My union leadership, all bluster?

I didn't go this year to the National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly, but having gone twice, I have a sense of the results by looking at the new business items passed by the delegates. I was particularly interested in how the NEA would respond to the increased attacks against teachers and our unions, specifically with Obama's Race to the Top and his horrible plans for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) (titled NCLB under Bush).

With the attacks suffered by our teacher unions this year, there is no better time than now to start fighting back.

In his keynote address, NEA head Dennis Van Roekel thundered, "We must not allow another bad ESEA. Because if they take the old NCLB, fancy it up and call it the new ESEA, I think we ought to just call it TNT and blow the whole damn thing up!”

But a look at the passed business items suggests that the NEA leadership does not intend on leading a grassroots mobilization, but rather plans on continuing with their ineffective support of Democratic Party politicians and lobbying efforts.

Van Roekel does call for state affiliates to organize a Day of Action against Obama's plan for ESEA, which in my opinion is even worse than Bush's NCLB. But such devolution of organizing to state bodies insures a mediocre effort. The New Business Item that would have committed the NEA to a national mobilization in the streets failed, undoubtedly due to the leadership's opposition to it.

More tellingly, New Business Item 95, passed late in the proceedings by the delegates, assists state affiliates in attracting Race-to-the-Top grant money, apparently contradicting the NEA position laid out in NBI A. NBI A commits the NEA to opposing "federal educational funding through competitive grant models" like that of Race-to-the-Top.

What we need is a national leadership willing to lead by mobilizing the ranks. Instead, once again, I suspect that we are getting fiery rhetoric with no substance. That said, we need to nevertheless influence our state affiliates to organize a Day of Action against Obama's ESEA. But it should be a real Day of Action by marching in the street, not worthless texting or call-ins.

Rank-and-file teachers win in Chicago

The most promising political news of the year has to be the victory in the Chicago Teachers Union of the Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators. This grouping was formed two years ago to contest the closing of Chicago neighborhood schools due to No Child Left Behind.

For anyone who has worked in an urban school, it is obvious that the NCLB-mandated tests are entirely unfair to schools with diverse school populations. I won't go into the details, except to say that I support accountability, and what we have with NCLB has nothing to do with accountability. The sad reality, though, is that the leadership of our teacher unions are retreating from the battle. Finally we have a union leadership willing to fight back, and do so by promoting democracy and grassroots mobilization of teachers and community members.

Right away, the CORE-led Chicago Teachers Union has a big battle ahead over layoffs. I couldn't believe that the Chicago Board of Education voted to layoff teachers, not by seniority, but by their evaluations! As if evaluations can be compared, and as if they are always to be trusted! While I have had good principals, I know teachers who have not. There goes our right to speak our minds and exercise professional judgment, when our future is held in one person's hands!

Our Race to the Bottom

This article on Obama's Sec. of Education, Arne Duncan, as leader of the corporate take-over of education, is the best I've come across yet. But I would have been a little harder on the leaderships of the two national teacher unions, which have done so very little to educate and lead on these issues. The NEA under Van Roekel is so enamored with Obama that his mild criticism of Race to the Top (RTTT) and merit pay gets lost when it isn't absent. And as for the AFT, which is getting hit hardest on NCLB and now RTTT because it represents teachers mostly in urban districts, Weingarten's appearance on Bill Maher's HBO show Real Time was absolutely pathetic. Honestly, almost anyone could have done better. The worst part was her refusal to defend the fired Rhode Island teachers, preferring instead to blame the school's administration on its "failures". Of course we can't depend on these bureaucrats, but it's infuriating nonetheless.

Stand up to Obama's No Child Left Behind

Obama and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, told us they would change the name of No Child Left Behind. Well, now we have it - Race to the Top. Unfortunately, we're now seeing that Race to the Top is an extension of NCLB. Using the punitive measures of the Bush era law, Race to the Top doles out money to states and districts that are willing to privatize and open up to charter schools. Meanwhile, it further demands that the "failing" schools of NCLB, mostly in cities meeting the needs of our poorest students, be punished. The recent Rhode Island firing of teachers is the model: blame the teachers and their union.

Sadly, our union here in Bloomington, Illinois approved District 87's application for Race to the Top funds. In assigning blame for this blunder, I have to say that it sits squarely with the national union leaderships, both of the AFT and NEA in failing to lead on this issue from the top. The NEA in particular seems unwilling to criticize Obama and his education policy. The NEA leadership contents itself with decontextualized criticisms of teacher merit pay based on test scores, failing to point out that Obama's Race to the Top seeks to implement such merit schemes. Without leadership from the national unions, teachers outside of the urban districts will fail to recognize how inner city schools are being unjustly attacked by NCLB. More than ever, these schools need our solidarity.

For information background on NCLB, watch Diane Ravitch on Democracy Now, embedded below in this same post. For an article on the Rhode Island situation, which includes info on their capitulation, see the article on Susan Ohanian's website.

Deborah Meier on charter schools

This Democracy Now! video from 5/21/09, featuring Deborah Meier on education, is a fairly good counterpoint to Obama's atrocious pro-NCLB/pro-charter school education plan. What's missing from the analysis, however, is that charter schools are designed to attack teacher unions and whatever democratic accountability exists within the present public school system.

Military-industrial complex schools

An article at Socialist Viewpoint, titled No School Left Unsold, tells the story of how Obama's new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, used No Child Left Behind (NCLB) as Chicago's superintendent to attack unionized public schools, and in one instance, promote the opening of a naval school.

Arne Duncan's embrace of NCLB and the reconstituting of Chicago schools is well-known. But this military school story is uncanny, since the school I worked at in St. Paul - Cleveland Jr. High - suffered a similar fate due to NCLB. To make a long story short, Cleveland Jr. was taken over by the Farnsworth Aerospace School to become a NASA school. (At the time I called Farnsworth the military-industrial complex school, and that perception was amplified by its insanely tyrannical principal.)

We knew before that NCLB promoted military interests by mandating that students' information be given to military recruiters unless students opted out. And many suspected that NCLB promoted corporate interests by privatization and the interjection of corporate curricula. But I wonder if there is a trend of NCLB promoting military schools nationwide. Is the miltiary-industrial wing of corporate America the biggest beneficiary of NCLB?

Background on NCLB:
Susan Ohanian Speaks Out
My article - Education and the 2008 Election