Unions Can’t Just Be About What We’re Allowed to Do: Social Justice Unionism

January 30, 2016 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Chicago, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Detroit Schools, Education, Election, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, Hillary Clinton, Labor, Media, Pensions, Philadelphia Schools, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, Propaganda, protest, Racism, school segregation, Schools, segregation, Social Justice Unionism, Supreme Court, Teachers, union busting, Unions #blacklivesmatter, #LetTeachersTeach, #StandUpForPublicSchools, Chicago Teachers, Corporate Education Reform, Detroit Teachers, education reform, Election, labor, Philadelphia Teachers, Politics, racism, Social Justice Unionism, teachers, unions

If labor unions were an animal, they’d be an old hound dog napping on the porch.

They’re slow to get up and chase away burglars but they do like to howl at night.

Most of the time you don’t even know they’re around until the dinner bell rings. Then that ancient mutt is first to bolt into the kitchen to find a place at the table.

It’s kind of sad really. That faithful old dog used to be really something in his youth.

He was fierce! He’d bark at trespassers even tearing them apart if they threatened his patch of land.

Old Uncle Sam used to yell at him and even threaten the pooch with a rolled up newspaper, but that dog didn’t care. He had a sense of right and wrong, and he didn’t mind getting into deep trouble fighting for what he thought was fair.

Today, however, the only thing that really riles him is if you threaten to take away his ratty old bone.

Let’s face it. Unions have become kind of tame. They’re housebroken and not much of a threat to those people waiting in the shadows to rob us blind.

Some people say we’d be better off without them. But I don’t agree. Even a decrepit canine can act as a deterrent, and thieves sure are frightened of dogs.

Think about all unions have given us: the weekend, child labor laws, vacation time, pensions, lunch breaks, healthcare, the 8-hour day, maternity leave, safety measures, due process, sick leave and free speech protections on the job!

They didn’t get us all that by sitting politely at the table with their hands crossed. They didn’t do all that by contributing modest sums to political campaigns. They didn’t do it by obsessively protecting collective bargaining at the expense of all else.

Unions used to take to the streets. They took over the job site. They marched with signs and placards. They exercised people power.

And the government was scared of them. The President called out the army to get them back to work. Lawmakers hired mercenaries to break strikes with clubs and guns. But eventually Congress passed laws to placate them.

Unfortunately, That was a long time ago.

For decades the pendulum has been swinging against us. Federal and state laws have become increasingly restrictive. They want to tell us when we can strike and how long. They want to tell us when and if we can collect dues. And – frankly – they want to tell us to just disperse and do whatever the bosses want – because the business class has already bought and paid for our politicians.

For decades we’ve heard to their propaganda on TV, the radio and the print media. Well-paid shills have poured their poison in our ears about the evils of the labor movement. They’ve spoken these lies so often lots of people believe them.

Workers used to fight to make sure everyone got a fair deal. Now the working man has been brainwashed to focus instead on making sure no one else gets more than him. And the bosses are laughing all the way to the bank.

Union membership is at the lowest it’s been in a century. So are wages adjusted for inflation. A family of four used to be able to get by comfortably on one salary. Now it can barely make ends meet with two.

Yes. There’s no doubt about it. We need unions today more than ever.

But for unions to survive, they must change. They have to become a reflection of the membership and not just of the leaders.

During this presidential election cycle, we’ve seen our largest national unions – the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) endorsing a candidate without bothering to actively poll their members. We’ve seen them speak for us on policy decisions without asking our opinions. We’ve seen them act just like the corrupt politicians who we should be fighting against.

Yes, it is time for a change. No longer can our unions be run from the top down. They must be run from the bottom up. They shouldn’t tell us what to do. We, the membership, should be giving orders to them.

Moreover, we need to stop obsessing about collective bargaining. I’m not saying that’s unimportant. But it can’t be the only thing we do.

Our unions used to be in the midst of larger social movements. We were part of the Civil Rights movement. We were part of the push for desegragation. We were part of the fight to protect children and provide them a decent education.

We need to continue that today. And in some places we are already doing that! Look to Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia. Teachers unions in those urban areas are fighting not just for better pay and benefits but for the communities they serve. Detroit teachers en mass are calling off sick to protest horrible conditions in the schools. Chicago teachers are marching in the streets with the community to demand indictments for police murdering their black and brown students. Philadelphia teachers are supporting students who walk out of class to protest state disinvestment and toxic testing.

THIS is what unions should be doing. We should be fighting for social justice. We should be a central part of the struggle to turn the tide against corporatization, privatization and standardization of our country’s public goods. We should be marching hand-in-hand with BlackLivesMatter activists. We should be in the front lines of the fight to save our environment and replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.

We must be part of the community and not apart from it. We must share in the struggles and goals of those we serve. We must be an example of the old truism that a rising tide raises all ships. After all, the word “union” literally means together. By definition we must all be in this together or else we’re not even really a union.

And to do this we have to stop being so concerned with what they tell us we can do.

We live in a democratic society. The government gets its power from us, from our consent. That means that if there are enough of us, we trump their corrupt laws. They only get to make those laws because we say so. And court decisions – even Supreme Court decisions – mean nothing next to the court of public opinion.

The bosses buy the politicians and tell them to legislate us into a box. It’s time to break out of that box. We can’t be afraid to take our power back. We shouldn’t be afraid of our government. Our government should be afraid of us.

How do we do it? Organize.

If you belong to a union, roll up your sleeves and get active. Run for office. Convince like-minded folks to join you. Take over your local. Spread to your national.

If you don’t belong to a union, start one at your job. Talk to your co-workers. Talk about the benefits for each of you and your neighborhoods. Fight for your rights.

I know. It’s a whole lot easier to complain. Real change, though, takes real work.

We used to know these things. Somewhere along the line we forgot.

So wake up, you yeller cur dog, and get off the porch. Take to the streets.

Because the surest way to take back our country is to take back our unions.

Hundreds Gather in Puerto Rico on Martin Luther King Day Demanding Arts Education

January 20, 2016January 20, 2016 stevenmsinger Art, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Politics, Puerto Rico, school closings, School Funding, Schools, student action, Teachers, Unions Arts, austerity, Budget, Corporate Education Reform, education, education reform, Let's Save the Arts, Music, Politics, protest, public schools, Puerto Rico, teachers

They came with trumpets, tubas, bongos and acoustic guitars.

They came with brightly colored banners and freshly painted posters.

They came armed with songs, dances and slogans.

More than 500 teachers, students and college professors marched to the Puerto Rican capital of San Juan to demand the island government bring back public school arts classes.

The group of activists calling itself Let’s Save the Arts has been fighting against the narrowing of curriculum for the last three years.

At that time, the island Department of Education changed the length of class periods at all public schools in the U.S. territory.

Students used to have seven class periods of 50 minutes each. Now students have six class periods of 60 minutes each. In effect, officials eliminated one class.

Students still receive Spanish, Math, Science, Social Studies, and English instruction. However, now they have to choose between Physical Education or Arts where they used to be able to do both.

Secretary of Education Rafael Román approved the measure to save money. More than 3,000 half time teaching positions were lost.

“It was an austerity measure,” says Mercedes Martinez, president of the Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico (FMPR) – the teachers union.

“They’re saying these teachers are not needed.”

Senator Rossana Lopez has proposed a solution. She introduced Bill 584 – legislation that would require all Commonwealth schools to include arts courses as a graduation requirement.

Arts teachers across the island formed the collective group to help pass the measure.

“Having a holistic education is a right and not a privilege,” said Carlos Vélez, an art teacher from Ángel Sandín Martinez Middle School in the Vega Baja region.

“The study of the arts benefits all students – especially those living under poverty that can’t pay for art courses elsewhere.”

The teachers union issued a strong statement of support.

“Students were off school Monday,” Martinez says. “In symbolism to MLK’s holiday celebration, they protested the best way they know: performing.”

During those performances, Román, the architect of the plan to eliminate the arts, changed his tune. While at the rally, he said he supports the bill.

However, the Secretary of Education could make most of these changes, himself, without legislative action. He could return the alignment of class periods to their previous configuration tomorrow.

“We’re waiting for him to put words into action,” Martinez says.

Meanwhile, supporters hope Bill 584 will pass before this Congressional session ends in June.

Corporate education reform measures like this one limiting arts classes are a consequence of financial woes imported from the mainland. Puerto Rico is besieged by vulture capitalists encouraging damaging rewrites to the tax code while buying and selling the territory’s debt.

Hundreds of American private equity moguls and entrepreneurs are using the Commonwealth as a tax haven.

As a result, tax revenues to fund public goods like education are drying up while the super rich rake in profits.

Officials warn the government may be out of money to pay its bills this year. Over the next five years, it may have to close nearly 600 more schools – almost half of the remaining facilities!

Of the 135 schools closed in just the last two years, Román had originally proposed shuttering 200. The remaining 65 were only kept alive because communities occupied the buildings and refused to let the government step in.

The people of Puerto Rico aren’t letting their government defund and defraud their public schools without a fight. Monday’s musical and artistic protest was just another note in the battle hymn of the people.

Bernie Sanders is Right: We Should Federalize Public School Funding

January 13, 2016 stevenmsinger Accountability, Bernie Sanders, Budget, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Election, ESEA, Every Student Succeeds Act, Hillary Clinton, NCLB, No Child Left Behind, Pennsylvania, Politics, Poverty, President, privatization, Race to the Top, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, segregation, Standardized Testing, standards, Teach for America, Teachers, Toxic Testing, Unions, Value Added Measures, VAM, voting #FeelTheBern, Bernie Sanders, Budget, charter schools, common core, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, education, Election, Hillary Clinton, Politics, public schools, school funding, standardized testing, teachers

Bernie Sanders just dropped a massive dose of truth on us Monday night.

No politician in my lifetime has ever said anything so dangerous, fraught with problems, unlikely, impractical, and absolutely on the nose right!

The Presidential candidate running for the Democratic nomination wants to make the federal government largely responsible for funding public schools. Right now districts are supported mostly by local and state taxes.

This is what he said:

“One of the things that I have always believed is that, in terms of education, we have to break our dependency on the property tax, because what happens is the wealthiest suburbs can in fact have great schools but poor, inner-city schools cannot. So I think we need equality in terms of how we fund education, and to make sure the federal government plays an active role to make sure that those schools who need it the most get the funds that they deserve.”

(Find the quote above 17 minutes into this video.)

Wow! What a statement!

Don’t tell me that was focused grouped. Don’t tell me his campaign did a poll first. Don’t tell me he ran that by any big donors for approval.

Whether you agree with it or not, such an audacious remark has to come from a genuine belief. This is really what Bernie thinks, and it’s entirely consistent with the Democratic Socialism of his whole political career.

I don’t think his rival for the party’s nomination, Hillary Clinton, will be parroting THIS stance! If anything, she might criticize him for it. And she’d have a multitude of practical reasons to do so.

Lots of folks on both sides of the aisle are sick of federal intervention in our schools. No Child Left Behind was a disaster. Race to the Top was worse. And the just passed Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) amounts to a massive giveback of power to the states. Under the most popular interpretation, the reauthorization of the federal law governing K-12 schools makes the states responsible for filling in the details of education policy while limiting federal interventions.

And now Bernie is suggesting the Fed foot the bill!?

That is going against the political tide. Who would vote for such a thing? Probably not Hillary. Or any of the Republican candidates. Or more than a handful in Congress, either.

But it’s exactly the right thing to do.

The reason?

The biggest problem with America’s public school system isn’t test scores, lazy students, or teachers unions. It’s poverty, segregation and inequitable funding.

We have separate schools for the rich and separate schools for the poor. We have schools serving mostly black and brown populations and schools serving mostly whites. And the way we allocate money and resources to these schools both allows and perpetuates this system.

Nationwide, state and local governments spend 15 percent less per pupil on poor school districts. I see this first hand. My home state of Pennsylvania is the worst offender, providing the poorest districts an embarrassing 33.5 percent less per student. This means higher class sizes, less teachers, less arts and humanities, less electives, less nurses, guidance councilors and wrap around services. This is the reality in 23 states.

An additional 23 states do buck this trend with more progressive funding formulas. States like California and Florida actually provide MORE spending to poor districts. This helps heal the wounds of malnutrition, violence, family instability and a host of other problems that go hand-in-hand with generational poverty. It also offset the costs of greater numbers of special education students and English Language Learners you typically find in these districts.

You might say, then, that the states where poor children get shafted could simply follow the lead of their more enlightened neighbors. Good luck with that! Rich folks rarely volunteer to subsidize the poor. They got theirs, and they vote and donate more regularly to local politicians than their indigent brethren can afford to do.

The result is a funding system based on local wealth. Rich areas have Cadillac education systems. Poor areas have dilapidated ones. That’s demonstrably unfair and leads to worse academic outcomes for needy kids.

What’s worse, no one else runs their schools this way. The U.S. is one of the only countries in the world – if not probably the ONLY country – that funds schools based largely on local taxes. Other developed nations either equalize funding or provide extra money for kids in need. In the Netherlands, for example, national funding is provided to all schools based on the number of pupils enrolled. But for every guilder allocated to a middle-class Dutch child, 1.25 guilders are allocated for a lower-class child and 1.9 guilders for a minority child – exactly the opposite of the situation in the U.S.

Federalizing education funding could solve all these problems. It could set the groundwork for an even playing field. All students could get a fair start in life! That’s a goal worth shooting for! And that’s what Bernie is suggesting.

But it’s an incredibly dangerous proposal.

Our school system still suffers nationwide from the effects of corporate education reform. National policy has been and continues to be one of high stakes standardized testing, poorly conceived and untested academic standards, and a push to privatize struggling schools. Corporatists call this “Accountability.”

It goes something like this: raise your test scores or we’re closing your school and turning it into a for-profit charter. Adopt these academic standards written by the testing companies and we’ll give you a couple extra bucks. De-professionalize teachers with junk science evaluations and hiring under-trained Teach for America temps or else we’ll cut your funding.

THIS is the federal legacy in education, and Bernie is suggesting we give them MORE POWER!?

Yes, and no. I can’t speak for Bernie, but that’s certainly not how this has to go. We can increase the Fed’s responsibility for funding schools without increasing its power over education policy. In my view, education decisions should be made locally, and I don’t mean at the state legislature. Decisions about how best to run schools should be made at the district level by the experts – the teachers and parents.

Certainly there will be those who call for more federal power over policy as a condition of federalized funding. But that has to be a deal breaker. Equitable funding with inequitable policy would just be plugging one hole while making another.

In my view, equitable funding IS the role of the federal government in public education. When the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was first passed in 1965, it’s purpose was to make sure all schools were getting adequate resources. Under Bush and Obama, that became perverted to mean more standardized tests and philanthro-capitalist interventions. Bernie’s suggestion could be a step in returning to the original intent of the law.

Yes, the Fed should be engaged in accountability. It should make sure it’s funding schools properly. Maybe it should even be responsible to make sure those funds are being spent on things that broadly can be construed as education. I don’t mean that the fed should be able to withhold monies from districts with low test scores. But maybe it can prosecute administrators who use funding to lavishly redecorate their offices or who neglect the needs of students in their districts.

However, even if you agree – as I do – that this is a lofty goal, it is almost impossible to achieve. It’s like single-payer healthcare was in the ‘80s and ‘90s. This is what most of the world is doing but it was completely out of reach here politically. In fact, we still don’t have it, but look at how the landscape has changed. Obamacare is not-single payer, but it is a step in that direction. Bernie is even championing going that extra step and providing a medicare like system for all.

What seemed impossible decades ago, now seems within reach. The same may be true one day with federalized education funding.

To be honest, I doubt fixing our school funding system is high on Bernie’s list of things to do. Breaking up the big banks, overturning Citizens United, free college tuition, even healthcare probably come first. And maybe that’s not a bad thing. If any or all of these goals were realized, it would help the more than half of our public school children living in poverty. Moreover, just having equitable funding on the list with these other worthy goals puts it on the national agenda.

Right now, no one else is talking about this. It isn’t even a recognizable goal for most progressives. Frankly, I doubt many people have even thought about it. By bringing this up, Bernie is forcing us to do so.

When I first became an education activist, I thought I was doing it for my students. Then we had a daughter, and I thought I was doing it for her, too. But as the years have gone by, the landscape has changed only slightly. We’re still reaching a level of critical mass when the culture demands a major shift. We’re not there yet. So now I wonder if the people I’m really doing this for are my grandchildren.

One day we may have the courage to change the course of our education system. We may gain the nerve to actually accomplish our convictions. We might actually try to have a nation with liberty and justice for all.

That’s what I’m fighting to achieve. I think many of us are doing the same. But do we have the bravery to take Bernie at his word, to push this topic onto the national stage?

A Bernie Sanders presidency would do that. It might not achieve this lofty goal. Not now. The political winds aren’t favorable. But we can try, knowing full well the dangers and the improbability.

I wish Bernie would flesh out the details of his plan. I wish he’d exorcise the devil from the details. But the very fact that he has the intrepidity to offer this as a solution fills me with hope.

Is it hot in here or am I starting to Feel the Bern?

F is for Friedrichs… and Freeloader: A Supreme Court Nightmare

January 12, 2016January 15, 2016 stevenmsinger Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, Labor, memes, Politics, Propaganda, Schools, Supreme Court, Teacher Tenure, Teachers, union busting, Unions corporate, Corporate Education Reform, education, forced choice, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, Politics, public schools, satire, Supreme Court, teachers, union busting, Union Contract, unions

Say you’re on an airplane flying high over the Rockies.

The plane is going down.

You need a parachute.

Luckily, before you took off, all the passengers got together and pooled their money to buy them.

There’s enough for everyone. We’re all going to make it out of this alive.

People line up at the doors getting ready to jump.

Right in front of you is a lady with a sour look on her face.

“I can’t believe they’re making us pay for these parachutes,” she says.

“Really?” you reply. “Don’t you want one?”

“Sure I do!” she says. “I just don’t think I should be forced to pay for it.”

You give her a look. You can’t help it.

“But how else can they buy the parachutes?” you say.

She puts her hands on her hips and says, “There are some people on other airplanes that don’t have parachutes. I don’t think it’s fair that I get a parachute when they don’t have one.”

“You could just leave your parachute here on the plane and jump without it,” you offer helpfully.

She makes a face looking down at the parachute she’s been provided. “Will you look at this?” she says. “Mine’s blue.”

“So what?” you say. “So is mine.”

“I hate blue. I don’t want my money going to buy blue parachutes.”

“Um. At least you’ll have a soft landing.”

“A soft BLUE landing without my Constitutional rights.”

Just then a hole breaks open in the back of the plane sending air whooshing through the cabin. Oxygen masks fall from the ceiling. The plane shudders back and forth before the hole is plugged and cabin pressure returns.

A man with a similar sour expression comes forward to both of you. He is wearing a military police uniform and has a whistle in his mouth. He blows it.

“Did I hear right!?” he bellows. “Is this woman being forced to pay for her parachute!?”

“Yes,” you say after a moment. “She wants one.”

They both look at you like a third arm is growing out of your forehead.

“That’s beside the point,” the military man spits. “She can’t be FORCED to pay for it!”

By this time, a woman makes her way to the three of you from the front of the plane. She is wearing a beret and an armband.

“What’s the problem back here?” she asks.

“The problem is that this woman is being forced to pay for her parachute!” the MP says.

“Do you want a parachute?” beret woman asks the sour jumper.

“Of course,” the woman says.

“Then why shouldn’t you pay for it?”

“Because it’s blue,” she says.

“Are you kidding me?” beret woman asks. “Of course it’s blue. We got those on sale. The only way we could afford parachutes for everyone was if we bought in bulk and bought blue.”

“I don’t care,” the jumper says. “I shouldn’t be forced to buy a blue parachute if I don’t want one.”

“But you DO want one,” you say.

“Not a blue one,” she responds.

“Just give it back,” you say.

“No,” she replies stubbornly.

“That’s it,” the MP says drawing his gun. “Both of you, give me your parachutes.”

“What!?” you say.

“You heard me, Flyboy!” he says opening a huge rucksack. “Everyone on this plane! Put your parachutes in this bag!”

Everyone groans but does as he commands. After all, he’s holding a gun.

“Now what?” the sour jumper says once all the parachutes have been collected.

“Now I’m going to return all of these to the store,” he says.

“Huh!?” you say.

“It’s the only fair thing to do. You’ll each have to come back to the store and pay for your own ‘chutes.”

“But we’re on a plane plummeting out of the sky!” you say.

He turns to the sour jumper. “You’re welcome,” he says. “My job here is done.”

You turn to beret lady. “Isn’t there something you can do?” you ask.

“I’m afraid not,” she says. “Even if we could go back to the store, we can’t afford to buy everyone a parachute unless everyone pitches in. And even then only the blue ones are on sale.”

The military man salutes and jumps out of the plane. After he falls an appreciable depth he pulls his own rip cord. You can see his parachute balloon open. It’s bright red.

You turn to beret girl. “Who was that guy?” you ask.

“Air Marshal Alito,” she says before making her way back to the front of the plane.

The nose of the cabin dips down. The sound of rushing wind is intense.

You turn to the sour jumper. “Are you satisfied now?” you say. “We’re all going to die.”

She slumps to the ground. Her head falls off. She’s hollow. She was just a mannequin.

You sit back in your seat stunned.

You put on your belt.

“I don’t want to pay for any seat belts,” comes whining from the mannequin’s head rolling on the floor.

You kick it out of the plane.

And smile.

Before you crash.

And experience a fiery death.

Meanwhile on the ground, Air Marshall Alito is shaking a man’s hand. The man is from Wall Street. He just made a small fortune betting the plane would crash. His name is Koch.

He gives Alito a suitcase full of greenbacks. He turns to another man, the owner of Friedrichs’ Mannequin Manufacturing. He gives him another similar suitcase.

These suitcases contain just a fraction of the money Koch has won betting on the demise of the airplane passengers.

He is laughing.

On the suitcases it says, “Right to Fly.”

He laughs harder.

He laughs and laughs and laughs.

EPILOGUE:

You’re still dead.

MORALS:

Should workers be permitted to benefit from collective bargaining without paying union dues? No. Pay for what you get or turn down the benefit.

Is collective bargaining essentially political? No. It’s negotiating fair treatment. Ebay isn’t political. Neither is this.

Is Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association a trumped-up case tailor-made for the five conservative Supreme Court justices to overturn existing law simply because they wanna? HELL YEAH!

NOTE: This article was featured on Diane Ravitch’s blog.

Who’s Your Favorite Gadfly? Top 10 Blog Posts (By Me) That Enlightened, Entertained and Enraged in 2015

December 31, 2015 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, AFT, Arne Duncan, Badass Teachers Association, Bernie Sanders, Bill Gates, Black Names, Budget, Civil Rights, Common Core, Compassion, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Election, ESEA, Every Student Succeeds Act, Hillary Clinton, Labor, Media, NCLB, NEA, No Child Left Behind, Obama, Opt Out, Parents, Police, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, President, privatization, Propaganda, Race to the Top, Racism, Refugees, Republican, Rick Smith, School Funding, school violence, Schools, Standardized Testing, Student Mobility, Teachers, Unions, Violence Against Children, voting, White Allies, White Fragility, White Privilege, Yohuru Williams #blacklivesmatter, #LetTeachersTeach, #StandUpForPublicSchools, annual testing, badass teachers association, Bernie Sanders, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, education, education reform, Election, Hillary Clinton, Politics, public schools, racism, standardized testing, teachers

“Pennsylvania educator and public school advocate Steven Singer is one of the most powerful voices in the nation when it comes to speaking out for students, parents, teachers and our public schools.”
–Jonathan Pelto, founder of the Education Bloggers Network

“Steven Singer wrote these five terrific posts last year. I didn’t see them when they appeared. Probably you didn’t either. You should.”
– Diane Ravitch, education historian

“Your name should be Sweet Steven Singer. You are a delight.”
–Karen Lewis, President of the Chicago Teachers Union

Hello. My name is Steven Singer, and I am a gadfly.

I make no apologies for that. It’s what I set out to do when I started this blog in July of 2014.

I told myself that people were too complacent. There was no curiosity. People were too darn sure about things – especially education policy and social issues.

They knew, for instance, that standardized testing was good for children. Why? Because Obama said so. And he’s such a nice man. It’s too bad all those mean Republicans keep making him do all this bad stuff.

They also knew racism was over. After all… Obama! Right? Black President, therefore, the hundreds of years of struggle – finished! Move along. Nothing to see here.

Yet all this “knowledge” went against everything I saw daily as a public school teacher.

Standardized tests are good for children? Tell that to more than half of public school kids now living below the poverty line who don’t have the same resources as middle class or wealthy kids yet are expected to magically ace their assessments. Tell that to the kids who get hives, get sick, or throw up on test day. Tell it to the black and brown students who for some unexplainable reason almost always score lower than their white peers.

Racism is over? Tell that to all my minority students who are afraid to walk home from school because they might get followed, jumped, beaten or killed… by the police! Tell it to their parents who can’t get a home loan and have to move from one rental property to another. Tell it to the advertising executives and marketing gurus who shower my kids with images of successful white people and only represent them as criminals, thugs, athletes or rappers.

So when I started this blog, I consciously set out to piss people off. But with a purpose. To quote the original historical gadfly, Socrates, my role is, “to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth.” It seems well suited to a school teacher. After all, Socrates was accused of “corruption of the youth.”

It’s been quite a year. When I went to the Network for Public Education conference in Chicago last April, some folks actually seemed to know who I was. “Don’t you write that Gadfly blog?” was a common question.

When I met NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia and AFT President Randi Weingarten, they both said, “I read your blog.” And then they looked me up and down suspiciously as if they were thinking, “THIS is the guy who writes all that stuff!? THIS is the guy giving me such a hard time!?”

Of course, I am human, too. One can’t sting and bite every day. Sometimes the things I write are met with love and approbation. Some weeks even Lily and Randi like me. Sometimes.

Education historian Diane Ravitch has given me tremendous moral support. I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to have one of your heroes appreciate your work! Her book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” really woke me up as a new teacher. I’m also on the steering committee of the Badass Teachers Association, an organization that has changed my life for the better. The more than 56,000 people there are my support. I would never have had the courage to start a blog or do half of the crazy things I do without their love and encouragement.

And there are so many more people I could thank: my fellow bloggers Jonathan Pelto, Peter Greene, Russ Walsh, Nancy Flanagan, Mitchell Robinson, and Yohuru Williams. Also the good people at the LA Progressive and Commondreams.org. The incredible and tireless radio host Rick Smith.

There are just too many to name. But no list of acknowledgment would be even close to completion without mentioning my most important supporter – you, my readers. Whether you’re one of the 9,190 people who get every new post delivered by email or if you otherwise contribute to the 486,000 hits my site has received so far, THANK YOU.

So in celebration of my first full year of blogging, I present to you an end of the year tradition – a Top 10 list. Out of the 90 posts I wrote in 2015, these are the ones that got the most attention. Often they incensed people into a fury. Sometimes they melted hearts. I just hope – whether you ended up agreeing with me or not – these posts made you think.

Feel free to share with family, friends, co-workers, etc. After all, I’m an equal opportunity gadfly. I always cherish the chance to buzz around a few new heads!

10) The Democrats May Have Just Aligned Themselves With Test and Punish – We Are Doomed

Published: July 17, 2015
Views: 7,122

Description: It hit me like a slap in the face that almost all Senate Democrats voted to make the reauthorization of the federal law governing K-12 public schools a direct continuation of the same failing policies of the Bush and Obama years. Heroes like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren seemed to be turning their back on teachers, parents and school children. And they were stopped in their efforts by… Republicans!

Fun Fact: This story had some legs. It inspired a bunch of education advocates like myself who are also Bernie Sanders supporters to write the candidate an open letter asking him to explain his vote. His campaign eventually responded that it was about accountability!?

9) Punching Teachers in the Face – New Low in Presidential Politics

Published: Aug. 3
Views: 14,735

Description: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie thought he’d run for the Republican nomination for President. He thought threatening to metaphorically punch teachers unions in the face would get him votes. It didn’t.

Fun Fact: This new low in Presidential politics came just after Donald Trump had announced he was running. Christie’s new low now seems almost quaint after Trump’s calls to tag all Muslims and monitor their Mosques. How innocent we were back in… August.

8) This Article May Be Illegal – Lifting the Veil of Silence on Standardized Testing

Published: April 18
Views: 15,818

Description: Teachers and students may be legally restrained from telling you what’s on federally mandated standardized tests, but we’re not restrained from telling you THAT we’re restrained. Is this just protecting intellectual property or direct legal intimidation of educators and children?

Fun Fact: I have not yet been arrested for writing this piece.

7) Stories about Teachers Union Endorsements of Hillary Clinton

–Did the AFT Rank and File REALLY Endorse Hillary Clinton for President? If So, Release the Raw Data

(July 12 – 4,448 hits)

–The NEA May Be About to Endorse Hillary Clinton Without Input From Majority of Members

(Sept. 21 – 3,873 hits)

–A Handful of NEA Leaders Have Taken Another Step Toward Endorsing Hillary Clinton Despite Member Outcry

(Oct. 2 – 739 hits)

–Teachers Told They’re Endorsing Hillary Clinton by NEA Leadership, Member Opinions Unnecessary

(Oct. 4 – 7,074 hits)

Published: July 12 – Oct. 4
Views: 16,134 TOTAL

Description: You expect your union to have your back. Unfortunately it seems our teachers unions were more interested in telling us who we’d be endorsing than asking us who the organizations representing us should endorse.

Fun Fact: I broke this story pretty much nationwide. News organizations like Politico were calling me to find out the scoop.

6) Why We Should Have ZERO Standardized Tests in Public Schools

Published: Jan. 30
Views: 16,443

Description: Someone had to say it. We don’t need any standardized tests. We need teacher-created tests. And that’s not nearly as crazy as some people think.

Fun Fact: This was written back when the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was being rewritten and naïve fools like me thought we might actually get a reduction in high stakes testing. Spoiler alert: we didn’t.

5) Atlanta Teacher RICO Conviction is Blood Sacrifice to the Testocracy

Published: April 3
Views: 18,187

Description: There is something terribly wrong when we’re using laws created to stop organized crime as a means to convict teachers cheating on standardized tests. I’m not saying cheating is right, but the mafia kills people. These were just teachers trying to keep their jobs in a system that rewards results and refuses to balance the scales, listen to research or the opinions of anyone not in the pockets of the testing and privatization industries.

Fun Fact: Watching all those seasons of “The Wire” finally came in handy.

4) Not My Daughter – One Dad’s Journey to Protect His Little Girl From Toxic Testing

Published: March 20
Views: 26,420

Description: How I went to my daughter’s school and demanded she not be subjected to high stakes testing in Kindergarten.

Fun Fact: They were very nice and did everything I asked. If you haven’t already, you should try it!

3) I Am Racist and (If You’re White) You Probably Are, Too

Published: June 2
Views: 28,906

Description: White folks often can’t see white privilege. This is my attempt to slap some sense into all of us. If you benefit from the system, you’re responsible to change it.

Fun Fact: Oh! The hate mail! I still get it almost every day! But I regret nothing! A black friend told me I was brave to write this. I disagreed. Anytime I want I can hide behind my complexion. She can’t.

2) I Am A Public School Teacher. Give Me All the Refugees You’ve Got

Published: Nov. 19
Views: 45,196

Description: Our public schools are already places of refuge for our nation’s school children. Send me more. I’ll take them all. I’d rather they end up in my classroom than drowned by the side of a river.

Fun Fact: I got equal love and hate for this one. Some folks were afraid of terrorists. Others didn’t think we could afford it. But many told me my heart was in the right place. Lily and the folks at the NEA were especially supportive.

1) White People Need to Stop Snickering at Black Names

Published: Sept. 6
Views: 96,351

Description: Maybe we should stop laughing at black people’s names. Maybe we should try to understand why they are sometimes different.

Fun Fact: You’d have thought I threatened some people’s lives with this one! How dare I suggest people should stop mocking other people’s names! If you want to know how strong white fragility is in our country, read some of the comments! But many people thanked me for bringing up something that had bothered them for years but that they had been too polite to talk about, themselves. This is easily my most popular piece yet.

Does Bernie Sanders Offer Education Advocates Enough? Are We Feelin’ the Bern or Just Feelin’ Burned?

December 27, 2015December 30, 2015 stevenmsinger Bernie Sanders, Common Core, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Election, ESEA, Every Student Succeeds Act, Hillary Clinton, NCLB, NEA, No Child Left Behind, Politics, President, privatization, school closings, Schools, Standardized Testing, standards, Teachers, Unions, voting Bernie Sanders, common core, Corporate Education Reform, education, education reform, Election, Hillary Clinton, Politics, public schools, school closings, standardized testing, teachers

You probably didn’t hear about this on the news.

To my knowledge no one covered it on TV, the newspaper or even on the blogosphere.

But Bernie Sanders may have made a reply to his Democratic Primary rival Hillary Clinton’s gaffe about closing public schools.

“I wouldn’t keep any school open that wasn’t doing a better than average job,” Clinton said at a campaign stop in Iowa on Dec. 22.

The media took this to mean Clinton is in favor of closing half the schools in the country. The comment has been much debated with calls for context and explanation by the Clinton campaign.

However, very quietly on Dec. 24, Sanders tweeted, “We should not be firing teachers. We should be hiring teachers. School teachers and educators are real American heroes.”

The @BernieSanders twitter account has more than 1 million followers, a little less than the @SenSanders account. But it does appear to be affiliated with the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. If Sanders, himself, posted the tweet is unclear. The candidate used the same account to live tweet the Republican debates so he – at least sometimes – is personally responsible for the material that comes out of there.

Moreover, the comment can be connected directly to something he said on C-SPAN at a campaign stop in Cleveland, OH, on Nov. 16 – before Clinton’s gaffe. In a larger speech that touched on numerous issues he said, “We should not be firing teachers and childcare workers, we should be hiring teachers.” The line about teachers being American heroes is new.

Start the speech 56 minutes in to hear the comment.

So I think it’s fair to say that the sentiment is, in fact, Bernie’s. It’s only the timing that is in question.

Is this tweet an attempt to distinguish himself from Clinton? Is this his way of saying that he’s NOT interested in closing schools and firing teachers – instead he wants to invest in education and hire more educators?

Maybe.

It sure would be nice if he’d come out and tell us. Frankly, I’m getting tired of having to read the tea leaves to get a glimpse of Bernie’s K-12 education policy.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the guy.

He’s been one of my favorite politicians for years. As a U.S. Senator, he’s consistently worked against economic and social inequality for decades. He’s been a fearless critic of Wall Street and privatization, an advocate for single payer healthcare and fighting global climate change.

He champions historic investments in preschool and college – even vowing to make post secondary tuition free. But somehow when it comes to K-12 schools, he’s got very little to say.

Most notably, he voted against No Child Left Behind (NCLB) – the devastating schools bill passed with bipartisan support during the George W. Bush years. However, he also voted in favor of the Charter School Expansion Act of 1998 which further opened the nation’s piggy bank to for-profit school privatizers. He also opposed a bill in early 2015 that would have prohibited the federal government from imposing the terrible Common Core standards on the nation’s schools.

On the campaign trail, when asked about his stance on K-12 schools, Sanders has boasted he would end NCLB. That was just accomplished by Congress through a reauthorization of the bill now called the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). As a member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Sanders was an active participant in that process.

When this legislation was still in the Senate, he – along with almost all Democrats – voted for a failed amendment that would have continued most of the worst aspects of NCLB. The bill eventually passed the chamber in a potentially more palatable form. Sanders eventually voted for that Senate version but was conspicuously absent from the final vote.

Though keeping a busy campaign schedule, Sanders is known for returning to Washington to vote for important legislation. He does this much more than most of the other sitting Congressional Presidential candidates.

So why was he absent for the final vote on the ESSA? Was that done on purpose, and if so why? Could it be an attempt to distance himself from this legislation? Or is it an attempt at plausible deniability – a way of justifying both his approval and disapproval of the same legislation?

Sanders hasn’t said much.

This puts would-be-supporters in an uncomfortable position. We like what Sanders has to say about the economy and poverty, but we have little to go on when it comes to K-12 education. Certainly if Sanders was elected President and came through with all of his other promises, that would help our public schools tremendously. And since Sanders has been fighting for these things his entire lengthy political career, it’s hard to doubt his sincerity. But why not include education as part of this platform? It seems to fit perfectly with everything else he believes.

On the other hand, there’s Clinton. She is making a real effort to clarify her education positions. In fact, last week’s gaffe was part of a much larger policy speech on K-12 schools. Sander’s reply – though better stated – was a one off. It was a sound-byte. It was an applause line. It didn’t have much substance behind it.

How are we to take it? Would Sanders hire more teachers as part of a nationwide education equity policy? If so, what exactly is that policy? Or is he – like Clinton – in favor of closing some struggling schools?

Certainly Clinton has a credibility problem. One of her first actions on the public scene as the First Lady of Arkansas in 1983 was to fight against the state teachers union to enact accountability-based school reform. Many of the billionaires and shady think tanks that are working so hard to destroy public schools have donated heavily to her campaign. Her endorsement by both major teachers unions – the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers – were allegedly the result of leadership and not rank and file members.

But unlike Sanders, Clinton actually seems to care about getting the education vote. She is actively fighting for our advocacy. Bernie doesn’t seem to think he needs us.

The Democratic Primaries are about two months away. If Sanders is going to make a play for teachers, parents, students and education advocates, he still has a chance. But time is running out.

Personally I’d rather vote for him, and maybe I will. But if he finally came out swinging, if he actually made me feel like he’d strip away the high stakes testing, unproven or failing policies and put teachers in the drivers seat – he could get so much more.

There are tens of thousands of teachers and advocates standing on the sidelines looking to Bernie. If he gave us a major policy speech, he’d find his campaign offices flooded with new volunteers. Educators would take to the streets and phone banks. We’d lead the charge. We could help turn the tide in a Democratic primary where the margin of victory could well be razor thin.

We’re out there, Bernie. Just say the word and we’ll come running.

We want to Feel the Bern, but you’ve got to turn up the heat!

NOTE: This article also was published in Commondreams.org and the LA Progressive.

I Doubt Hillary Clinton Plans to Close Half of All Public Schools – But She Does Want to Close Some

December 23, 2015December 30, 2015 stevenmsinger Accountability, Bernie Sanders, Bill Gates, Campbell Brown, Charter Schools, Chicago, Civil Rights, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Election, Hillary Clinton, Media, Politics, Poverty, President, privatization, Rahm, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, segregation, Teachers, Unions, voting charter schools, Corporate Education Reform, education, education reform, Election, Hillary Clinton, neoliberal, Politics, public schools, school closings, teachers

“This school district, and these schools throughout Iowa, are doing a better than average job. Now, I wouldn’t keep any school open that wasn’t doing a better than average job. If a school’s not doing a good job, then, you know, that may not be good for the kids.”
-Hillary Clinton

The above comments have caused a tremendous stir in the media lately.

Hillary Clinton wants to close half of all public schools!? She wants to shutter all public houses of learning that are average or below average!?

The Federalist even did some quick math and decided this means Clinton would shutter 50,000 schools. They even put that number in the headline of their article!

But hold your horses, media backlash.

I’m not really a Hillary supporter, but this has gotten a little out of hand.

Maybe I’m being too generous here, but I’m going to assume that Clinton may be a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.

She made a gaffe. She said something that doesn’t make much sense mathematically. Close all schools below average? Average means 50%. That’s half of all schools.

It was a blunder, a mistake, a foot-in-the-mouth moment.

I can believe a lot about Clinton, but not that her education policy includes shuttering half of our nation’s schools.

However, don’t take my word for it. Seriously! Ask her. She should clarify what she meant. But give her a chance to do so. Don’t mob her just looking to trip her up.

I doubt I’ll vote for Hillary in the primary, but she deserves a certain modicum of respect. She is an impressive person. She’s accomplished a heck of a lot in her life under some pretty intense circumstances.

As a college student in the 1960s, she volunteered to teach reading to children in poor Boston neighborhoods. She fought to ensure voting access for African Americans and even worked at an alternative newspaper in the black community. As First Lady and in Congress, she pushed for universal pre-kindergarten, arts education, after-school tutoring, smaller class sizes and the rights of families.

And in 2008 she ran an impressive – if ultimately unsuccessful – campaign for President.

As one of the most prominent women in the nation, she’s made some enemies.

Remember that Benghazi nonsense! Conservatives have been out for her blood because an American diplomatic compound in Libya was attacked in 2012 while Clinton was Secretary of State. They’ve trumped up a crazy amount of lies and innuendo that she was somehow responsible when it was the Republican-controlled Congress that voted to reduce security at these installations.

Heck! Michael Bay has a hatched job movie coming out during this election season just to wound Clinton’s current bid for president!

So give the woman some credit. She’s proven she’s a serious-minded, intelligent and capable politician.

However, like every human being she misspeaks from time-to-time. George W. Bush couldn’t open his mouth without English teachers and grammarians hiding under the sofa.

I think this explains much of what she said in Iowa trying to consolidate votes for the first Democratic primary on Feb. 1, 2016.

It explains much – but not all.

Clinton may have fudged her math momentarily forgetting that 50% of all schools are – and always will be – below average. If tomorrow every school in the country provided the greatest education the world has ever seen, half of them would still be below average. That’s what average means.

What bothers me is that Clinton thinks we should be closing schools at all.

That’s not a slip. That’s not a blunder or a miscalculation.

She really seems to believe you can improve public education by closing schools. And THAT is much more dangerous than any nonsense about her going on a nationwide school shuttering spree – something of which she would not, by the way, even have the power to do as President.

This idea that we can close schools to improve education is one of the founding principles of corporate education reform. And it’s demonstrably untrue.

Never has a school ever been improved by being closed. Student academic outcomes do not increase when children are displaced. In fact, they suffer.

If schools are struggling, a sensible strategy would be to find out what’s wrong. What is the reason kids are having trouble reaching academic success?

Spoiler Alert: nine times out of ten the problem is disinvestment. The school doesn’t have adequate resources to meet students’ needs.
More than half of our nation’s public school children live in poverty. Their schools don’t get equitable funding with districts that serve the rich. Moreover, privatization, charterization, increased efforts at vouchers, tax breaks and school choice have segregated our schools to such a degree that these problems disproportionately affect our students of color to a much larger degree than white children.

THAT is the problem with American education. It’s been proven time and again in study after study. Yet corporate education reformers like Michelle Rhee, Campbell Brown, Bill Gates, and Andrew Cuomo continue to ignore the facts in favor of simply closing more schools. In his time as Mayor, Rahm Emanuel has closed 50 Chicago schools – 46 of which serve mostly black and brown students. And he’s a close Clinton friend.

It is no accident that so many of these corporatists are Democrats. The entire neoliberal wing of the party is sick with these sorts of conservative policies. And Clinton can be connected with many of them.

Since getting the support of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA), Clinton’s tried to distance herself from her disaster capitalist buddies. But it isn’t working.

On the one hand, she criticized charter schools for ignoring the most difficult students. On the other, she still champions keeping privatized education in the mix.

On one hand, she thinks there should be a federal investigation of the Chicago Police Department for civil rights abuses. On the other hand, she thinks Rahm is doing a heck-of-a job.

I am deeply troubled that Clinton seems to think we can close our way to academic success. She should know better than that by now. Everyone should. It is absolutely unacceptable that any candidate with such teacher support should hold these views. Quite frankly, it’s a deal breaker.

The ball’s in your court, Hillary. You need to explain what you meant by your Iowa comments.

I admire Clinton’s bravery for actually talking about K-12 education – something her rival Bernie Sanders seems much less inclined to do. However, we all know Clinton’s endorsements by the AFT and NEA don’t represent the views of the rank-and-file. These were top down decisions made without much member input. If Hillary wants those endorsements to translate into votes, she’d better do some serious convincing.

Otherwise it won’t be schools that are shuttered. It will be her campaign.

NOTE: This article also was published on the Badass Teachers Association Blog and mentioned on Diane Ravitch’s blog.

Standardized Tests Every Day: the Competency Based Education Scam

November 30, 2015December 30, 2015 stevenmsinger Accountability, Bill Gates, Common Core, Competency Based Education, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Education, ESEA, Junk science, Labor, National Academic Standards, satire, Schools, Standardized Testing, standards, Supreme Court, Teachers, Technology, Toxic Testing, Unions, Value Added Measures, VAM, video games #LetTeachersTeach, #StandUpForPublicSchools, ALEC, annual testing, common core, Competency Based Education, Computers, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, education, education reform, Foundation for Excellence in Education, Gates Foundation, Politics, public schools, standardized testing, teachers, technology

rocketship-charter-schools

IN THE NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE:

Welcome to class, children.

Please put your hands down, and sit at your assigned seat in the computer lab.

Yes, your cubicle partitions should be firmly in place. You will be penalized if your eyes wander into your neighbors testing… I mean learning area.

Now log on to your Pearson Competency Based Education (CBE) platform.

Johnny, are you reading a book? Put that away!

Are we all logged on? Good.

Now complete your latest learning module. Some of you are on module three, others on module ten. Yes, Dara, I know you’re still on module one. You’ll all be happy to know each module is fully aligned with Common Core State Standards. In fact, each module is named after a specific standard. Once you’ve mastered say Module One “Citing Textual Evidence to Determine Analysis” you will move on to the next module, say “Determining Theme or Central Idea for Analysis.”

Johnny, didn’t I tell you to put away that book? There is no reading in school. You’re to read the passages provided by the good people at Pearson. No, you won’t get a whole story. Most of the passages are non-fiction. But I think there is a fun passage about a pineapple coming up in your module today. Isn’t that nice?

Laquan, you haven’t put on your headphones and started your module yet? You’ve been on module three for the past week. How can you learn at your own rate if you never progress beyond module three?

What’s that? Your mother wrote me a note? Let me see that.

Huh. So she wants to know how come you never get beyond module three. You should be able to answer that question for her, yourself, Laquan. (At least you could get that one right.)

Laquan, tell your mother that you haven’t passed the proficiency standard yet. You’ve taken all the remediation available on the computer program, haven’t you? Yes, that fun game where you answered multiple choice questions and when you got one correct the spaceship blasts an asteroid. And then you took the daily assessment but you just haven’t received a passing score yet. But don’t worry. I’m sure if you continue to do the same thing again today… eventually… you’ll get it right. It’s how the state and federal government determine whether you’ve learned anything on a daily basis.

In ancient times, teachers like me used to make up our own assignments. We’d give you books to read… Johnny, have you started yet? …whole books, novels, literature. And then we’d hold class discussions, class projects, act out scenes, draw posters, relate the books to your lives, write essays. But now all that silliness is gone.

Thanks to the good people at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Gates Foundation, and the Foundation for Excellence in Education, The state and federal government have mandated a much more efficient way of determining student learning. Back in the day, they forced schools to give one big standardized test in Reading and Math every year. Teachers would have to scramble with test prep material to make sure all learners could pass the test, because if students didn’t get passing marks, the teacher was out on her butt.

We’ve done away with such silliness now. Thankfully the government got rid of yearly high stakes standardized testing. What we do now is called Competency Based Education. That’s what this program is called. It’s kind of like high stakes standardized testing every day. So much more efficient, so much more data to use to prove you know this set of basic skills written by the testing companies with hardly any input from non-experts like classroom teachers.

That’s how the district became composed of 100% charter schools. No more inefficient school boards made up of community members. Today our schools are run by corporate CEOs who are experts at finding ways to cut corners and increase profits for their shareholders. And, ugh, make you learn good.

Hm. I seem to be talking too much. No one’s paying me to impart any information. I’m just supposed to make sure you’re all hooked up to the program and making satisfactory daily progress. Otherwise, I’ll be out of a job again.

You laugh, but it’s hard to get minimum wage work like this. Since the U.S. Supreme Court made labor unions all but illegal and public schools instituted CBE programs, teachers like me could no longer demand such exorbitant salaries. Now I make an honest living. Speaking of which, I may have to get out of here a few minutes early today to make it to my shift at WalMart. I’m greeter today!

And if you work hard, someday you can be, too!

NOTE: This article also was published on the Badass Teachers Association Blog and quoted extensively on Diane Ravitch’s blog.

Teachers Told They’re Endorsing Hillary Clinton by NEA Leadership. Membership Opinions Unnecessary

October 4, 2015December 13, 2015 stevenmsinger Bernie Sanders, Election, Hillary Clinton, Labor, NEA, President, Schools, Teachers, Unions 2016, Bernie Sanders, Democracy, Election, Hillary Clinton, labor, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, NEA, Politics, President, schools, teachers, unions, Vote

The decision has been made, teachers.

YOU WILL ENDORSE HILLARY CLINTON IN THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES.

Your union has spoken.

Now please donate to the Political Action Committee (PAC).

The National Education Association (NEA) represents 3 million educators. It is the largest labor union in the country. However only about 180 people made the decision to back Clinton.

The NEA Board of Directors voted today 118 to 39 in favor of the endorsement with 8 abstentions and 5 absences.

Thursday the 74 member PAC Council voted to endorse Clinton with 82% in favor, 18% against and some of the largest delegations – California and New Jersey – abstaining.

Check my math here. So 61 PAC votes plus 118 Directors plus one President Lily Eskelsen Garcia equals 180 in favor.

That’s about .00006% of the membership.

And we call that an endorsement.

But wait. It can’t really be that simple. All of these people are voted in by members. Surely they polled their constituencies to gauge how individuals wanted them to vote.

Nope.

To be fair, some NEA directors may have polled state union leaders.

Ronnie Ray James, NEA Director from South Carolina, wrote in to this blog saying he took a straw poll of the South Carolina Education Association (SCEA) board about an early endorsement. He said the vote was close but came out in favor of making the endorsement.

However, that’s a far cry from asking actual card carrying members of the rank and file! Moreover, it is unclear how widespread these straw polls were, if they polled board members about outright support for Clinton and if the leaders of state boards have the pulse of their constituents.

According to NEA by-laws, the organization need go no further to obtain input from individual members for a primary endorsement. Even these straw polls are a formality.

The 8,000 strong Representative Assembly (RA) did not get a say. This larger body representing state and local affiliates will get to vote on an endorsement in the general election when the field is narrowed down to only two major candidates.

But anything like a poll of individual members is apparently not desired by leadership – now or later.

Perhaps that’s because for weeks the rank and file have been vehemently criticizing leaderships’ mounting push to endorse Clinton.

Some opposed to the decision are certainly Bernie Sanders supporters. However, many others complain that it is too early to endorse before candidates have clearly outlined their positions on education or even had a chance to debate.

In an effort to solidify the vote among wavering leadership, Garcia called in the big gun – Hillary Clinton, herself.

The Democratic candidate met with Directors today before the vote. No other candidate was present.

It’s one thing to vote. It’s another thing to do it in the presence of one of the candidates!

This whole process has been a mockery of what labor is supposed to stand for.

Unions are supposed to be about solidarity. The word, itself, means joining together. But this move by NEA leadership has been nothing like that. It has been a top down decision imposed on membership.

It is ludicrous that leaders claim they are representing card carrying rank and file when they haven’t asked us what we think. Nor do they even seem to have the slightest interest in doing so.

Full disclosure: I am not a Clinton supporter. I lean towards Sanders. However, I could accept this decision if it had been conducted democratically – if it really was a reflection of the thoughts of my union brothers and sisters.

Instead, we’ve been treated like sheep. We’ve been herded, fenced in, hushed and placated.

The way I see it, there are only two ways to go from here: we can give up or we can fight back.

It is tempting to become despondent and stop participating in the union. Why bother with people who don’t care what I think? In fact, maybe all those fat cats fighting to destroy us are right. If the NEA won’t include me in something this important, why should I continue defending it? Why keep paying dues?

But I can’t go that route. I won’t. Together we bargain, alone we beg.

The problem is not unions. The problem is our leadership. We must fight to take it back.

We must replace those who would silence the rank and file. We must vote in new leaders who actually represent us and have an interest in our input.

We need leaders who will fight for us, not those who are satisfied with a mere seat at the table and an opportunity to enrich themselves at our expense.

This is hard. It’s much easier to just wave a white flag, go home and watch the football game.

A union is not made of leaders. It is made of members.

Lily is not the NEA. I am.

And I will fight to take it back.

NOTE: This article also was published in the LA Progressive and on the Badass Teachers Association blog.

A Handful of NEA Leaders Have Taken Another Step Toward Endorsing Hillary Clinton Despite Member Outcry

October 2, 2015December 13, 2015 stevenmsinger Bernie Sanders, Democrat, Election, Hillary Clinton, NEA, Politics, President, Schools, Unions 2016, Bernie Sanders, Democrats, education, Election, Hillary Clinton, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, NEA, Politics, President, public schools, teachers, unions

“We are what Democracy looks like.”

With those words, Lily Eskelsen Garcia took the reigns of the National Education Association (NEA) as President in 2014.

A little more than a year later, the NEA is set to prove those words false by endorsing a candidate for the 2016 Presidential Primaries without input from the rank and file.

Despite vocal opposition from thousands of members of the largest union in the country, the NEA Political Action Committee (PAC) Council voted to endorse Hillary Clinton.

The council of 74 educators from the organization’s political arm voted Thursday. The NEA Board of Directors is expected to make a final decision on Saturday.

Despite Garcia’s fierce rhetoric, the decision is being made by a handful of union leaders with next to no input from the more than 3 million members.

Many details of the vote, itself, are shrouded in secrecy and bad math.

Numerous sources in the NEA say the PAC council voted 82% in favor and 18% against. However, these figures are suspect. Two of the largest state delegations – California and New Jersey – abstained. The percentages being touted by PAC Council representatives do not seem to take that into account. The actual total should be somewhat closer.

When the Board of Directors votes later this week, at least 58% will be needed to give Clinton the organization’s endorsement.

However, the main body of representatives – the Representative Assembly (RA) – will be excluded from voting. The larger RA’s say is unnecessary according to NEA by-laws to give an endorsement in the primary election. However, the RA will get to vote on an endorsement in the general election when the field is narrowed to only two major candidates.

Any additional outreach to card carrying educators and other dues paying members is apparently not needed or desired.

Opposition to this much anticipate vote has been mounting. State chapters in New Jersey, Massachusetts and Vermont have come out publicly against the Clinton endorsement. However, when it came to a vote in the PAC Council, New Jersey abstained instead of voting the measure down. Moreover, the California chapter has been riddled with outspoken critics of the endorsement, yet they only pushed the state delegation to another abstention.

Ohio and Massachusetts delegations voted against it, but full tallies of the roll call vote could not immediately be determined.

Those in-favor of the endorsement claim Clinton is the most electable candidate who supports positive education policies. However, even Garcia is reported to have admitted that Bernie Sanders has better education positions.

While some opposing the endorsement clearly favor Sanders, many oppose any endorsement so early in the race before even the first Democratic debate.

Clinton and Sanders are polling neck-and-neck in the first two Democratic primary states. A Clinton endorsement could give her a much needed edge over her political rival.

Meanwhile as labor unions are attacked on all sides, it seems the biggest opponent to union Democracy may come from inside these organizations, themselves.

NOTE: This article also was published on the Badass Teachers Association blog.

gadflyonthewallblog

"To sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."

Unions