AFT REPORTS: 'What we're seeing in Detroit, Philadelphia and Cleveland is nothing less than the controlled demolition of public education...' Can the American Federation of Teachers Meet the Challenge?
[Editor's note: Socialist worker (socialistworker.org) published the following analysis on its website just prior to the beginning of the national convention of the American Federation of Teachers in Detroit this weekend. Lee Sustar looks at the attacks facing the American Federation of Teachers as union delegates gather in Detroit for the organization's biannual convention. Article originally published by the International Socialist Organization, SocialistWorker.org, under a Creative Commons (by-nc-nd 3.0) [29] license, and this article is reprinted with permission.]
AS DELEGATES from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) gather in Detroit for their convention July 27-30, it's hard to keep up with the escalating attacks on teachers and public education.
America's most politically wired mayor, Rahm Emanuel, is taking aim at the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) in a contract showdown [1] over Emanuel's effort to make teachers work much longer for less. Los Angeles teachers are bracing for their third straight year of pay cuts [2] to try and avert some layoffs. In Philadelphia, officials are trying tobreak up the city's school district into "networks" run by private groups, which will effectively destroy centralized collective bargaining for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, an AFT affiliate. In Cleveland, the AFT local union accepted a contract that allows for layoffs based on evaluations rather than seniority [3].
Then there's the host city for the AFT gathering, where the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) is being hit with the continuation of a 10 percent pay cut, cutbacks in maternity and sick leave and other takeaways [4] in a contract imposed by an emergency financial manager empowered by state law to tear up union collective bargaining agreements. These attacks come after the union agreed to previous rounds of concessions [5] that forced Detroit teachers to defer part of their pay until they retire or leave the district.
What we're seeing in Detroit, Philadelphia and Cleveland is nothing less than the controlled demolition of public education. And the response of the union most affected by these attacks, the AFT, is...what, exactly?
Certainly the union has sounded the alarm when faced with some of the more egregious attacks, and AFT President Randi Weingarten talked tough at a May 23 Chicago Teachers Union rally.
Yet the AFT leader kept quiet when the Philadelphia school carve-up was announced. And when members of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) voted to accept an agreement that gave them unpaid furlough days in exchange for averting some layoffs, Weingarten was quick to issue a statement of support [6].
"UTLA members agreed to forego up to 10 days of pay to ensure that as many of their colleagues as possible stayed in the classroom and off the unemployment line," she said. Weingarten, however, failed to mention that LA teachers--whose union is jointly affiliated with the AFT and the National Education Association--also took pay cuts in the previous two years, but still haven't seen all the promised jobs return.
Then came the Cleveland deal, in which the local union agreed to allow layoffs based on performance evaluations [7]--which are based on student test scores--rather than seniority. Weingarten trumpeted the deal as a model of collaboration. In fact, Weingarten began pushing the Cleveland teachers to accept evaluations based on test scores more than two years ago [8]. It was the union, not management, that proposed axing traditional job protections, Weingarten said, "breaking a significant logjam over the tenure issue."
In fact, the AFT surrendered far more in the Cleveland deal. The union had already agreed in April to the so-called Cleveland Transformation Plan [9], which gives "the district greater flexibility to close underperforming schools and to partner with charter schools," Crain's reported. "It also would give school principals greater responsibility over budgeting and hiring." In other words, principals will be empowered to target teachers they view as troublemakers.
After rejecting an initial tentative agreement [10] because of its harsh economic impact, Cleveland teachers voted to accept a contract with somewhat better terms on pay and benefits, but that accepts the "transformation" plan. Once contract terms were settled, the local union joined the school district and Republican Gov. John Kasich--who last year tried to gut collective bargaining for public-sector workers--to back legislation that will enforce Cleveland's school "reform."
In an article headlined "A School Fix Without a Fight," [11] the Wall Street Journal highlighted the significance of the union's concessions:
The overhaul, signed into law by Gov. John Kasich this month, will allow the district to link teachers' pay, in part, to student test scores, and to lay off teachers based on performance instead of seniority. It will also let the district fire teachers after two years of poor performance, based in part on test scores.
The district will become the only one in Ohio to share local tax dollars with charter schools — public schools run by outside entities that are now funded by state and federal money — and will have more say in who gets to operate those schools.
In other words, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District will see tax dollars — and student enrollment — shift toward nonunion charter schools run by unaccountable private organizations. The Cleveland Teachers Union and the AFT, confronted with a head-on assault on public education, surrendered without a battle.
THE AFT's concessions in Cleveland are only the latest example of a policy of collaboration in which the union sheds long-established principles--like the defense of tenure and opposition to merit pay--in the hope of staving off even more aggressive "reforms."
The Obama administration accelerated those attacks since 2009 through the Race to the Top program [12], which offered $4.3 billion in grants to states on the condition that they passed legislation lifting caps on charter schools, weakening teacher job protections, tying teacher evaluations to student test scores and imposing merit pay. But that didn't stop the AFT from making an early endorsement of President Barack Obama in his campaign for re-election.
Weingarten's strategy: Look to the Democrats for political cover while pre-empting the corporate reformers by taking the initiative in making contract concessions in order to keep the union's proverbial seat at the table.
That was the idea behind the 2009 teachers' union contract in New Haven, Conn., which Weingarten called "a model or a template." Under that agreement, as the Wall Street Journal put it [13], school officials have greater ability to close schools while imposing "tough performance evaluations and fewer job protections for bad teachers." Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who made his reputation by implementing a corporate-driven reform agenda as head of Chicago schools [14], cheered the deal: "This shows a willingness to go into areas that used to be seen as untouchable."
Weingarten also promoted similar "reform" contracts with AFT locals in Pittsburgh and Hillsborough County, Fla., [15] that allows teachers to opt out of tenure — job security — if they agree to merit pay. Microsoft founder Bill Gates' foundation helped bankroll both efforts. Private money was even used to fund salary increases in a similar merit pay scheme for teachers in Washington, D.C. [16], in an agreement that Weingarten helped negotiate.
Not surprisingly, many AFT members are appalled at the union's willingness to give up job protections and the principle of equal pay for equal work. That's why in 2010, members of the Baltimore Teachers Union initially rejected a contract [17] that embraced merit pay and undermined job security. Weingarten had the traditional response of union bureaucrats out to sell a lousy contract to a rebellious rank and file: Vote until you get it right. Staffers from AFT headquarters in Washington traveled the 40 miles to Baltimore and arm-twisted union members into accepting the deal in a second ballot.
Now the disastrous results are in. In the midst of the 2012 school year, some 60 percent of Baltimore teachers received unsatisfactory ratings [18], which meant that they got no raise, were placed on a "performance improvement plan" (PIP) and are subject to dismissal.
"We have more people on PIPs, and we're proud of it," said Tisha Edwards, chief of staff for Baltimore schools. "We're not saying we're going to fire everybody, but we're using PIPs the way they were supposed to be used, but never were: to communicate where we need to develop, and get better about documenting the development of our people."
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WEINGARTEN ISN'T embarrassed by this abandonment of the bedrock positions of the union. On the contrary, at the 2010 AFT convention, she made Bill Gates the keynote speaker. "We're not going to wait and oppose--we're going to lead and propose," she said of the reform agenda in her opening speech to delegates [19].
The problem is that by trying to maintain collaboration with politicians and education officials hell-bent on breaking teachers' union power, the AFT is moving further and further to the right to accommodate them, as evidenced by the union support for the "transformation" plan in Cleveland. And the union has so far been silent on the Los Angeles Unified School District's plan to give a company run by charter school pioneer Steve Barr [20] control of schools, which would be operated as "hybrids" of traditional and charter schools--another major shift of taxpayer money and students to unaccountable outside entities.
One of the few places the AFT leadership seems to be trying to hold the line is in New York City.
Even so, the United Federation of Teachers has so far failed to resist a punitive new evaluation system. And rather than fight for a contract that is years overdue, the union is simply trying to wait until Mayor Michael Bloomberg's term expires in 2013. In the meantime, the city's school officials pressed ahead with an aggressive school closure program that got more opposition from an Occupy-inspired education group [21] than the union itself--until an arbitrator barred the actions [22].
As the attacks on the teachers' unions intensify, AFT members are discovering what their counterparts in the steelworkers, autoworkers, Teamsters, machinists and other unions could have told them: Concessions only lead to more concessions. Indeed, the corporate school reformers are following the same plan as their private-sector counterparts.
In the freight industry, for example, the Teamsters membership has been gutted by the practice of "double breasting"--starving the unionized operations of investment while building up nonunion subsidiaries. That's why Consolidated Freightways, a one-time Teamster bastion, disappeared in bankruptcy court, while trucks from its nonunion counterpart, Con-Way, continue to roll down the highway.
As traditional school systems in New Orleans, Detroit and Pennsylvania are gutted," It doesn't take much imagination to see how nonunion charter schools are playing the same role in education as a subsidiary like Con-Way did in trucking. And just as the nonunion U.S. operations of Toyota grabbed market share from General Motors, unaccountable big charter operators like KIPP are siphoning off tax dollars students and students from traditional public schools. In Michigan, egged on by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, two districts, Muskegon Heights and Highland Park, are handing their entire school district over to charter school operators [23].
As Diane Ravitch, the former assistant secretary of education turned school reform critic, wrote [24], "Governor Snyder wants to reshape the state's school finance system so that public money 'follows the child,' instead of just automatically going to public schools. This is part of the right-wing agenda to defund public education, cloaked in alluring terminology."
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WHICH BRINGS us back to Chicago, scene of the approaching confrontation between the Chicago Teachers Union and Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Because it isn't just right-wingers like Snyder who want to funnel tax dollars into charter schools, it's corporate Democrats like Emanuel and his operatives. That's why Chicago Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard is using a formulation remarkably similar to Snyder's "follow the child" policy. "It doesn't make sense [that] our parents pay taxes and then pay tuition [for their children] to go to [private] school as well," Brizard said in a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago [25].
That's no coincidence. As Chicago journalist Ben Joravsky pointed out [26], Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's education plan "in many respects...reads like it could have been written by our very own union-busting, charter-school-loving Mayor Rahm Emanuel."
Will the AFT help Chicago teachers take on Emanuel, who has national clout after his stint as White House chief of staff? Randi Weingarten promised CTU members that she'd come to Chicago to support their struggle whenever necessary.
But the very day in June that nearly 90 percent of the CTU membership was voting yes to authorizing a strike, Weingarten was in town for a different reason--to participate in an event hosted by the Clinton Global Initiative, the foundation headed by former President Bill Clinton. She appeared alongside Emanuel on a panel [27] that highlighted that organizers billed as the "dynamic duo" as they discussed how union pension money could be tapped to fund Emanuel's new Infrastructure Trust, a deal crafted by banks to fund various development projects that will put taxpayers in debt for decades at unknown rates of interest.
That's why CTU members should look carefully at the AFT's potential role in contract negotiations and a possible strike. Chicago teachers should welcome Weingarten's pledge of solidarity--and use it to help them appeal to AFT and NEA members everywhere as they square off with Emanuel.
But where the AFT and Weingarten will counsel collaboration and compromise, Chicago teachers should stick to their guns and fight for decent pay and job security as part of their wider program to defend public education from privatization and budget cuts [28].
A union is only as strong as its members. While the steady retreat of the AFT in recent years has shown its weakness, the CTU's mobilization shows the potential to build a fighting teachers' union. As the contract deadline looms in Chicago, this year's AFT convention provides the opportunity to debate how the union can take a stand against the corporate education reformers--and win.
[1] http://socialistworker.org/2012/06/26/how-can-the-ctu-win
[2] http://socialistworker.org/2012/06/13/vote-no-on-the-utla-deal
[3] http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2012/07/gov_john_kasich_signing_clevel.html
[4] http://www.freep.com/article/20120720/NEWS05/207200376/Teachers-rally-outside-Detroit-Public-Schools-headquarters-seek-bargaining-sessions
[5] http://socialistworker.org/2011/04/28/dictatorship-over-detroit-schools
[6] http://socialistworker.org//www.aft.org/newspubs/press/2012/061812.cfm
[7] http://www.aft.org/newspubs/press/2012/070212.cfm
[8] http://in.aft.org/gtu/index.cfm?action=article&articleID=25d08a7c-6b0e-4f28-bc34-16064edb3195
[9] http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20120412/FREE/120419929
[10] http://impact.cleveland.com/metro/print.html?entry=/2012/06/cleveland_teachers_union_rejec.html
[11] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303292204577517150275318434.html
[12] http://socialistworker.org/2009/11/02/race-to-the-top-or-bottom
[13] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125572781296990785.html
[14] http://socialistworker.org/2010/04/05/chicago-school-reform-fraud
[15] http://socialistworker.org/2010/07/22/wrong-partner-for-our-schools
[16] http://labornotes.org/blogs/2010/04/dc-teachers-gear-vote-privately-funded-merit-pay-plan
[17] http://socialistworker.org/2010/10/26/teachers-in-the-crosshairs
[18] http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-02-07/news/bs-md-ci-performance-improvement-plans-20120207_1_teacher-evaluation-system-new-evaluation-city-teachers
[19] http://socialistworker.org/2010/07/09/teachers-at-a-crossroads
[20] http://www.dailynews.com/ci_21092884/lausd-future-is-now-schools-announce-partnership-2013
[21] http://socialistworker.org/2012/02/07/targeted-for-turnaround%20
[22] http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/06/29/schools-closings-blocked-by-arbitrator/
[23] http://www.themorningsun.com/article/20120707/NEWS03/120709751/teachers-await-selections-of-charter-operators
[24] http://dianeravitch.net/2012/07/18/michigan-plan-to-defun-public-education/
[25] http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-03-05/news/chi-cps-chief-backs-federal-dollars-following-students-to-private-schools-20120305_1_jean-claude-brizard-school-vouchers-private-schools
[26] http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/romneys-plan-for-schools-sounds-like-rahms/Content?oid=6860548
[27] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A70dXldBaZs
[28] http://www.ctunet.com/blog/text/SCSD_Report-02-16-2012-1.pdf
[29] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0
Comments:
By: Patricia Breckenridge
School reform
I ran on the opposing caucus BAMN, against AFT/PC as PC rules AFT delegates out of solidarity if not voting for PC - so much for democracy and it's virtually impossible for any other caucus to win even though Chicago, CTU Local 1, was the first legitimate teachers union in 1916, Local 1078 out of Berkeley, CA. We received 2% of the vote. That's a start. It's a shame our American school system doesn't. give students ownership over their reading and instructional levels. Students go to school everyday on frustration level without the intervention of the Edward Fry readability graph to find, monitor, and. take ownership over their reading level. See worldwideliteracy1 as our students from underperforming schools are being transferred to more underperforming schools in rival gang territories and killed. A Dyett teacher spoke out at Wednesday July 25th press conference outside of Chicago Board of Education/CPS. In hurt and anguish, she said she went to 10 funerals in one year. Moreover, Chicago\'s murder rate has risen 156% from last year.
By: Kati Gilson NBCT
BAMN slate versus CTU leadership
I find it interesting the a CTU - AFT delegate would run on a slate against Karen Lewis, CTU president. I talked to one delegate who did vote for BAMN. She was not threatened by anyone to vote for the PC. Seeing as Chicago is on the front lines in the education fight, I do not see the advantage of anyone representing CTU and the teachers, attempting to be elected to a group that would remove people like Karen from the AFT leadership. This is a time for solidarity and unity — not dissent. Change does need to be made, but we need to do it properly as a united front. Karen has led us well and continues to do so. When she got up to speak at the mic at AFT, people listened. Walking around in my CTU red tee shirt, photographing the convention for Substance, I received lots of positive responses from people I never met.
Why? Because CTU is on the front line and pushing hard for the just cause of equal opportunity education for all. To see someone in a CTU shirt actively campaigining against everything CTU has worked for was disturbing to say the least.
By: Patricia Breckenridge
Katie Gilson remarks on BAMN
Katie no one is working against what CTU stands for on the front line, however we were represented in Detroit as winning the strike authorization and extra curricular for students as 2010-2012 recall teachers will teach no-core subjects to my understanding and are still vulnerable to E3 and termination without tenure and seniority rights, but even more devastating we're losing our students to gang violence as school reform is fatal in Chicago. A Dyett teacher lost 10 students in one year and the murder rate is up 156% from last year. The nation deserves to know this so interventions can be made. Our students are starved of literacy skills and have been for years, so I feel that I'm running for CTU because I ran for students and families that were underreprsented in Detroit at the AFT Convention.
CORE had the opportunity to run for AFT in Seattle and lately Detroit, but we chose to stay further to the right as Randi Weingarten is further to the Republicans right wing than the Democrats left wing. You should think about the opportunity we missed in Seattle and Detroit to be a change agent against the status quo instead of insulting my attempts to change history back to a democracy -- freedom of choice.
By: Kati Gilson NBCT
BAMN wasting Chicago's time...
We have a big enough fight in Chicago right now without trying to take over the AFT. Our priorities are here with our students. Also, please spell my name correctly next time. Thanks
By: Patricia Breckenridge
BAMN wasting Chicago's time per Kati Gilson
BAMN forced UC-Berkeley Chancellor to resign http://www.bamn.com/affirmative-action/victory-uc-berkeley-chancellor-forced-to-resign due to beating of public school activists. BAMN has a well-deserved reputation of fighting for civil rights, affirmative action, public schools, and democracy. There is no reason to belittle their cause because BAMN fights and speaks for us all during this devastating and fatal school reform.
Our priorities are always with the students whether we help them nationally, statewide, or locally.
Decades of failed school reform must stop or we need new leadership in AFT. Our students already have the innate ability to succeed, but as low ses (socio-ecnomic status)students they have been denied the opportunity to be raised in an emergent literacy and print-rich environment, therefore have no ownership over their reading levels. The AFT is long over due for acknowledging this imperative school reform and taking proper perventative and intervention methods for our American children.
By: Patricia Breckenridge, M.Ed.
Non-democratic school reform
USA was founded and built on democracy -- freedom of choice, and "We the People... " ideology that permeates society in this 21st century. Any entity that impedes that democracy is not patriotic. This is non-democratic school reform.
Non-democratic school reform consists of this nationwide billionaire school reform shift to privatization of public schools and unfounded charter public schools as the citizen's public tax dollars are paying for unproven school reform while draining our local economy, and emasculalting our teachers and schools. This is non-research based and scientifically unproven school reform.
Poverty, not teachers and schools, is the highest correlation to student underperformance and impoverished students nationwide have been deprived of finding and gaining ownership over their reading levels as student's reading levels do not correspond to their grade levels.
Teachers are being disenfranchised from society. There is no scientific research to prove a Union teacher's unworthiness as Finland schools have teacher's Unions and their school system is ranked #1 in the world. Teachers continue to be ostricized from society as stabalized tenured job-protected middle-class US citizens for students to aspire to; as well as, live in a democracy.
Privatization makes our society into "haves" and "have nots" as middle-class job security, protections, and tenure are eradicated. Charter, contract, and privatized public schools do not outperform traditional public schools on average, but leave them starved of educational resources and experienced teachers as unfounded charter public schools are still funded in the midst of failed school reform.
UNO's Charter School Director, Rangel, makes $265,000 (overseeing less than 11 charter public schools http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/us/a-lifetime-of-close-ties-and-growing-influence.html?_r=3&src=recg ) with your tax dollars and he's paid much more than Jean-Claude Brizard at $195,000 a year (overseeing 675 public schools), the CEO of Chicago Public Schools (CPS).
Other states are seeing the demolition team tactics of failed school reform as George analyzed; such as, LA, PA, OH, DT, WI, etc. "In other words, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District will see tax dollars — and student enrollment — shift toward nonunion charter schools run by unaccountable private organizations. The Cleveland Teachers Union and the AFT, confronted with a head-on assault on public education, surrendered without a battle." per George Schmidt, Substance Editor.
Citizens must be informed and "speak-up-vote" for their democracy as it is threaten by billionaire privatizers and unfounded charters that are temporary 5 yr contract schools and have the option selective enroll students and leave low ses (socio economic status), special needs, English as a second language, and disciplinary action students uneducated while busting the teacher's Unions (people who care about your child as a person, not a commodity) nationwide.
The nation has totally turned it's back on traditional schools and teachers as the latest interventions for disabled readers were never implemented in public schools nationwide. Students one-year below reading level require some one-on-one instruction.
American demand that your public school tax-dollars go back into the traditional public school system and return legitimate schools, and return teachers to their hard-earned teaching positions. President Barack Hussein Obama, and first lady Michelle Obama said Americans should be rewarded for their hard-earned work as teachers are being disenfranchised due to failed school reform.
By: Patricia A. Breckenridge, M.Ed.
Underperforming student or underperforming society.
I posit if we live in a society that for whatever reason has decided not to implement the latest intervention, Edward Fry Readability Graph, and give students ownership over their reading level, then we must ask ourselves, "Who is underperforming--the student or society?"
So, "Why do we teach students that don't even know what reading level they are on?"
The student has the innate ability to learn, if given the learning evironment to adapt to...but if a student is below reading level and he/she has no idea (no ownership) of that reading level, then how can students adapt to the learning environment and improve literacy skills successfully.
Curriculum and instruction is only designed for one year's reading instructional level or growth and benchmark (even with the differentiated instruction and CCSS Common Core State Standard intervention as witness to teachers teaching above and beyond the call of duty). So how can we hold schools and students accountable when society is not accountable for implementing best practice?
For decades research has proven that if a student is not on reading level by 3rd grade then that student will more than likely be an illiterate adult according to standards and expectations in America.
Students reading below reading level results in discipline problems as the studend can articulate or talk to peers, but can't achieve the same academic success due to illiteracy. Discipline problems may lead to suspension, expulsion, low self-esteem, gang activity, and sadly in many cases death from gang related activity as we as a nation must educate our students to the best of their ability so they realize that they have options that are not detrimental to their well-being.
I have been in the CPS system for 18 years and I only had to attend one funeral of one kindergarten. I can't imagine a teacher having to attend ten funerals in one year like the Dyett teacher as students are transferred across rival gang territory.
By all means necessary school reform can not be unproven, unresearched, or fatal for our students. Our students deserve the wealth of knowledge that life has to offer. If we take care of our students now from state to state, then well-educated students can take care of us in the future from state to state.
By: Jean R Schwab
AFT positions are disturbing
This is very disturbing!
AFT may find itself out of business if it keeps this up.