has been that this is tantamount to insubordination and failure to fulfill one’s job responsibilities—thus administrators would be justified in disciplining them. On the other hand, the AFT is not providing any material, logistical or tangible support, nor are they promoting similar boycotts or civil disobedience elsewhere—actions that would be necessary if they really want to see an end to the testing mania.

Teachers are Terrorists and Corporate Shills

Politicians are notorious for saying stupid, embarrassing and downright insulting and hurtful things in the quest to promote their political agendas. Michael Bloomberg’s recent comparison of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) to the National Rifle Association (NRA) ranks right up there with some of the stupidest—but here are a few other ditties (just in case you missed them):

Teachers Unions are Terrorist Organizations

In 2004, Education Secretary Rod Paige called the nation's largest teachers union, the National Education Association (NEA), a "terrorist organization" during a White House meeting with state governors.

Schools and Universities Should Be Blown Up

Since the teachers are a bunch of terrorists, it is justifiable to blow up the places where they hang. In line with this sort of thinking, right-wing education privatization cheerleader and Fordham Foundation President Chester E. Finn Jr. said that the best way to reform public education is to “Blow it up and start over,” while his counterpart, Reid Lyon, former Chief of Child Development and Behavior Branch at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, suggested we blow up the teachers’ colleges.

Deadly Disasters are Great for Capitalism (Er, Children)

Current Education Secretary Arne Duncan said that Katrina was the best thing that could have happened to the New Orleans schools. What he meant was that disasters are fantastic ways to rally popular support for otherwise unpopular ideas, in this case, a massive scheme to convert the entire district to charter schools and destroy the unions.71% of New Orleans children are now attending charter schools, the highest rate in the nation. All employees, including teachers and custodians, were fired and forced to reapply, and all union contracts were canceled. Many of the unionized teachers were replaced by Teach For America interns.

Michael Bloomberg: Teachers Unions are Like the NRA

“It’s typical of Congress, it’s typical of unions, it’s typical of companies, I guess, where a small group is really carrying the ball and the others aren’t necessarily in agreement. . . The N.R.A. is another place where the membership, if you do the polling, doesn’t agree with the leadership.” (NY Times)

The comparison is grotesque and offensive because it likens teachers—who see themselves as defenders of childhood innocence and purity (e.g., Sandy Hook) to gun nuts and corporate shills—who are seen by many as the defenders of psychotic, murderous rampages (e.g., Sandy Hook). Yet if we ignore the offensiveness of Bloomberg’s statement, perhaps substitute AMA or Bar Association for NRA, one can see that there is some truth to Bloomberg’s comments. Most unions are like these organizations in that they invest heavily in lobbying, buying politicians and attempting to buy legislation. It is true that rank and file union members are often alienated from and disagree with their leadership. And it is true that the leadership of unions often put their own needs, interests and agenda above those of their members.

11,000 Educators Fired in December

Clean Up Your Act Teachers or You're Out! (Image from Flickr, by  emilydickensonridesabmx)

The Great Recession has been officially over for more than three years, but the plunder of the public sector and middle class wealth continues. According to the Department of Labor, more than 13,000 public sector workers were laid off in December, more than 11,000 of whom were teachers or other school employees (see WSWS).

This is unusual. Typically, teacher layoff notices go out in February or March in anticipation of coming budget shortfalls, giving teachers the summer to look for work (or to be rehired, as often occurs when revenue picks up). Mid-year layoffs are an indication just how desperate many school districts are, with states continuing to have large deficits and the feds continuing to do nothing about it.

Indeed, by ignoring the problem, state and federal governments facilitate the deterioration of public education, making it easier to argue that it is broken beyond repair, or that it can only be repaired through privatization. Since 2008, the private sector has hired about 725,000 new workers, while the public sector has lost almost the same number of jobs (again, see WSWS)—a statistic that is largely due to the divestment of tax dollars from the public sector. Obama, despite receiving early endorsements and massive support from the NEA and AFT, has made no indication that he intends to help struggling school districts.

Many cities are shuttering their schools and selling off their facilities or the operation of their schools to private for-profit education management organizations (EMOs). According to the WSWS, Philadelphia plans to close 36 schools. Detroit has closed dozens of schools over the past few years, with former financial manager Robert Bobb attempting to close half the city’s schools in 2011. Many of the closed schools were sold or rented to private charter school operators. Recently, secret leaked documents revealed that Chicago has been planning to close or consolidate as many as 95 schools, with many of them going to private charter operators. New Orleans already has 70% of its students attending charter schools.

As schools close and teachers are let go, the teachers unions lose members and strength, something they seem unwilling or unable to fight. In fact, the social contract union leaders have made with the bosses to keep their members on the job at all costs (not to mention the no-strike clauses in many of their contracts and state prohibitions against public sector strikes) has effectively stymied the unions and is leading to their own downfall. The laid off teachers, however, are free to sell their labor to the highest bidder—Increasingly nonunionized private charter school operators that pay less and require far more work than the traditional public schools.

Will Bar Exam Turn Teachers Into Shysters?

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has launched a new initiative to raise entry standards for teacher-preparation programs, calling it a “bar exam” for teachers. My first thought on hearing the news was that they were trying to turn us into shysters, but then I remembered that we are already considered disreputable and unscrupulous by much of the public.

What's black and tan and looks good around a teacher's neck? A doberman!

So how will the bar exam change matters?

The AFT and its bigger sister, the National Education Association (NEA) have both been tripping over each other to prove to the public that they accept and intend to remedy every criticism made against teachers and their unions. This has included a tacit acceptance of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and its testing mania, as well as evaluation reform and Value-Added models for assessing teachers.

So when the free market “reformists” insisted that there were too many incompetent teachers out there, it was only natural that the teachers’ two largest unions should jump to defend their members by conceding that it has just been too damned easy to become a teacher up until now, and new, more stringent entry requirements were necessary to protect our precious children.

Of course there are significant differences between lawyers and teachers which make this metaphor just plain silly.

For one, lawyers stand to make anywhere from two to several hundred times more than teachers, thus providing the incentive to spend thousands of dollars on tutoring and training courses to help them pass their tough bar exam. With teacher pay abysmally low and working conditions deteriorating daily, why should anyone want to invest the time and money into a professional teaching degree, as well as training for the tougher new test, when it could cost them years of debt and all the stress and anxiety that accompany the job?

Another consideration is that it costs society little if an aspiring law student fails the bar exam. Even if s/he retakes the exam and repeatedly fails it, it simply means one less lawyer. Last I heard, there was no shortage of lawyers, particularly if one has the money to hire one. But a “bar exam” for teachers implies lots of failure, which could easily translate into a significant teacher shortage. The number of students will not magically decline in unison, so class sizes will necessarily rise, while many students will find themselves being taught by non-credentialed, long-term substitutes. Thus, rather than improving the quality of teachers for greater numbers of students, a “bar exam” for teachers could wind up causing more students to have mediocre or lousy teachers and greater competition for help from the good teachers.

Of course, my criticisms are only valid if the AFT’s new exams truly are as difficult as actual state bar exams, which can have failure rates as high as 30-50% (see here and here). While it remains to be seen how challenging these exams will be, the AFT is also calling for teaching candidates to have 3.0 GPAs and higher scores on college entrance exams, in order to get into teaching programs in the first place. This could significantly reduce the number of people eligible for credential programs, or encourage them to get their undergraduate degrees from degree mills and less rigorous universities. This would further reduce the number of high quality entry level teachers.

AFT President Randi Weingarten, a woman who earns over $600,000 year NOT working the classroom, said, "It's time to do away with a common rite of passage into the teaching profession—whereby newly minted teachers are tossed the keys to their classrooms, expected to figure things out, and left to see if they and their students sink or swim.” (From Ed Week)

Her comments show a great deal of ignorance and disdain for teachers who act as mentors and master teachers to help novice teachers find their feet and grow professionally. Indeed, there is only so much a teaching candidate can gain from a university classroom—the rest must be learned in front of a K-12 classroom, through student teaching, peer observations and actual practice. It is absurd to think that any teaching program or high stakes test can produce a cadre of perfectly molded teacher droids.

Could more stringent requirements work in the favor of existing teachers? If the AFT’s proposed reforms are adopted, it would almost certainly create a teacher shortage. Theoretically, this could drive demands for higher wages, as districts compete more aggressively for fewer qualified applicants. In reality, however, it seems unlikely that districts, states or the federal government will pony up the money to pay teachers enough to make the new requirements worth their trouble. If budgets continue to be anemic, teachers’ salaries are most likely to remain stagnant, regardless of any future shortage.

The AFT’s proposal is yet another lousy solution to an imaginary problem. Sure, beginning teachers say they feel unprepared to start teaching. However, this is not because they didn’t have to pass a tough test. It is because keeping a bunch of kids focused, motivated and interested in the subject matter is no easy task. Getting them to behave and show respect for you and themselves is equally challenging. No exam can prepare a teacher adequately for this.

On the other hand, one might wonder why a union is focusing on making it tougher to become a member. Isn’t the job of unions to protect the interests of their members? Does the AFT believe that teachers who have jumped all these new hurdles and made it as teachers will somehow win the respect of Bill Gates and Michelle Rhee, not to mention comfortable salaries and better funding and support for the classroom needs?

No amount of obsequiousness and self-blame will get the free market education reformers to back off, give up their privatization schemes, or cease their union busting.

Teachers Unions are Failing Kids AND Teachers

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Chip Johnson’s recent hit piece in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Oakland Teachers Failed Kids,” accused the Oakland Educators Association (OEA) of putting the interests of teachers above kids and cheating them out of millions in federal  Race to the Top (RttT) funds by refusing to accept student test scores (also known as Value Added Measures, or VAM) as a part of teacher evaluations.

If Johnson was really interested in better education funding, he would redirect his anger from the teachers, who have no direct control over the matter, to the legislature, which has cut over $20 billion from K-12 education over the last 4 years. This is the main reason why the feds feel they can blackmail teachers into accepting “reforms” that are detrimental to students, as well as teachers. If he wants to blame partisans, he should look to the state’s 87 billionaires (or its hundreds of thousands of millionaires) who have lobbied to get their tax rates down to record low levels; or the oil companies, which pay lower royalties here than in Alaska or Texas; or the prison guards union, which has succeeded in redirecting state revenue from education to prisons, with a resulting  436% increase in prison spending since over the past 30 years. (For more on prison guards’ impact on education, please see “Lack of School-to-Prison Pipeline.”)

Student Test Score Data is Useless and Detrimental to Student Wellbeing

If he wants greater accountability, he is also barking up the wrong tree.  VAM is inconsistent and unreliable except for teachers at the extremes and only if averaged over three years. (For more on VAM, see here, here and here). In practice, test scores are rarely averaged over three years. Most districts want evaluations every two years and some are moving toward yearly evaluations, thus invalidating the data for all teachers. Yet, even if they are averaged over three years, the data would still be meaningless for the vast majority of teachers who fall somewhere in the middle, away from the extremes. While VAM could still help weed out the very worst teachers, it would likely lead to many good teachers losing their jobs and many mediocre ones slipping through the cracks. The consequence for students could be a net decrease in good teachers and a net increase in mediocre ones because of all the false positives and false negatives.

Johnson is dead wrong in his assertion that teachers are harming students by opposing VAM. The use of student test data to evaluate teachers is terrible for students precisely because it does nothing to improve teacher quality, while potentially forcing many good teachers out of the profession. Furthermore, it encourages the continued use of high stakes standardized exams, which take away class time from real learning, encourage teaching to the test, and unnecessarily increase the stress and anxiety children already face at school.

Teachers Unions are Complicit in the Proliferation of High Stakes Tests and VAM

The teachers’ unions, however, ARE hurting students as well as teachers by their inability to effectively resist free market “reforms” like VAM.

Let’s start with the obvious. The free market “reformers” are winning the propaganda battle: large segments of the public support VAM and it has been an easy sell. Their claim that student test scores will rise with good teaching and remain stagnant or decline with bad teaching not only appears self-evident, but it supports the popular belief in meritocracy. Cheerleading for the merits of VAM has become so ubiquitous in the press and among politicians that it is now considered common sense by much of the public. As a result, the “reformers” have easily pushed it through in districts throughout the nation, including the three largest school districts, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

The unions have done little to counter this. On the contrary, whenever the “reformers” invent a problem, the unions typically agree with their premises, and quibble over the solutions. A case in point is evaluation reform. Both the NEA and the AFT have jumped on the bandwagon, joining right wing critics in their proclamations that the evaluation system is broken. Many have even consented to the use of VAM, including most recently the CTU, in Chicago, and UTLA, in Los Angeles. The difference is that the unions also want some say in the matter. For example, many are demanding that the new evaluation systems provide teachers with meaningful data that can be used to improve their practice. Ironically, VAM cannot do this, while existing internal assessments (e.g., unit tests, essays, lab reports) are already being used this way by teachers. Likewise, evaluators observing classroom practice could provide useful feedback, but they typically do not because they are overbooked, undertrained and biased.

Digging Their Own Graves

This has been a mistake for the unions both strategically and in terms of the propaganda battle. Rather than educating the public about how devastating VAM and high stakes testing are to children and working to abolish them, union acquiescence sends the message that teachers support them. This only serves to solidify public support for both VAM and accountability through testing.

It also sends the message to the “reformers” that the unions are easily bamboozled. All you have to do is cry “the sky is falling and our precious children will be hurt by the fallout” and teachers will go on the defensive, bitch and moan, and then accept some slightly watered down version of the “reform.” This only encourages the “reformers” to continue with their agenda of slashing public education funding, destroying the unions, and giving away as much of the system as possible to private entrepreneurs.

What a Good Evaluation System Could Look Like

Since VAM cannot accurately assess teacher quality, nor provide useful feedback to help improve their practice, the unions should refuse to accept it in any form. What they should be demanding is a sufficiently-funded system of well-trained outside evaluators (not administrators) who observe teachers blindly (i.e., they do not know the teacher and have no stake in the school or district) and often enough to be able to make valid assessments and critiques. The system should be primarily remedial, not punitive—that is, the goal should be to provide the feedback and support necessary to help improve struggling teachers who want to remain in the classroom, while providing a fair and accountable system for removing teachers who are incapable of or uninterested in doing their job correctly. This would not only help prevent future teacher shortages, it would help all teachers grow and it would improve their morale—an important component of a healthy, collaborative learning environment for children.

A Winning Strategy?

In a sane and rational society, the arguments against VAM would be sufficient to end debate and consign VAM to the dustbin of history. The problem is that few people are aware of these facts, something that could easily be rectified with an effective, large scale public outreach campaign. Unfortunately, the teachers unions have been asleep at the wheel, allowing the free market education “reformers” to frame the debate and then impose their will, leaving the unions in the weak position of constantly having to constantly fight back.

Such campaigns are not cheap, but the teachers’ unions have relatively large war chests and could afford it if they chose to use their vast resources in this way. Instead, they spend the lion’s share of their resources on lobbyists and political campaigns which have done little to stem the decline in education funding and student services, or to educate the public about the implications of the various snake oil “reforms”  they are being sold.