Unions

I Stand With Striking Teachers Because I Stand for Underprivileged Children

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America’s teachers are taking to the streets by the thousands.

 

In West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky and soon to be Arizona and Puerto Rico, educators are leaving the classroom and storming their state capitals.

 

Why?

 

Not because they’re greedy. Not because they don’t want to do their job. But because this country doesn’t care enough to provide them the resources they need to do it.

 

America doesn’t care about black and brown children.

 

America doesn’t care about poor white children.

 

America only cares about middle class and wealthy kids, preferably if their skin has a melanin deficit.

 

Don’t believe me?

 

Just look at how much these states have cut education funding. Look at how the federal government has slashed financial assistance. Look at how districts are forced to increasingly rely on local tax revenues to pay for the kind of education their children receive.

 

This means poor kids get poor resources. This means minority kids have to do without.

 

For the dark and the destitute, this means larger class sizes, out of date text books, and narrowed curriculum. It means fewer tutors, reading specialists and librarians. It means being left to your own devices to deal with the effects of generational poverty which put them behind their wealthier, lighter peers before they even enter kindergarten. It means greater emotional disturbance, greater malnutrition, higher absences, more learning disabilities, and less help to deal with any of it.

 

On the other hand, for the economically privileged white kids, it means just the opposite – fewer social problems, and the best of everything to deal with whatever issues they have.

 

It’s an unfair system, and teachers aren’t having it. We’ve been sounding the alarm for years, but it has fallen on deaf ears.

 

We don’t want to strike, but lawmakers are giving us no choice.

 

We’re saying, Enough! We’ve had it with the excuses.

 

Society hires us to do a job – let us do it.

 

Don’t refuse us the money to get it done and then blame us for the results.

 

That’s why there was a 9-day teachers strike in West Virginia which won educators a 5% raise in February.

 

That’s why 30 districts closed in Kentucky this week after a statewide sick out inspired by the legislature’s plan to cut pension benefits.

 

That’s why thousands of teachers in Oklahoma walked out this week demanding higher wages and better school funding.

 

And it’s why educators in Arizona, Puerto Rico and other states and territories may be next.

 

When you deny teachers the basics necessary to do their jobs, you’re refusing your responsibilities toward children.

 

When you deny educators a fair wage, you’re discouraging young people from entering the profession and encouraging those already there to seek work elsewhere.

 

And that is what we’re talking about here – a fair wage. We’re not talking about teachers getting rich off the taxpayers dole. You’re asking us to get an advanced education and do a hard job – that requires a middle class income so we can pay off our student loans and support our families.

 

The same goes for pensions. When teachers took their jobs, a fair pension was part of the contract. You promised that after 30-some years, educators could retire and you’d take care of them. You can’t renege on that. And if you plan to offer less for those coming in to the field, you’re going to get fewer high quality teachers willing to take the job.

 

When you attack unions and union benefits, you’re really attacking students. A teacher who can be fired at the whim of an administrator or school director is not as affective at her job. She has less autonomy and freedom to do what is right for her given students. And she has less reason to take a chance on the profession in the first place.

 

This doesn’t mean that after three years teachers should have a job for life. They don’t. It just means that if you’re going to fire a teacher for negligence, you should have to prove she’s negligent first.

 

This is why there’s a so-called teacher shortage in most states. As a society, we’ve become less-and-less willing to pay for teachers to do their jobs. We’ve become less-and-less willing to offer them the independence and respect necessary to get things done.

 

Why?

 

Because we’ve swallowed a pack of lies from the business community.

 

Many of them look at our public schools and see an opportunity for financial gain.

 

School funding may not be enough to give every one of the 50.7 million students in public school a first class education, but it’s more than enough to make a cabal of entrepreneurs and corporate officers rich.

 

That’s why they’re pushing charter schools and voucher schools and standardized tests and edtech software scams.

 

They want to get rid of democratic rule, get rid of teacher-based assessments and – ultimately – get rid of teachers. They want to replace us with minimum wage temps and leave the work of educating to computers that can provide test prep and standardized assessments.

 

But only for the poor and minorities. The affluent and middle class white kids will still get the best money can buy. It’s only those other kids they’re willing to feed to the wolves of edu-profit.

 

THAT is what educators are fighting.

 

THAT is why teachers across the nation are striking.

 

We’re demanding this nation does right by its public school students.

 

And that begins by supporting their teachers.

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Every Public School Teacher Should Support Opting Out of Standardized Tests

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Over the last few years, educators and parents have built up a wall of opposition to high stakes testing in the Opt Out movement.

 

But now it seems some teachers are starting to tear it down.

 

Not so long ago, tens of thousands of parents refused letting their children take the tests – with full support of their teachers.

 

Yet today you hear some educators question their involvement or even if they’re on the right side.

 

It’s almost like an anthropomorphic red pitcher smashed through the bricks and offered beat down educators a drink.

 

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And far from refusing that rancid brew, some are actually gulping it down.

 

“OHH YEAH!”

 

You hear things like these:

 

“Opt Out’s dead. Stealth assessment schemes like Personalized Learning and Competency Based Education have replaced the federally mandated tests.”

 

GLUG. GLUG. GLUG.

 

“The tests often take up fewer days now so there’s no reason to opt out.”

 

GLUG. GLUG. GLUG.

 

“The kids who opt out aren’t doing it for the right reasons. They just want to get out of work.”

 

GLUG. GLUG…

 

Blargh! I can’t drink any more of that artificially flavored propaganda crap!

 

I’ve even heard of some teachers in New York State agreeing to call families who have refused testing in the past and asking them to reconsider!

 

What the heck!? Have we all lost our minds!?

 

We’re educators!

 

If anyone knows the problems with standardized testing, it’s us.

 

We know in intimate detail how these assessments are biased and unscientific.

 

So let me counter some of this dangerous disinformation going around.

 

1) You say the tests take up less time?

 

Marginally, yes. There are fewer test days.

 

But we’re still being pressured to narrow the curriculum and teach to the test just about every other day!

 

2) You say stealth testing has made the traditional standardized assessments irrelevant?

 

Okay. Competency Based Education is a real problem that threatens to make everyday test day – I’ll go with you there. In fact, schemes like Personalized Learning could transform every app into an opportunity to test kids without them even knowing it.

 

But that doesn’t mean the old fashioned high stakes tests have gone away!

 

Far from it. The federal government still requires all states to give these assessments to public school students in grades 3-8 and once in high school.

 

Let’s say the feds required teachers to give rich kids higher grades than poor children.

 

Or say the state commanded teachers to copy down sensitive information about students and give it to private corporations.

 

Imagine if the school board instructed teachers to put minority kids in slower classes than white kids.

 

If any of that happened, there would be wide scale revolt!

 

Yet standardized tests do all of these things!

 

They dishonestly give higher scores to rich kids and lower scores to poor kids.

 

The apps used for preparation and remediation often steal student data and sell it to third parties.

 

They are used to justify increased segregation within school buildings because implicit testing bias means white kids generally score higher than children of color. So the white kids get more advanced courses and the brown ones get test prep.

 

3) You say the Opt Out kids are just trying to get out of doing work. It’s just laziness.

 

First, of all, it is the parents who are opting their children out of standardized testing – not the students. Second, who are you to question their motives?

 

We serve the parents and children of the community. If they say they don’t want their children tested in this way, we should listen to them.

 

Third, why are you defending these tests? They are used by charter and voucher schools as “proof” that the public schools are failing.

 

These tests are used to justify unfairly evaluating YOUR work, narrowing YOUR curriculum, repealing YOUR union protections, reducing YOUR autonomy, cutting YOUR funding, and ultimately laying YOU off.

 

Why are you standing up for THAT?

 

So why are some teachers wavering in their opposition to high stakes tests?

 

I think it has to do with who we are.

 

Most teachers are rule followers at heart. When we were in school, we were the obedient students. We were the people-pleasers. We got good grades, kept our heads down and didn’t make waves.

 

But the qualities that often make for the highest grades don’t often translate into action. That, alone, should tell you something about the limits of assessment which are only exacerbated by standardized test scores. When it comes to complex concepts, it’s hard to assess and even harder to determine if success on assessments is a predictor of future success.

 

Bottom line: Every teacher should be in favor of the Opt Out movement.

 

And I don’t mean quietly, secretly in favor. I mean publicly, vocally in favor.

 

Many teachers are parents, themselves, with children in the districts where they teach. Every educator should opt out their own children from the tests.

 

If we can’t at least do that and lead by example, what good are we?

 

Next, we should force our unions to do the things that we can’t as safely do as individuals.

 

Call parents and ask them to opt IN!? We should be doing just the opposite, but that would put a target on our backs.

 

As a teacher, I can’t unilaterally call or send a letter home to my students’ parents explaining why they should opt their kids out. If I did that, I could find myself in administration’s cross hairs and face grave repercussions.

 

But isn’t that why we have a union? To stand up as a collective and do the necessary things we can’t do as individuals?

 

Imagine if every teachers union in the country routinely sent open letters to all parents asking them to opt their kids out! What an impact that would make!

 

Imagine if the unions put pressure on the school boards to pass resolutions against testing and in favor of opt out! What effect would that have on state legislatures and the federal government?

 

How could the feds continue to demand we give high stakes tests when nearly every school board across the country objected and advised parents to refuse testing for their children?

 

Taken individually, these aren’t really all that difficult things to do.

 

They require a certain degree of moral courage, to be sure. And teachers have been beaten down by a society that devalues their work and begrudges them just about everything.

 

But what do we have to lose?

 

Our backs are already against the wall.

 

We are being slowly erased – our numbers dwindle more every year while policymakers shrug and point to a teacher shortage that they refuse to explain by reference to the way we’re treated.

 

The tech moguls and the testing giants are salivating over the prospect of replacing us with apps and low-skilled, low paid babysitters to oversee students hunched over computers and tablets. (See? Told you Personalized Learning was poison.)

 

We shouldn’t be helping them destroy our own profession by advocating for the same tests they’re using as a tool in our destruction.

 

It’s high time teachers get some backbone.

 

We may all end up on the unemployment line, but that’s where we’re headed already.

 

I’d rather go kicking and screaming.

 

Who’s with me?

Rampant Ignorance of What a School Should Be

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From politicians confusing a living wage with a handout—

 

To a white supremacist teacher podcast.

 

From a tone deaf government flunky using tragedy to do anything to stop gun violence except regulate firearms—

 

To a Bronx principal barring a black history lesson during Black History Month.

 

All-in-all, it’s been a crazy news cycle.

 

If one thing was made clear during the last seven plus days, it’s this:

 

Many people have no idea what a school should be.

 

Take West Virginia, the site of a recently resolved statewide teacher strike.

 

After years of watching the cost of living rise while wages remained stagnant, educators took to the streets to demand enough money that they wouldn’t have to quit their teaching jobs and look for work elsewhere.

 

It’s a reasonable request.

 

Imagine if we didn’t pay doctors enough to afford to practice medicine. Imagine if we didn’t pay lawyers enough to afford to practice law.

 

Teachers just wanted enough money so they could focus on educating the next generation and still get perks like food and shelter.

 

However, West Virginia is a self-confessed conservative state where self-identifying conservatives unashamedly explain that a full-throated expression of their conservative values includes the idea that you shouldn’t have to pay people a living wage for a hard day’s work.

 

Or as state Senator Lynne Arvone (R-Raleigh) put it:

 

“The teachers have to understand that West Virginia is a red state, and the free handouts are over.”

 

What, Sen. Arvone? Are you high?

 

A salary is not a “free handout.”

 

That’s redundant – there is no such thing as a free handout. Handouts are by definition free. That’s something you would have known had you paid more attention to your third grade language arts teacher. But, whatever.

 

Moreover, a salary is neither free nor a handout.

 

It is a fixed regular payment – often weekly or biweekly – made by an employer to an employee in exchange for doing a job.

 

West Virginia teachers are doing their job. State representatives like Arvone aren’t doing theirs.

 

They aren’t making teaching an attractive career and thus encouraging the best and brightest to become teachers. When you’ve already got a shortage of people willing to become educators, you have to invest. That’s economics 101! Basic supply and demand.

 

Admittedly, after 8 days of a state-wide strike, the legislature caved and gave teachers a 5% raise, but only moments before introducing a bill to reduce the requirements to become a West Virginia teacher in the future.

 

Boom.

 

It’s like lawmakers are saying: Oh. So you want your raise? Here you go. But the next generation of teachers hired in the state will be more ignorant, less experienced, more unskilled and less professional. In short, they won’t expect to be paid a living wage because we’ve made teaching right up there with being a WalMart greeter!

 

So there!

 

If passed, the academic quality of education provided by West Virginia will drop.

 

But so will the cost. And that seems to be the only thing lawmakers like Arvone and her “conservative” colleagues seem to care about.

 

You know, I don’t think they know what conservative means, either.

 

It’s certainly not what a public school should be.

 

Want another example?

 

Take Dayanna Volitich, a 25-year-old Florida teacher who allegedly ran a white supremacist podcast until non-Aryans heard it, put two-and-two together and removed her from class.

 

On a recent episode she bragged about spreading racist and prejudiced ideas to her students.

 

According to an article in the Huffington Post describing her latest podcast:

 

Volitich also agreed with her guest’s assertion that more white supremacists need to infiltrate public schools and become teachers. “They don’t have to be vocal about their views, but get in there!” her guest said. “Be more covert and just start taking over those places.”

 

“Right,” Volitich said. “I’m absolutely one of them.”

 

Great. Just what we need. An army of undercover white supremacists being encouraged to enter the teaching profession – taking those newly minted minimum wage jobs vacated by more expensive but less biased educators.

 

As a more than 15-year veteran of the public school classroom, I have some advice for white supremacists thinking about becoming teachers: Don’t.

 

We don’t want you here.

 

No one has the time for your warmed over master race lullabies.

 

We don’t need another generation of privileged white people who think the world owes them something just because of the color of their skin.

 

We need an America made up of people of all colors and creeds who believe in a meritocracy. You get what you work for, what you earn.

 

And we need lawmakers to actually create a system that supports this ideal.

 

We need political parties and grassroots movements to push for such an America.

 

Nazi propaganda belongs in one place only – the history books. It is not part of our future.

 

And on a personal note, let me just say that becoming a teacher often makes you more progressive than you were when you started.

 

I know it did me.

 

Especially if you work at a high poverty, high minority district like I do.

 

Your job is to serve students’ needs. You push them to think, you don’t tell them what to think.

 

If that’s not what you’re up for, you’re not up for being an educator.

 

Indoctrination is not what school should be.

 

And that brings me to Betsy DeVos, our billionaire Education Secretary who bought her government position with campaign contributions and political connections.

 

She went to Parkland, Florida, this week to visit with students, teachers and administrators who survived a school shooting a couple weeks ago.

 

Or at least that’s what it probably said on the press release.

 

It was really just a publicity stunt to push for arming teachers instead of sensible gun control.

 

Parkland students have been rocking it holding demonstrations and speaking truth to power demanding that we keep them safe from future violence by banning assault rifles, mandatory background checks on all gun sales and other common sense measures favored by almost 70% of the nation.

 

DeVos took about five questions before walking out of her own press conference.

 

She didn’t meet with students – didn’t even try.

 

She was just there for a photo op.

 

Well, time’s up, Betsy.

 

The next generation isn’t putting up with your tone deaf water carrying. With your own family ties to mercenary soldiers for hire, it’s no surprise you’d be against gun control and in favor of firearms to chase away all the Grizzlies attacking our public schools.

 

It won’t stop the bloodshed but an increase in gun sales will boost your portfolio.

 

Arming teachers is one of the dumbest things on an agenda full of real whoppers from this absurd Presidential administration.

 

Teachers touting guns, shooting it out with armed terrorists – no. That’s not what a school should be, either.

 

So finally we get to the Bronx, where some dimwit who somehow became a principal told an English teacher not to teach a unit on the Harlem Renaissance.

 

You know, the Harlem Renaissance – Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Louis Armstrong, Zora Neale Hurston, Duke Ellington… Nobodies like them.

 

And if that’s not bad enough, she did it in February during Black History Month.

 

This number crunching pedant thought it was inappropriate because the teacher wasn’t in the social studies department.

 

This is what happens when you try to put education in a box with things like Common Core. Don’t teach background information, just look at every text divorced from everything else around it – the author’s personal history, what was happening in the world at the time or even how the reader responds to it.

 

Administrators like this need to take a seat and get out of teachers ways.

 

This kind of subtly racist micromanaging isn’t a part of what schools should be either.

 

Schools should be places where dedicated professionals are prized and valued. They’re given the autonomy to teach what they know is important and they make these decisions informed by the empiricism of what their students need.

 

Schools should be places without prejudice or racism. They should be cultural melting pots free from segregation and preconceived notions. They should be about academic freedom and the joy of learning.

 

I wish more people understood it.

 

Maybe then we could work to make our schools and our country more like the ideals of the overwhelming majority of the people living here.

 

Instead of continually letting the rich and privileged set the agenda.

Arming Already Stressed Out Teachers Will Only Increase the Chance of School Shootings

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It happened in Georgia yesterday.

 

A beloved social studies teacher locked himself in his classroom while his students stood outside the door.

 

When the principal came with the key, the teacher fired a handgun through an exterior window.

 

Students ran, one even twisting her ankle in the escape.

 

Thankfully, no one else appears to have been injured.

 

However, the incident brings into focus a vital component of the gun debate.

 

Teachers are already under tremendous stress.

 

Arming them won’t stop gun violence. All it does is add another potential shooter.

 

It’s only been about two weeks since a shooting at Stonemason Douglas High School in Florida left 17 dead.

 

That’s at least 19 school shootings so far in 2018 – and it’s only the beginning of March!

 

In that time, the national media and the Trump administration have focused on one specific solution to stopping such violence from happening again: giving teachers guns.

 

The latest incident in Georgia underlines why this is such a terrible idea.

 

Teachers are not super heroes.

 

Take it from me. I’m an almost 15 year veteran of the middle school classroom in western Pennsylvania.

 

We’re just human beings.

 

My colleagues and I have all the same human failings and weaknesses as everybody else.

 

We get tired and overworked and put upon and stressed and sometimes…

 

…Sometimes we don’t handle it well.

 

I know some people don’t want to hear it.

 

Society has piled all kinds of responsibilities and unreasonable expectations on our shoulders.

 

We’re no longer allowed to be just educators.

 

We’re parents, counselors, disciplinarians, doctors, psychologists, lawyers, nutritionists…. The list goes on-and-on.

 

And now politicians actually want us to add law enforcement to the job description?

 

We’re already under colossal pressure, and some folks want to add a gun to that situation?

 

That’s lighting a fuse.

 

But don’t just take my word for it.

 

Back in 2015, tens of thousands of educators filled out the Quality of Worklife Survey conducted by the American Federation of Teachers and the Badass Teachers Association.

 

After responses from 91,000 school employees and 31,000 who completed the entire 80-question survey, a picture of the emotional landscape became clear.

 

A total 73% of respondents said they often feel stressed at work.

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The reasons? Adoption of new initiatives without proper training or professional development (71%), negative portrayal of teachers and school employees in the media (55%), uncertain job expectations (47%) and salary (46%) were the most common responses.

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The survey identified the following as most common everyday stressors in the workplace – time pressures, disciplinary issues and even a lack of opportunity to use the bathroom.

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Focusing just on the classroom, top stressors were mandated curriculum, large class sizes and standardized testing.

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Many teachers claimed to be the victims of violence at school.

 

A total 18% of all respondents said they had been threatened with physical violence – though the percentage jumped to 27% when looking solely at special education teachers.

 

A total of 9% of all respondents claimed to have been physically assaulted at school. Again the percentage jumped to 18% of all special education teachers.

 

But it’s not just physical assault.

 

A total of 30% claim to have been bullied by administrators (58%), co-workers (38%), students (34%) and student’s parents (30%).

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This is the situation where policymakers want to throw firearms.

 

Most gun violence doesn’t involve a shooter doing harm to others. The great majority of gun deaths are self-inflicted.

 

Even without adding guns to the mix, several high profile teachers and administrators already have committed suicide.

 

In October of 2010, for example, a California elementary school teacher named Rigoberto Ruelas, Jr. took his own life after the Los Angeles Times published a report labeling him a “less effective teacher.” Despite the fact that students and parents praised Ruelas, who taught in one of poorest schools in his district and who also was born, raised and continued to live in area where his school was located, the Times targeted him among other so-called “less effective” teachers as part of a major propaganda campaign.

 

And this isn’t an isolated incident. In July of 2015, a New York City principal under investigation for altering Common Core test scores, killed herself by jumping in front of a subway car.

 

Adding guns to this situation will just mean more teachers taking their own lives with a bullet.

 

That may have been the intent of the Georgia teacher in yesterday’s shooting.

 

Local police said they didn’t think he was trying to injure anyone else. When he shot his gun out of the window, he appeared to be trying to get others to leave him alone.

 

Arming teachers is a terrible solution to school violence. It’s taking an already stifling room and turning up the heat.

 

We need sensible gun regulations to reduce the pressure, not increase it.

 

We need sensible school policies that treat teachers and students like human beings and not just cogs in the system.

 

But this requires us to break out of a dangerous pattern in how we deal with social problems.

 

When we see a problem, we generally just shrug and leave it up to public schools and teachers to solve.

 

Inadequate resources – leave it to teachers to buy school supplies out of pocket.

 

Inequitable funding – increase class size and leave it to teachers to somehow make up the difference.

 

We can’t do the same with gun violence. We can’t just toss teachers a gun and tell them to sort it out.

 

Teachers can’t solve all of society’s problems alone.

 

That’s going to take all of us.

 

And we’ll need more than disingenuous proposals like answering gun violence with more guns.

Teaching is Hard Enough Without the Threat of Imminent Death

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I am so sick of coming to school and having an impromptu meeting to discuss why my students and I might die today.

 

Really.

 

Every time there’s a major school shooting somewhere in the nation it seems a copycat makes a threat in my own backyard, and we react.

 

The police tell us it’s not a credible threat so school stays open.

 

However, be vigilant.

 

Be aware that our students know about the threat and will be talking about it.

 

We’ll bring in bomb-sniffing dogs…

 

But try to maintain calm and order.

 

There will be a lock down drill in a few days…

 

But try to make the kids feel safe and secure.

 

An older student violently attacked a classmate last week after threatening to go on a spree…

 

But attempt to establish an atmosphere conducive to learning.

 

To which, I say: are you freaking kidding me?

 

I know Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

 

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There are certain basic necessities anyone must have in order to become a fully actualized person.

 

After physiological necessities like food and water, safety is absolutely fundamental.

 

Without it, you can’t get people to focus much on anything else.

 

You can’t get children to pay attention to nouns and verbs, for instance, if they’re afraid they’re going to be shot and killed.

 

You can’t get them to care about writing a complete sentence, if they feel like they may have to duck and cover at any moment.

 

You can’t get them to bother with abstract reading comprehension if they’re afraid of imminent death!

 

Oh, and by the way, I’m not exactly at my best either!

 

My lesson plans aren’t going to win any awards when the best solution our legislators can come up with is giving me a loaded pistol to keep in my desk drawer!

 

Well, Yippee Ki Yay! I’m a teacher! Pew! Pew!

 

My 7th grade students are literally frightened that going to school on any given day may lead to the end of their lives.

 

Every couple of weeks on the news it’s another school shooting and another body count, while lawmakers do nothing to ensure it won’t happen again tomorrow.

 

Every few days, it’s a rumor about this or that troubled kid we all know snapping and throwing a gun in his backpack. Or it’s an anonymous threat scrawled on a wall or a social media page.

 

Today it was teaching classes where half the kids were missing because their parents held them out of school afraid a vague rumor of imminent violence was true.

 

And as I tried to assure those who did show up that everything was okay, law enforcement checked the lockers with K-9 police dogs looking for weapons or drugs.

 

What the heck are we coming to?

 

I work in a police state and my students are being asked to learn in a penitentiary.

 

And the teachers should get guns.

 

And the principals should get guns.

 

And the parents should get guns.

 

And the guns should get little tinier guns to protect themselves from even more guns!

 

This is madness.

 

We’re begging for a political solution but our political system is a shambles. Nothing puts that in starker contrast than the gun debate.

 

The overwhelming majority of Americans want sensible gun laws – an assault weapons ban, closing the gun show loophole, mental health screenings, etc.

 

If we lived in an authentic Democratic Republic, we’d have them. But we don’t, because we live in a plutocracy.

 

One industry has enough power and influence that the only solution our policymakers can safely suggest is one that increases that same industry’s bottom line.

 

It’s like Tony the Tiger suggesting the only cure for obesity is to eat more Frosted Flakes! They’re Ggggrrrreeeaaaattt!

 

A teacher’s job is hard enough without society crumbling all around us.

 

But that doesn’t mean the children aren’t learning.

 

They’re watching the world burn with wide eyes. They’re taking in every flame, every bullet hole, every cowardly senator, representative and chief executive.

 

They’re watching and taking names.

 

 

At the end of the year, policymakers will wag their fingers at the nation’s teachers about failing standardized test scores.

 

They’ll bemoan sinking academic standards, powerful labor unions and a lack of moral fiber as the cause of a generation of children who lost out on an education while cowering under bulletproof backpacks.

 

But this generation refuses to be lost.

 

Despite everything, they’ve left a trail of breadcrumbs back to sanity.

 

They are emotionally damaged by a country that no longer functions, but they know the truth.

 

They know who’s responsible. And they know what to do about it.

 

When they reject our society, we’ll know why.

 

Because the next generation will be nothing like us.

 

And on a day like today, that’s the most hopeful thought I can offer.

Go Ahead, SCOTUS. Rule Against Unions in Janus Case. You’ll Only Make Us Stronger

stevenmsinger Accountability, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Labor, Local Control, Obama, Politics, privatization, protest, Republican, School Choice, Schools, Social Justice, Taxation, Teachers, union busting, Unions , , , , , , , , ,

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Bwa-hahahaha!

 

The corporate owned far right has been trying to destroy labor unions for decades.

 

But this time they may have finally overplayed their hand.

 

The upcoming Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 case set for a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on Feb 26 has been billed as the final nail in the coffin for public sector unions.

 

With the pitifully weak Democrats giving up President Obama’s pick for the bench in favor of Trump’s absurd choice, Neil Gorsuch, the court has a decidedly conservative bias.

 

So court watchers expect the latest challenge to collective bargaining rights to come out in favor of the corporations and billionaires who have spent truckloads of money to ensure the little guy has less of a say in the workplace.

 

BUT! They aren’t taking into account how stupid these far right shills truly are!

 

The case comes down to this: some people working in a union job don’t think they should have to pay union dues even though they benefit from the contract negotiated by their union. They affirm that being part of a union is political speech and thus they cannot be compelled to pay – yet somehow they should be able to keep all the benefits of being in a union, anyway.

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So the union gets me a raise and better healthcare, but – even though none of my dues go to pay for political campaigns (that money is donated separately and voluntarily) – just being in a union is a political act.

 

If the court rules in favor of this position, unions would no longer be able to compel members to pay dues.

 

Pay them, don’t pay them – there’s nothing the union could do.

 

Conservatives are betting that if dues become voluntary on a person-by-person basis, at least a few members will opt out and thus weaken union finances and ability to collectively bargain for everyone.

 

But what they don’t seem to understand is that a decision like this would overturn decades of established law.

 

It would overturn mountains of legal decisions that provide the foundation for how our government works.

 

In short, how many times are we compelled to pay for things we don’t necessarily believe in?

 

Answer: every freakin’ day!

 

How much of my tax dollars go to the military? What if I don’t want my taxes used to pay for a bloated war machine?

 

How much of my hard earned money is wasted on corporate subsidies? What if I don’t want to prop up huge multinational businesses already making record profits?

 

How much of my money go to privatized schools? What if I’m against charter and voucher schools and want my taxes instead to fund fully public schools with elected boards, transparency and who have to accept all students regardless of ability?

 

If the court rules against unions, then I guess I won’t have to pay my taxes anymore – or at very least, I will have to be given the option of where my tax dollars go.

 

Not just SOME of my tax dollars – every single penny on a line-by-line basis for every single tax payer in the United States!

 

An Illinois based engineering union wrote in detail about exactly how such a ruling would change the landscape. Operating Engineers Local 150, wrote on their blog titled, “Union Busters Set Themselves Up for Janus Backfire”:

 

 

“If not bargaining is protected free speech, then bargaining will conversely be protected free speech, giving union workers new protections that we’ve never enjoyed before.  For example:

  1. Governor Scott Walker’s now infamous Act 10, the law that destroyed public sector collective bargaining in Wisconsin, will be declared an unconstitutional, content-based restriction on speech and association.

 

  1. Every state in America will now be subject to bargaining with their public sector employees, even if they didn’t previously.

 

 

  1. Local municipalities will be subject to numerous taxpayer lawsuits based upon forced contributions to lobbying groups.

 

  1. The municipal lobbying industry, currently an extremely large source of revenue for lobbyists, will be decimated as taxpayers now have a First Amendment right to demand their tax dollars are not used for lobbying or political advocacy.

 

 

  1. Public Sector pensions will be adversely affected as participants demand that their forced pension contributions are not used for corporate speech.

 

  1. Municipal advertising, tax increment financing, and all other types of tax breaks (think Foxxcon in Wisconsin) will be subject to litigation based upon taxpayers’ First Amendment rights to opt-out of this type of speech. The same burdensome calculations that are currently leveled only upon unions would become widespread.”

 

Shaun Richman, a former organizing director for the American Federation of Teachers, agrees.

 

In an article for In These Times called “How A Supreme Court Decision to Gut Public Sector Unions Could Backfire,” he writes:

 

 

“The ruling could both wildly increase workers’ bargaining power and clog the lower courts with First Amendment challenges to routine uses of taxpayer money. At a minimum, it has the potential to turn every public sector workplace dispute into a constitutional controversy…”

 

 

Frankly, this is kind of exciting.

 

In trying to stifle workers’ free speech, conservatives may unravel the statutes that have muzzled us for years.

 

A decision against unions by the Supreme Court would open the way for thousands of cases throughout the court system – challenge after challenge. Certainly conservative justices would try to staunch the tide, but they simply couldn’t stop every case – especially after such a dangerous precedent has been set!

 

The SCOTUS would be unleashing chaos on the justice system, and I, for one, hope that every workers union takes advantage of it.

 

Every individual across the political spectrum should file suit against whichever political peccadillo they want. Evangelicals can file against public schools using their tax dollars to teach evolution. Libertarians could file against having a standing army. Liberals could file against oil pipelines.

 

And on and on and on.

 

Meanwhile, those workers unions that conservatives are hoping will be destroyed will be just fine.

 

You think workers won’t pay their union dues? Some might try, but doing so will have immense personal ramifications. At very least, it will make those individuals social pariahs. Who wants to associate with someone who thinks they should get all the benefits without paying like everyone else?

 

Moreover, I don’t advocate violence against anyone, but stiffing your co-workers on your union dues is a sure fire way to get slashed tires. Do you put your lunch in a communal fridge? I wouldn’t eat that after word gets out you’re a free rider. Not unless you like to share your co-worker’s saliva.

 

Again, I’m not advocating for any of that, but it’s just the way humans behave. We don’t like paying for any other able-bodied person whose “political” decision puts our lives and livelihoods in jeopardy.

 

The end result of a ruling against unions would forever put collective bargaining rights firmly under the protection of the First Amendment.

 

It would protect all speech – including union rights.

 

So I say, go ahead, SCOTUS, make our day!

School Choice Week – Choosing Away Your Choice

stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, church and state, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Local Control, Parents, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, Propaganda, Racism, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, small class size, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Unions , , , , , , , , , ,

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School Choice Week is one of the greatest scams in American history.

 

 

It is a well-funded, thoroughly organized attempt to trick parents into signing away their right to make educational choices about their children.

 

 

Seriously.

 

 

It goes like this:

 

 

Salesman: Would you like a choice?

 

 

Parent: Sure!

 

 

Salesman: Then just agree to never have another choice again.

 

 

That’s it in a nutshell.

 

 

Choose not to choose.

 

 

When you decide to send your child to a so-called choice school – a charter or voucher institution – you lose almost every other choice about what happens at your child’s school.

 

 

Sound impossible?

 

 

Let me count the decisions you lose by signing on the dotted line.

 

 

When you send your child to a school paid for with public money but run by a private organization, you lose:

 

 

–AN ELECTED SCHOOL BOARD, so you have no say about what the school does.

 

 

–OPEN DOCUMENTS, so you have no right to see budgets, spending agreements, bids, contracts, etc.

 

 

–OPEN MEETINGS, so you have no public place to speak up to the people who run your school.

 

 

–RIGHT TO SELF-GOVERNMENT, so you have no right to run for a leadership position on the school board. Instead you’re at the mercy of appointed flunkies.

 

 

–THE RIGHT OF ENROLLMENT, so school operators get to choose whether your child gets to attend, unlike public schools which have to accept your child no matter what – so long as you live in the district.

 

 

–QUALITY SERVICES, so school operators can cut services for your child and pocket the savings as profit or use it to advertise to get more paying butts in seats.

 

 

–QUALITY TEACHERS, because most charter and voucher schools aren’t required to hire educators with 4-year degrees, and since they don’t pay as well as public schools and often refuse to let their teachers unionize, they attract less experienced and distinguished educators.

 

 

–DIVERSE CLASSMATES, because charter and voucher schools increase segregation. Your children will be educated with more kids that look just like them. That’s healthy!

 

 

And that’s merely at MOST privatized schools. But that’s not all. At some privatized schools you can lose even more! You may also lose:

 

 

–COMMON SENSE DISCIPLINE POLICIES, so your children will be held to a zero tolerance discipline policy where they may have to sit quietly, eyes forward, marching in line or else face aggressive public reprimands and harsh punishments.

 

 

–AN UNBIASED SECULAR EDUCATION, so your children will be taught religion and politics as if they were fact – all funded by public tax dollars! Hear that sound? That’s our Founders crying.

 

 

–FREE TIME, so you’ll be required to volunteer at the school regardless of your ability to do so. Gotta’ work? Tough!

 

 

–MONEY, so you’ll have to pay tuition, buy expensive uniforms, school supplies or other amenities.

 

 

And if your children are struggling academically, you may also lose:

 

 

–ENROLLMENT, so your child is given the boot back to the public school because he or she is having difficulty learning, and thus costs too much to educate.

 

 

You lose all that if you decide to enroll your child in a charter or voucher school!

 

 

But that’s not all!

 

 

If you DON’T decide to send your child to a so-called choice school, you can still lose choice!

 

 

Why? Because of the rubes who were fooled into give up their choice. When they did that, they took some of your choices, too.

 

 

Because of them, you still lose:

 

 

-NECESSARY FUNDING, because your public school has to make up the money it lost to charter and voucher schools somewhere, and that means fewer resources and services for your child.

 

-LOWER CLASS SIZES, because your public school has to fire teachers and increase class size to make up for lost revenue.

 

 

-FAIR ASSESSMENTS, because the state and federal government require your child to take unfair high stakes tests to “prove” your public school is failing and thus justify replacing it with a charter or voucher school – as if those have ever been proven to be better, but whatever! CA-CHING! CA-CHING!

 

 

This is what you get from School Choice Week.

 

 

It’s a uniquely American experience – selling the loss of choice — as choice.

 

 

And all the while they try to convince you that public schools are the ones that take away your alternatives.

 

 

Yet public schools are where you get all those things you lose at privatized schools.

 

 

You get elected school boards, open documents, open meetings, the right to self-government, the right of enrollment, quality services, quality teachers, diverse classmates, common sense discipline policies, an unbiased secular education, free time and money! That’s right! You actually get all that and more money in your pocket!

 

 

I’m not saying public schools are perfect. There are many ways they need to improve, but it’s difficult to do so when many of the people tasked with improving these schools are more concerned with sabotaging them to make room for privatized systems.

 

 

These are paid employees of the charter and voucher school movement who want to kill public schools – BUT THE KILLER IS ALREADY IN THE HOUSE!

 

 

Imagine if we dedicated ourselves to making our public school system better!

 

 

Imagine if we committed to giving parents and students more choices in the system and not trying to replace that system with one that gives all the benefits and choices away to corporate vultures!

 

 

So, yeah, School Choice Week is a scam.

 

 

But, hey, enjoy those yellow scarfs.

 

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Two Theories Why Facebook Keeps Blocking Me When I Write About School Privatization

stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Campbell Brown, capitalism, Censorship, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Competency Based Education, Corporate Education "Reform", Credibility, Donald Trump, Education, Facebook, Journalism, Media, Politics, privatization, School Choice, Schools, Standardized Testing, Teachers, union busting, Unions, Value Added Measures, VAM , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Facebook blocked me.

 

Again.

 

What did I do?

 

Did I post Russian-sponsored propaganda?

 

Nyet.

 

Did I post Nazi or racist memes?

 

Nein.

 

Did I post fraudulent or debunked accounts of factual events?

 

No.

 

So what did I do?

 

I had an opinion.

 

I took that opinion and wrote about it. I backed it up with facts, analogies, literary references and examples from my own experience as a classroom teacher in public school.

 

I took all that, wrote it up in a blog called “The False Paradise of School Privatization,” and posted it on Facebook.

 

It was the same kind of thing I do several times a week.

 

Write a blog. Post it on various Facebook pages and on Twitter.

 

And wait to see if anyone reads it.

 

But this time – BOOM!

 

I hadn’t even posted it to a handful of pages before the cyber arm of Mike Zuckerberg’s robo-security came down on me.

 

The same thing happened in October when I wrote an article called “School Choice is a Lie. It Does Not Mean More Options. It Means Less.”

 

I had hoped that that first time was just a fluke or that by now I had since sufficiently proven myself to be a human being and not some nefarious bot.

 

But no such luck.

 

After posting my latest article a few times on Monday, I got this message:

 

“ACTION BLOCKED

 

You have been temporarily blocked from performing this action.”

 

And I got a choice of clicking on:

 

“This is a mistake”

 

Or

 

“OK”

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So I clicked on “This is a mistake,” and got the following:

 

“Thanks for letting us know.”

 

My only choice was to click “OK.”

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At some point I got a message telling me that I was blocked until Dec. 11 – a full week from my offense.

 

And now I have limited use of the social media platform.

 

I can still see posts.

 

I can like posts.

 

For some reason, I can even post and comment on my own page. But I can’t comment or post on other pages without getting the same error message.

 

At least I can’t do it consistently.

 

I’ve experimented and found that sometimes I can share posts to different pages. Sometimes I can’t.

 

It’s a bizarre, wonky system.

 

And it gets in the way of my work as an education blogger.

 

Facebook has more than 1.5 billion accounts. That includes more than 80% of all Americans.

 

Sharing my blog on the site gets me more readers than anywhere else.

 

Twitter is great and certainly more free. But when you push out a tweet, no one sees it unless they’re looking at their feed at that exact moment. Unless it gets retweeted – or you’re a famous unhinged former reality TV star turned President, then people seek out your own personal brand of nuclear-apocalypse-threatening madness.

 

So why does this keep happening to me?

 

I have two theories.

 

1) I am being purposefully censored by Facebook.

 

2) Facebook algorithms are targeting me because of how I post.

 

Let’s look at the first theory.

 

 

Could someone be actively censoring me?

 

Yes.

 

The proposal has a certain plausibility because the powers that be at Facebook undoubtedly disagree with what I have to say.

 

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, is a huge supporter of edtech, standardized testing and school privatization. He’s spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to make public schools rely more heavily on high stakes tests, evaluating teachers on their students’ scores and pushing Personalized Education software packages on public schools. And when that doesn’t pan out, he’s even backed his own charter schools to do the same.

 

But that’s not all.

 

Since early January of this year, he’s had Campbell Brown on the job as the arbiter of truth for his on-line platform.

 

That’s right.

 

Brown, a school privatization lobbyist and former NBC and CNN personality, heads Facebook’s News Partnership Team.

 

The newly created position was part of Zuckerberg’s attempt to limit fake news on his social media platform while prioritizing information in the mainstream media.

 

What exactly is fake news? Whatever Campbell Brown says it is.

 

This is quite a lot of power to give one person, especially someone who has a reputation for partisanship.

 

Brown, after all, co-founded a charter school propaganda network called The 74, funded – unsurprisingly – by Betsy DeVos, Republican mega-donor and current Secretary of Education.

 

After leaving the anchor’s desk, Brown has had a second career helping corporations destroy public schools and public school teachers.

 

And she does. Not. Like. Me.

 

Let’s just say we’ve gotten into a few Twitter skirmishes.

 

When she became the face of a New York lawsuit attacking teacher tenure in 2014, she received a tidal wave of public backlash. So she went on the Colbert Report to complain about how those fighting for workplace protections for themselves and their students were “silencing the debate” on how best to reform public education.

 

I responded with a blog called “Shhh! Who’s Silencing the Debate on Real Education Reform” claiming that Brown was actually doing the very thing she claimed to be decrying in shutting out teachers’ voices and rights.

 

She responded by cherry picking her rudest critics and tweeting “Sorry Steve but sadly this is not what I characterize as debate,” as if I had had anything to do with these comments.

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As if any movement should be judged by its most extreme elements.

 

As if attacking someone’s job, someone’s kids and their future was fine so long as you did so with a smile and a polite comeback.

 

I don’t condone personal attacks, but I certainly understand them. In any case, Brown used the extreme fringes of her critics to condemn us all and conveniently refused to engage us – even those who had been unceasingly polite.

 

That lawsuit eventually failed, but Brown somehow landed on her feet.

 

Now she’s the one who gets to choose truth and falsity on Facebook.

 

Could she be actively working against people like me?

 

Yes.

 

Could she be directing Facebook’s programmers to select against posts that are negative to her pet projects?

 

Yes.

 

But there’s no way to know if she’s actually doing it.

 

Which brings me to my second theory.

 

Perhaps mindless Facebook algorithms are targeting me because of how I post.

 

I do, after all, try to post my articles on as many pages as I can.

 

They’re mostly pages focused on education and education policy with a few political and anti-racism sites thrown in, too.

 

Maybe I’m posting too quickly.

 

I might be triggering one of Zuckerberg’s bots to think I’m a bot, too, spamming up the works with advertising.

 

However, there’s a few problems with this theory.

 

Let’s say it’s true.

 

Why would that, alone, be reason to block me?

 

I’m not posting advertisements. I’m not asking for money. My blog doesn’t sell adds other than those WordPress puts on there, itself, so I can keep the page for free.

 

If an algorithm is stopping me because it thinks I’m unfairly selling something, it’s the result of some badly written code, indeed.

 

When programmers write code, that’s not impartial. It betrays their values. It betrays certain decisions about what’s acceptable and what isn’t.

 

For instance, I keep getting advertisements from Facebook asking me to pay money to the social media network so that they’ll post my articles on other people’s site for me.

 

I get reminders like “Boost this post for $3 to reach up to 580 people.”

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Oh, really?

 

So I’m blocked because I posted my own writing to sites that have accepted me as a member and whose membership includes many I consider friends and colleagues. But for a fee, Facebook will post that same article to various sites filled with people I’d consider to be complete strangers.

 

Somehow that doesn’t “violate community standards” – the reason they said they blocked me in October.

 

This is very telling.

 

It seems to indicate that there is nothing wrong with what I’m doing, per se. It’s just that Facebook wants to encourage me to let them do it for me – so they can monetize my account.

 

They’re stopping me from doing this on my own, because they think I’m a sucker who should pay them for the right to communicate with others.

 

And that’s a very real possibility.

 

These blockages may not be political. They may be a simple marketing strategy.

 

So what can I do about it?

 

Well, first I need to wait a week until my account is unfrozen and I get back all the features Facebook users usually enjoy.

 

Then I can try to go back to the way things were posting my articles at all my favorite virtual watering holes.

 

Only slowly.

 

Much more slowly.

 

I figure if I only post once every five minutes or so, I can have my article at all the places that seem to like having them in about the course of an evening.

 

But I have a life, damn it!

 

I can’t spend the twilight hours posting and waiting and posting and waiting.

 

I guess another alternative is to rely on friends to post for me.

 

Spread the love.

 

Have others circulate my articles far and wide.

 

And that’s a great strategy. It’s very hard for Facebook to do anything about it.

 

But it requires me to impose on others. I don’t like doing it.

 

My readers, friends and supporters have lives, too.

 

They have more important things to do than post my writing all over the Internet.

 

So where does that leave me?

 

I’m not sure.

 

If I continue as I have, I’m bound to be blocked and thrown in Facebook Jail again.

 

Even if I don’t, I’m at the mercy of the wealthy elites who control the network.

 

And if the FCC does away with Net Neutrality, as they’re threatening to do in a matter of days, it may not even matter.

 

Regardless of where I post on Facebook, my blog site will probably be slow to the point of molasses and maybe even shut down entirely.

 

This is the brave new world of the plutocracy unrestrained.

 

This is American fascism triumphant.

 

I am only a single point of the resistance.

 

My voice is only as powerful as those who share it.

 

If Facebook, Twitter or WordPress somehow takes me down, I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

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Killing Net Neutrality Would Muzzle Many Teacher-Activists 

stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, bloggers, Campbell Brown, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Competency Based Education, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Journalism, Obama, Politics, privatization, Propaganda, protest, Republican, School Choice, school vouchers, Schools, Standardized Testing, Teach for America, Teachers, union busting, Unions , , , , , , , ,

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As a blogger, I’m a big fan of net neutrality.

If the communications giants get to favor or block particular Websites, people-powered blogs like this one probably would become isolated and irrelevant.

As it stands, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to vote Dec. 14 to undo strict regulations on Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon that stops them from slowing down or blocking any sites, apps, or otherwise deciding which content gets to users faster.

If the Republican controlled five-member committee votes as expected, it would muzzle free speech.

It would effectively stifle hundreds, thousands of grassroots activists who’ve taken to the Web to educate and protest against the plutocracy strangling our democratic freedoms.

Think about it.

Close your eyes and imagine a United States where you couldn’t access your favorite Websites without paying a fee or – as in China – maybe even at all.

Want to know why standardized testing is harming our children and their schools? Sorry. That costs extra.

Want to know why Betsy Devos’ latest plan to give your tax dollars to Roy Moore’s Christian Fundamentalist Middle School and Dating Center endangers child welfare? Sorry. That information is no longer available.

Sure, you could probably look it up in the library and find it in a book, but that requires a complete change in how we consume media.

Most of us get our news on-line. We don’t read paper newspapers or glossy photo-print magazines. Books, when we read them, are often occasional pleasures or e-texts.

Searching out such material would take a paradigm shift back to the way we used to do things 10 or 20 years ago. It wouldn’t be impossible, but it would be onerous.

Remember traveling everywhere with a pile of books weighing down your bag, or a newspaper and magazines folded under your arm? People seeking such information would really need to want it.

Moreover, articles published in this way would almost surely become out of date quickly at least in regards to particulars. You can easily write something about the evils of charter and voucher schools in general that will be true for years if not decades, but it won’t as easily apply to individual charter and voucher schools by the time it’s published and been on the shelf for a while.

Additionally, writing and publishing such articles would become increasingly more difficult. Unless individuals or groups of activists bought up archaic printing presses or somehow funded mass media campaigns at Kinko’s and there were likewise an as yet undiscovered distribution engine that could disperse such periodicals across the country and the world – unless all of that, the resistance would be relegated to mostly scholarly tomes.

Take it from me: writing a book is not easy.

I just published my first volume of some of my best blog articles for Garn Press called “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform.”

I am embarrassingly proud of it, but this would not work for everyday activism.

Even though most of the articles were already written, it took a team of us months to revise them, insert end notes, edit, format, design a cover, market and all the other multidinous things that go into the process.

Whereas, with a blog, I can just write it and press “publish.”

The result isn’t as neat. It isn’t as error-proof. There’s bound to be spelling and grammar problems. It doesn’t pack nearly the authoritative punch. —But it’s so topical and subversive that it can slice through steel.

Campbell Brown can’t publish a billionaire-funded diatribe against those greedy teachers and their damn unions and their precious tenure without an army of teachers taking to the Web and showing her the error of her ways.

Bill Gates can’t send his well-paid trolls off to write op-eds praising Common Core without a grassroots tsunami of educators, parents and students responding with scores of counternarratives throughout the blogosphere.

And it’s net neutrality that allows us to do it.

The democratization of information made possible by the free Internet has greatly empowered the voices of the wise but penurious.

You no longer need a printing press or a think tank or a media empire to get information before the public.

Sure this means that even the lunatic fringe gets a voice in the conversation that is American culture, but it also allows ideas to win or lose based more on merit than money.

If enough people share an article on-line, it gets read. People see it. They know it.

False information is eventually found out, disproven and neutralized. But a factually-based critique of bad policy? That can move mountains. It can change the world.

And it has!

Think of how even neoliberal policymakers have rushed to claim they’re in favor of reducing standardized testing. Longtime standardization supporters like former President Barack Obama had to distance themselves from their own policies or face the torches and pitchforks of moms and dads everywhere.

Think of how Democratic and Republican partisans clamored over each other to denounce Common Core. Heck! The movement was so successful President Donald Trump even jumped on the bandwagon and used it as a rallying cry to help install himself in office.

And think of how the reaction to Trump’s dismal and dimwitted Education Secretary, Devos, caused a stampede away from school vouchers and even to some extent charter schools. Even longtime champions of privatization like Jeb Bush and Cory Booker are afraid to offer even a tentative thumbs up for fear of the Web’s blitzkrieg of Tweets, Facebook posts, blogs and other shade.

None of this would be possible without the Internet and the blogosphere.

None of this would be possible without net neutrality.

It’s no wonder Trump and his cronies want to destroy it. The open communication and debate on the Internet is a clear and present danger to his policies.

It is dangerous to the neoliberals and conservative fascists alike.

Though the movement fighting against corporate education reform has been rightly critical of unlimited technology for technology’s sake in our classrooms, that same confederation owes a great debt to technology for its current power.

We meet on Facebook and plan actions to be conducted IRL – In Real Life. Groups like the Badass Teachers Association, the Network for Public Education and United Opt Out use the technology to spread truth and question authority.

If the life line of net neutrality is severed, so will much of our activist networks.

I know we’re all concerned about competency based education, Teach for America and toxic testing, but we have to make room for net neutrality, too.

The 99% rely on it for the free exchange of ideas and the unhindered expression of our speech.

If the Trump administration crushes that venue, it will seriously weaken our ability to resist.

So before that day comes, exercise your rights.

Raise your voice for net neutrality – before it’s too late.

 

Please go to www.gofccyourself.com and urge the FCC to keep Net Neutrality.

Public School Teachers Are Absent Too Much, Says Charter School Think Tank

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school-shadows

 

Have you ever heard of media bias?

I don’t think many so-called journalists have.

At least their editors haven’t or perhaps they just don’t care.

Otherwise, why would self-respecting hard news purveyors publish the results of a study by charter school cheerleaders that pretends to “prove” how public school teachers are worse than charter school teachers?

That’s like publishing a study denigrating apples written by the national pear council.

 
Breaking news: Pepsi says, “Coke sucks!”

In a related story McDonalds has startling evidence against the Burger King!

THIS IS NOT NEWS!

THIS IS PROPAGANDA!

I know it’s become trendy to defend the media when our lame-ass President attacks every factually-based report that puts him in a bad light as “fake news.” But the giant media conglomerates aren’t doing themselves any favors with lazy reporting like this.

And I know what many journalists are thinking when they do it, because I used to be one:

I’ll publish the report and include dissenting opinions and that will be okay because I will have shown both sides and readers can make up their own minds.

But what’s the headline? What’s the spin? Who is David in this story and who is Goliath? When multiple stories like this appear all over the news cycle, what impression is made on your readers?

It’s the same thing with climate science. Ninety seven percent of climate scientists say global climate change is man-made and happening. Yet the news gives us one scientist and one crank climate denier and pretends like that’s fair and balanced.

And here we get one biased neoliberal think tank vs. millions of public school teachers all across the country and since you’ve given us an equal number to represent each side, you pretend THAT’S fair and balanced.

It isn’t.

But who’s paying your advertising revenue?

Who owns the media conglomerates that publish your articles?

Often the same people publishing bullshit reports like this one. That’s who.

No wonder they get so much coverage!

So here’s the deal.

The Fordham Institute wrote a report called “Teacher Absenteeism in Charter and Traditional Public Schools.” They concluded that 28.3 percent of teachers in traditional public schools miss eleven or more days of school versus 10.3 percent of teachers at charter schools.

To come up with these figures they used data from Betsy Devos’ Department of Education.

So let the hand-wringing begin!

Look how bad public school teachers are and how much more dedicated is the charter school variety! Look at how much money is being lost! Look at the damage to student academic outcomes!

Won’t someone think of the children!?

WHY WON’T SOMEONE PLEEEEAAASSSEEE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!??

This report brought to you by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the College Board, Education Reform Now, the Walton Family Foundation and a host of other idle rich philanthrocapitalists who are drooling over the prospect of privatizing public schools and hoovering up public money as private profit.

Oh. If that’s not enough, Fordham actually runs a series of charter schools in Ohio.

Biased much?

So what’s wrong with the report?

First of all, it’s not news.

Neoliberal think tanks have been publishing propaganda like this for at least a decade. Play with the numbers here, look only at this data and we can paint a picture of “failing” schools, “failing” teachers and therefore justify the “need” for school privatization.

Second, look at all the important data Fordham conveniently leaves out.

Look at the number of hours public school teachers work in the United States vs. those in other comparable countries, say those included in The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

In fact, the OECD (which is not biased one way or another about American school privatization) released a mountain of statistics about how many hours teachers work in various countries.

The result: in the United States teachers on average spend more time teaching and receive less pay than those in other countries.

American teachers spend on average 1,080 hours teaching each year. Across the O.E.C.D., the average for most countries is 794 hours on primary education, 709 hours on lower secondary education, and 653 hours on upper secondary education general programs.

 

teachingtime
Source: OECD

 

 

Yet American teachers start at lower salaries and even after 15 years in the profession, earn less money than their international counterparts.

So – assuming Fordham’s absenteeism statistics are accurate – why do public school teachers miss so much school? They’re exhausted from the hours we demand they keep!

But what about charter school teachers? Aren’t they exhausted, too?

Some certainly are.

Working in a charter school often requires grueling hours and fewer benefits. That’s why charters have a higher turnover than public schools.

Since they’re often not unionized, charter schools usually have younger, less experienced staff who don’t stay in the profession long. In fact, they rely on a constant turnover of staff. At many of the largest charter chains such as Success Academy and the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), teachers average only 4 years before moving on to another career, according to the New York Times. And this is typical of most charter chains.

So why don’t charter school teachers take as many sick days as traditional public school teachers? Maybe because when they check out, they often don’t check back in.

Moreover, there is a significant difference in the student population at both kinds of school – privatized vs. public.

As their marketing departments will tell you, the students in a charter school choose to be there. The charter schools often weed out the students with behavior problems, special needs or those who are otherwise more difficult to teach. As a result, the strain on teachers may not be as severe. When you’re only serving kids who want to be there and who are easy to teach, maybe you don’t need as much downtime.

Public school teachers, on the other hand, face real dangers from burnout.

According to a study by Scholastic (that actually goes counter to its pro-privatization bias), we work 53 hours a week on average. That comes out to 7.5 hours a day in the classroom teaching. In addition, we spend 90 minutes before and/or after school mentoring, tutoring, attending staff meetings and collaborating with peers. Plus 95 additional minutes at home grading papers, preparing classroom activities and other job-related tasks.

And for teachers who oversee extracurricular clubs, that’s even more work – 11-20 additional hours a week, on average.

Add to that the additional trauma public school children have experienced over the last decade. More than half of public school students now live below the poverty line. That means increased behavior issues, increased emotional disturbances, increased special needs, increased malnutrition, increased drug use – you name it.

Public school teachers deal with that every day. And you seriously wonder that some of us need some downtime during the year to deal with it.

Moreover, let’s not forget the issue of disease.

Working in a public school is to immerse yourself in a petri dish of bacteria and viruses. My first year teaching, I got so sick I was out for weeks until I developed immunities to strains of illnesses I had never been exposed to before.

Kids are constantly asking for tissues and blowing their noses and sometimes not even washing their hands. This is why teachers often purchase the tissues and hand sanitizers that school districts can’t or won’t – we’re trying to stop the spread of infection.

When teachers get sick (and often bring these delightful little maladies home to their spouses, children and families) what do you expect them to do? Continue going to work and further spreading the sickness around to healthy children?

And speaking of illness, let’s talk stress.

Stress is a killer. Do you think pushing the responsibility for the entire school system on to teachers while cutting their autonomy has an effect on teachers individual stress levels?

I can tell you from my own personal experience I had two heart attacks last year. And in the 15 years I’ve been a teacher, my health has suffered in innumerable ways. I’m actually on medication for one malady that makes me immunosuppressed and more susceptible to other illnesses.

So, yeah, sometimes I need to take a sick day. But if you ask most teachers, they’d rather stay in the class and work through it.

Having the day off is often more trouble than it’s worth. You have to plan an entire lesson that can be conducted in your absence, you have to give the students an assignment to do and you have to grade it. Even with the day off, you have a mountain of work waiting for you when you return.

So as a practicing public school teacher, I dispute the findings of the Fordham Institute.

They don’t know what they’re talking about.

They have focused in on data to make their chosen targets, public school teachers, look bad while extolling the virtues of those who work in privatized systems.

There is a manufactured shortage of teachers across the country. We’ve got 250,000 fewer teachers in the classroom than we did before the great recession of 08-09. Yet class enrollment has increased by 800,000 students.

So if we wanted today’s students to have the same experience as those of only a decade ago, we’d need to hire at least 400,000 more teachers.

I wonder why college undergraduates aren’t racing to become education majors. I wonder why there aren’t more incentives to get more teachers in the classroom and why there isn’t a boom of more teaching jobs.

And I wonder why reports like this are talked about as if they were anything but what they are – school privatization propaganda.