The University of Missouri system has been besieged with angry letters and phone calls, and top officials at its St. Louis campus have asked an adjunct faculty member to resign, as a result of the conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart’s posting videos this week that appear to show two labor-studies instructors advocating union violence.

The videos, however, were a “hatchet Job”.

Yet, “both Mr. Giljum and Ms. Ancel [the instructors] said they have been barraged with angry phone calls and letters, and Mr. Giljum said he has received explicit death threats over the phone.”

I assume the contradiction does not go unnoticed. The story continues:

If Mr. Breitbart’s Web site has broadcast a misleadingly edited video, it would hardly be the first time. The site is notorious for having put up the video that purported to show a Department of Agriculture official, Shirley Sherrod, saying she had discriminated against a white farmer, when a review of her comments in context show that she said no such thing. (Ms. Sherrod, who was forced to resign after the video came out, has sued Mr. Breitbart.)

Mr. Breitbart’s Web site also publicized the 2009 hidden-camera videos of employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, which appear to show the employees advising a pimp and prostitute on how to deceive the IRS about their activities and income. Law-enforcement officials who investigated the allegations have said the videos were edited to make it look as if the employees were actively engaged in wrongdoing when, in fact, they were not.

Mr. Breitbart had indicated in an April 18 interview on Hannity, Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, that he planned to “go after” educators and their union organizers.

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Recent news confirms what we have known for a long time: change is coming, and it doesn’t look good. But a key part of contending with change — good or bad — is to step back and analyze how that change is legitimated. In the case of the attack on the right to organize, much can be learned if one examines how the matter is framed and justified.

The nature of the right to organize

Key to attacking teachers is disinformation regarding teachers and their rights. By definition, a right cannot be given or taken away. It is a valid, legitimate claim based in the existence of the holder of the claim. Rights, by their very nature, are not “granted” on the basis of performance, ability, opinion, or any other consideration. I have the right to participate in decision making about matters that affect me, like my working conditions, the condition of my community, the economy in general, etc…whether or not I’m good at math, nice to my neighbors or have friends in high places. I have that right by virtue of being a member of that community, that economy, that workplace. Whether that right is recognized is in practice quite different from whether or not it exists.

So, even if the existence of unions are shown to correlate with some malady, this correlation does not correctly justify attacking a basic right, like that of a group of people with common interests to come together to defend those interests. Does the existence of teachers unions make it harder for administrators to do their job? Sometimes. Does that justify attacking teachers’ right to organize? Absolutely not. This logic would suggest that we should throw harder to educate kids out of school because they make the school’s job harder. Rights establish the boundaries for the negotiation of contending interests, a process which should be governed by the aim of harmonizing those interests, not empowering one group of people at the expense of another as current rhetoric suggests.

So think of it this way, as the right to organize in terms of unions is not simply a matter of “labor rights” but basic to democratic rights in general. Involving all constituencies in making a decision takes longer, is probably a drain on social resources, and might even be properly rendered as “inefficient”. Should we thus abandon the hope that society can be democratically organized? Does this fact negate the claim to have a say over matters that affect our lives? If the process for firing ineffective teachers is burdensome is expanding arbitrary authority of CEO-types with their brooms and bats really a solution? I don’t believe the vast majority of Americans want to wake up in a world run by these broom and bat wielding people.

I hope that these quickly-formulated thought exercises reveal that the logic behind proposals to outlaw or at least largely emasculate collective bargaining are very dangerous. One proposal in fact appears to block teachers from having a say over education policy — so, teachers are key to improving the quality of education, but they should be barred from decision-making (collective bargaining is a decision-making arrangement) about the very thing they are to lead improving? Not convinced?

Certainly, lurking in the public mind is this retort: “yeah, but the teachers are all self interested.” And the billionaires driving school deformation strategies premised on a for-profit model which requires cheap, temporary labor are what, generous and selfless? But let’s actually be serious. What does it mean to be self interested?

Teachers working conditions are students learning conditions

The line that outlawing teachers unions is required so that school boards and parents can be empowered is lunacy. Parents are not empowered if the teachers that teach their children are treated like shit. School boards are not representing the interests of their community if they treat teachers like shit.

More to the point, the line that the problem is that teachers unions only serve the interests of teachers needs to be interrogated. Is self interest wrong? Why is it wrong or socially harmful to want higher wages, better healthcare, and small class sizes, rest and leisure and assurance of being cared for during retirement?

That sounds terrible! I’ll sign up instead for the work camp where I can salute the master every day, as my body cripples and spirit is crushed under the mighty pressure of standards gaps and evaluation evaluation assessments data driven decision-less making brain-numbing ignorance of the 6,000 pound gorilla who just got laid off, has no healthcare and is being evicted, with three children, all of whom are not meeting “benchmark” (although they might be sleeping under the bench, which is not one of the marks). (And, of course, because the gorilla is sooo big, it can’t choose to even live under the bridge, let alone the bench.)

It is a material fact that teachers working conditions are students learning conditions. That is, teachers self interest is connected to their students’ interests. Students under the tutelage of teachers who are themselves under the thumb of a broom or bat totting CEO with unbridled power to hire and fire at will and extend the working day and increase class size at will (all so they can be “empowered to strategically use resources” — i.e., cut costs) will not be served well. Period. Teachers and parents and tax payers have well over one hundred years of experience fighting for real public education. I know its tough, but we need to remember: teachers are tax payers. Teachers are parents. And teachers are mostly women.

So laid out this way, someone is going to have a hell of a time convincing the public that the self-interest of women is somehow fundamentally at odds with parents and the community, and that to counter this, we should put “students first”…because, uh, women are opposed to helping children, and benefit from, uh, illiterate, poorly educated youth?

You know what, I think its time the public eye scrutinized another collective — not teachers, or women, or parents — a much smaller collective, a collective for whom its self interest does not in fact correlate with the general interest!

Bill, Eli, are you there?

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• Evidence on the quality of for-profit higher education?
• Stephen Sawchuk: States Aim to Curb Collective Bargaining
• Anthony Cody: Teachers Beware — They are Coming for Our Pensions
• Inside Higher Ed: For-Profit Colleges Open Another Front

First it was changes to pay, then evaluation systems, and then tenure laws. Now, lawmakers in several states are challenging collective bargaining, the foundation of teacher unionism.

In Idaho and Indiana, Republican leaders are proposing bills that would limit collective bargaining to wages and benefits, excluding education policy issues. And in Tennessee, a recently introduced bill would abolish altogether teachers’ ability to bargain collectively.

None of the proposals has yet passed its respective legislative chambers, but they are emerging in what may be a particularly favorable political climate, given the rightward shift in many state capitals as a result of the November elections…

At least three states have proposed bills to curtail or eliminate teacher bargaining. other states could follow suit.

IDAHO

SPONSORS: State Superintendent Tom Luna, a Republican, has proposed two bills. At press time, they awaited a sponsor and bill numbers.

One bill would limit negotiations to wages and compensation and require such negotiations to be held in open meetings. It would disallow “continuation clauses” in contracts—essentially clearing all previous policies for each negotiation. A second bill would require school districts to post copies of their current school district budgets and collective bargaining pacts on their websites.

INDIANA

SB 575: SPONSORS: Sens. Phil Boots, (R), Luke Kenley (R), Ed Charbonneau (R)

The bill would remove certain items from collective bargaining negotiations, including teacher-evaluation procedures, teacher-dismissal procedures, and school restructuring options, among others. it also would permit districts to impose certain employment terms if the teachers’ contract expires without a new one in place. contracts could not extend beyond two years.

STATUS: Passed Senate committee on Pensions and Labor, Jan. 27

HB 1337: SPONSORS: Reps. Robert Behning (R), David Frizzell (R)

Similar to the Senate bill, it also would alter the teacher-evaluation framework and allow for the dismissal of tenured teachers for performance reasons.

STATUS: Referred to house committee on Education, Jan. 13

TENNESSEE: HB 0130 — SPONSORS: Reps. Debra Maggart (R), Glen Casada (R)

The bill would prohibit teachers’ unions and other professional employees’ organizations from negotiating employment contracts with local school boards. Labor contracts signed before enactment of the bill would remain in force through their expiration.

STATUS: Filed for introduction, Jan. 18

SOURCE: Education Week

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From Teacher Blogs, Living in Dialogue

On Wednesday, listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR, I heard an expert on the auto industry, Paul Ingrassia, talk happily about the “tough love” the Obama administration had shown for auto workers. Using the device of bankruptcy to break contractual obligations to their employees, the US car makers have reduced their labor costs from 30% of the cost of a car to just 6%. Now, even though they are selling fewer cars, the car makers are raking in the billions again.

Ingrassia explained it this way:

So if we can, you know, at least address the problems of Detroit with promises, the promise of improvement, or even a cure, why can’t we apply the same tough-love methods to the federal budget deficit and the whole entitlement structure that we have in this country that has helped produce that deficit, and also to the public employee pension plans that are threatening to bankrupt many of our states? Those are huge problems that will swamp this country if they’re not addressed.

There was a very interesting op-ed piece a couple of days ago in The Wall Street Journal by a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania suggesting that Congress should pass a law that allows states to declare bankruptcy. And, you know, it’s not a bad thought. And there’s no way that GM and Chrysler would have made it through this restructuring without the ability to renounce contracts and, you know, to renounce their financial obligations that they have accumulated over the years that they could not afford to meet.

And the shoe dropped just a day later, when the New York Times reported that “Policy makers are working behind the scenes to come up with a way to let states declare bankruptcy and get out from under crushing debts, including the pensions they have promised to retired public workers.”

It is interesting to note Ingrassia’s use of the phrase “tough love.” In Michelle Rhee’s plan to fix the schools she simplisticly declares are, she says we must “Ensure that the government exercises discipline in pension and benefit programs.” So there must be tough love and discipline – we are being treated as if we were children bingeing on ice cream.

We are not children. We are adults who have chosen to teach, a not very well-paid profession. And those of us who have chosen to make it a career look forward to the day when we can cease grading papers and calling parents, and enjoy a few years of hard-earned rest before we go off to the teacher’s lounge in the sky. Our pensions are a form of deferred compensation. That money has already been earned, and the obligation to us is very real.

This is one more step towards the destruction of our profession. We need people to choose teaching as a career because it is complex work that deepens year after year. The first or second year intern may have good test scores, but they have a great deal to learn – as most of them will tell you. But when we make everything about test scores, and base everything – pay, hiring, evaluations – on these scores, we have lost the foundation for our profession, and any intern with a repertoire of test prep techniques is as “effective” as a seasoned veteran. This crass definition of effectiveness allows the embrace of policies that devalue experience and seniority, and things like pensions that promote career longevity, in favor of cost-cutting measures. We need a profession that creates stability in our schools, not the constant churn that makes the veteran teacher a rarity, and robs us of the dynamic mix that results when novices and veterans collaborate together to learn how innovative practices can meld with traditional ones.

But take careful note, when Mr. Ingrassia talks about the “entitlement structure we have in this country,” these are code words for Social Security, the other target in the sights of the billionaires. So we are in good company. It is not just public employees that stand to lose our pensions – it is every person who does not have an independent means of supporting themselves when they retire. And this is both the greatest danger, and our greatest hope. We need to help our fellow Americans understand – they are coming for ALL of our pensions. Teachers and other public employees are taking some big hits, but the biggest pot of gold of all is Social Security, and that will affect every wage earner in the nation. We need some good old fashioned solidarity. And we need to get ourselves into the streets for some old fashioned protests. I am headed to Washington, DC, this summer, and it looks like I have some company.

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http://www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au

Yesterday, the Buffalo News reported that the Buffalo Public Schools and the Buffalo Teachers Federation had negotiated a new teacher evaluation system. But what is particularly significant is that the News simultaneously reported on and endorsed the contract negotiated between Washington, D.C. teachers and administration, and promoted it as a model for Buffalo. The D.C. contract — known as IMPACT but not mentioned by name in the editorial — has, according to the Buffalo News, four key components: performance-based teacher evaluation, financial incentives to raise test scores, limits on the protections of tenure, and increased ability of the district to lay off “bad teachers” without “economic cause”. But the News is either unaware or unwilling to report facts unfriendly to its position of support.

While the News editorial characterizes the contact as one where “performance and the quality of teaching, not blind seniority, will determine who is hired and who is laid off,” it downplays the fact that “performance” and “quality of teaching” are determined by student test scores. Following adoption of the contract, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee fired 165 teachers based on lack of improvement in student test scores over one academic year. The method is said to measure the “value added” to students by their teacher.

Student test scores do not equal good teaching

Despite all the rhetoric supporting the use of scientific research to guide education reform, the amount of evidence against using test scores as a basis for teacher evaluation is very strong. President Obama, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and a host of billionaires who support Rhee are imposing this practice across the country, despite the warnings of the scientific community.

In his video Merit Pay, Teacher Pay, and Value Added Measures, professor Daniel Willingham summarizes the problems associated with what the News is promoting. But he is not alone. A recent report by the National Center for Educational Evaluation estimating the error in using test scores to classify teachers as effective or ineffective predicts that when using only one year of data, 35% of teacher classifications will be wrong (i.e., effective teachers will be classified as ineffective, and ineffective teachers will be classified as effective). For teachers in D.C., that means as many as 57 of the 165 teachers fired in DC might have been inaccurately identified as ineffective. The National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research also released a study examining the technical limits of using student test results to evaluate teachers. Among other things, the report found that different tests yield different teacher rankings.

The degrading effect of incentives

But more important than the technical limitations noted above is the philosophical underpinning of the entire system based on financial incentives to pressure educators to boost student test scores. Based on past practice, this gives rise to treating students as mere conduits of cash, leading ultimately to student abuse and debasement of public education. This is what happened under a similar system in England, Ireland, Australia and elsewhere during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The negative results of what was known as Payment by Results were widely recognized by contemporaries, and the practice was eventually halted. It was precisely this system — one that abused teachers and pushed many competent ones to leave the profession — that contributed to teachers unionizing in Britain. And most interestingly, it was a method of teacher compensation rooted in an effort to reduce spending on public education during a time of great expenditures following the Crimean War.

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Jack Gerson and other reporters (as indicated) – September 25, 2009

Well over 5,000 students, staff and faculty packed the University of California Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza on September 24, 2009, to protest sweeping layoffs, deep cuts to academic and research programs, steep tuition hikes, and the privatization of public education in California.

More than 5,000 students, teachers and other staff protested against cuts in higher education and privatization at the University of California’s Berkeley campus on September 24, 2009. Above, some of the crowd at Sproul Plaza, Berkeley, during the day of protests. Substance photo by Jack Gerson.On this, the first day of fall semester classes, over a thousand faculty members and more than 1,100 graduate teaching assistants staged a walkout, coinciding with a one-day strike by University Professional and Technical workers.

Reports compiled by Chicago’s Labor Beat (see button on the right for their Home Page):

Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:51:58 -0700

Subject: Reports from around California (and the world) – The UC Walkout

From: Eric

On Thursday, September 24, 2009, protests shook all 10 campuses of the University of California. Prompted by a walk-out letter signed by over 1,200 faculty, and a strike by 12,000 union researchers, students and labor allies organized a massive day of action to re-prioritize the budget of the UC system and push back against privatization. UC Berkeley, in particular, saw thousands attend rallies and marches reminiscent of previous generations, while activists at 3 other UCs occupied campus buildings (one of which is still ongoing). Politicians all over the state were forced to respond, with UC admins blaming state legislators and vis-versa. Schwarzenegger dismissed the protesters as a “screaming special interest group,” while Gavin Newsom insinuated his support of the walkout, injecting the UC crisis into the 2010 Governor’s race. Seeing how this was the very first day of class for most UCs, it looks to be a very long school year.. especially if you’re on the wrong side of the bullhorn.

Here’s a collection up of some of the reports from today. There’s many more – please feel free to comment.

UC Wide

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/24/california-university-berkeley-budget-protest

http://www.sacbee.com/108/story/2204365.html

http://studentactivism.net/2009/09/24/reports-from-the-uc-walkout/

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/25/MNVU19SBEV.DTL

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/09/20/18622513.php

http://socialistworker.org/2009/09/25/thousands-join-uc-walkout

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/video?id=7030684

http://extras.mercurynews.com/slideshows/news/2009/09/0925walkout/

http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=0z&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=uc+walkout&oq=uc

background info: http://labornotes.org/node/2459

UC BERKELEY

* Huge rally. Police estimate 5,000. March through streets of Berkeley, sit-down civil disobedience in front of campus, shutting down three main streets.

* All day picketing

* Over a half-dozen teach-ins (see titles: http://www.saveuc.org/teachout-sched.pdf)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/24/MN2Q19S3FS.DTL

http://www.dailycal.org/article/106776/walkouts_vary_across_uc_campuses

http://www.insidebayarea.com/twitter/ci_13411072

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-09-24/article/33824

http://twitpic.com/iyy8d

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APuKukByoQA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pERb1G0-UA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_w0CToZjCc

UC DAVIS

* All day picketing

* Teamsters electricians and others honored the strike and went home

* Rally/March with estimates from several hundred to over a thousand + bikes w/ sound systems

* Brief occupation of admin building

http://twitpic.com/iz6i9

http://www.news10.net/video/default.aspx?aid=82555

http://www.fox40.com/news/headlines/ktxl-news-ucbudget0924,0,6713606.story

UC IRVINE

* Faculty-Student Improv Show

* Rally (w/ estimates between 500 and 1000) outside admin building

http://www.upte.org/photogallery/index.html#original/05

http://twitpic.com/iz10h

UC LOS ANGELES

* Noon Rally (LA Times estimate 700 people)

* March to Chancellor’s office

* Occupation of Chancellor’s office results in forcing Chancellor to set a meeting.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ucprotests25-2009sep25,0,3895472.story

http://media.dailybruin.com/dailybruin/img/2009/sep/24/walkoutcrowd_-_derek_liu.jpg

http://media.sacbee.com/smedia/2009/09/24/14/CaliforniaUniversity5.standalone.prod_affiliate.4.jpg

UC SANTA CRUZ

* City buses (UTU), UPS (Teamsters) and construction crews refused to cross picket lines.

* All Day Picketing

* Noon Rally with 300+ people

* 3:30pm second rally and march

* Ongoing occupation of building in the center of campus, with rally outside http://occupyCA.wordpress.com and http://wewanteverything.wordpress.com/

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/09/24/18623088.php

http://www.flickr.com/photos/melissarachelblack/sets/72157622449721648/

http://www.mercurynews.com/centralcoast/ci_13412921?nclick_check=1

UC SAN DIEGO

* All day picketing, joined by UNITE-HERE Local 30 members who’ve been boycotting the Manchester Grand Hyatt over similar issues.

* Rally w/ about 350 attendees

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjPJO2zwmkM

UC SAN FRANCISCO

* All day picketing

* Rally w/ about ~75 people

UC SANTA BARBARA

Rally with ~400 people

http://www.independent.com/news/2009/sep/24/protesters-target-uc-regents/

http://twitpic.com/iyz2p

UC RIVERSIDE

Rally (w/ widely ranging estimates – from 150 to 500 to 1000) followed by a teach-in.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/25/qt/walkouts_across_u_of_california

http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_13414178

UC MERCED

A small rally, but notable since Merced is the newest and smallest UC!

http://www.ksee24.com/news/local/61292127.html

LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LAB (UC-managed)

UPTE Strike/Picketing/Protest

http://cbs5.com/local/UC.walkout.strike.2.1206109.html

TAIWAN

UC Education abroad students assembled and took a group picture.

http://tinyurl.com/yecgbxa

“The words we are holding up say, “Protect the UC, prevent fee increases” in traditional Chinese characters. We took the picture at the front gate of National Taiwan University, where we are all studying and have students from all the UC campuses except for San Francisco and Merced (we even have a student from CSU East Bay and a student from SF State).”

-

SOLIDARITY:

UNIV. of ARIZONA:

Rally w/ ~100 people against cuts and costs in the UA system, staged on 9/24 in solidarity w/ UC.

http://www.kold.com/Global/story.asp?S=11195684

SF STATE:

~75 students held a rally against cuts, costs, and the elimination of hundreds of classes in the Cal State system, and in solidarity w/ UC.

SF City College:

Rally against budget cuts and in solidarity with other educational institutions.

UNIV. of MICHIGAN:

Members of Michigan GEO, AFT Local #3550 took a group picture, with signs in solidarity.

http://tinyurl.com/y8ho329

-

QUOTES OF THE DAY:

“Walkout, Rally Hailed as Rebirth of UC Activism” (as if it ever died – Front Page story from the Berkeley Daily Planet)

“I’ve been here since 1972, and I’ve never seen anything like it.” – George Lakoff

“For most of UC, today was THE FIRST DAY OF CLASSES, so there was essentially no time to organize. That makes #UCwalkout even more amazing.” – @studentactivism

“Faculty, students and unions from the University of California’s 10 campuses including its two most prestigious, UCLA and Berkeley, joined forces in what was the biggest student protest for more than a generation… The scale of the protests has come as a shock to state authorities.” – The Guardian (UK)

“being president of the University of California is like being manager of a cemetery” – UC President Mark Yudof. (The whole interview is shockingly appalling.) See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/magazine/27fob-q4-t.html?_r=1

http://www.ucfacultywalkout.com 

Related Posts:

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• Labor Beat Chicago Video Exposes Duncan’s Record

George N. Schmidt – September 26, 2009

The Chicago labor news organization Labor Beat is still circulating the hit video about Arne Duncan and his work in Chicago at http://blip.tv/file/2428857

As it becomes more and more clear to more and more Americans that Arne Duncan’s Chicago Plan is worse than No Child Left Behind and more dangerous than anything done during the eight year presidency of George W. Bush, it’s more and more important that every who has Internet access takes a half hour to watch the Labor Beat story about the Chicago record of Arne Duncan.

“We used to call it segregation,” the story begins, quoting me. “Now we call it school reform…” It goes on from there to highlight the massive protests that greeted all of the Chicago lies of Arne Duncan. Those lies were only sustained because of Chicago’s unique dictatorial corporate “school reform” structure. As Chicago’s lies — from charter school and privatization to “turnaround” — become more the basis for national policy, people across the USA have the opportunity to learn about what actually happened in Chicago under Arne Duncan, who served as CEO of Chicago’s public schools from July 2001 through December 2008 at the behest of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and Daley’s corporate backers.

Read more…

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approve plans to fire hundreds of Veteran teachers on the teachers’ low performance on evaluations, rather than on their seniority.

Even more controversially, the 134,000-student North Carolina district granted an exemption to teachers hired through the Teach For America recruiting program who meet teaching standards over more-senior teachers, and it is poised to hire more TFA alumni.

[...]

But members of the district’s school board said the decision was influenced by several factors, including the desire to maintain a contract with TFA and an overall sense that the teachers are doing well by their students.

Of course, firing veteran teachers and replacing them with new teachers saves money. Instead of making the legitimate demand for increased funds for education, the Board has caved in to the pressure that there is no alternative to cuts. Certainly, as well, folks in N.C. are pressured by Duncan and his “Race to Top” bribe to support, among other things, TFA.

But there are several questions. The first, raised by former TFAer Dan Brown in the Huffington Post, (“Overhyping Teach For America, Undercutting Millions of Students”) concerns the issue of turnover, or the fact that TFA teachers, by design, do no commit to teaching as a profession, creating more instability. “Our country requires broadly-conceived initiatives to ensure that our schools in all 50 states are staffed with talented, well-trained, and well-supported teachers–with or without that Princeton degree,” Brown writes. I’ll add: Schools don’t need the “support” of white-man’s-burden do-gooders arrogant and callous enough to claim bad teaching and unions are the root cause of social problems, and the presence of high-scoring Yale graduates for only a couple of years is sufficient to address the criminal conditions imposed on tens of millions of families across the U.S.

Yet, TFA is likely more than a poorly designed, silver bullet, and therefore significant in other respects. Lincoln Caplan writes, in Why big donors back Teach for America, that

TFA is … “theory of change’ [that] depends on ensuring that its teachers “attain high levels of success with their students—and then, as alumni, go on to bring about equity in education for kids of different classes and races, in the role of everything from principal to school superintendent to governor.”

While one might dismiss the theory on empirical grounds — Caplan reports one study observing that 30 percent of TFAers leave in their first year, not completing their two-year commitment — the theory itself deserve future attention (as it suggest in classic liberal fashion that the struggle for equality is most appropriate waged through the struggle for education, and not class struggle).

The other question is that of evaluation. What are the standards? In the context of a national campaign to blame collective bargaining, including the standard of seniority, what is to stop evaluators from favoring TFA recruits when that is the aim of school boards and senior officials. Sawchuk reports:

A second school board member, Tom Tate, added, “We seem to be getting good results from these teachers generally.”

He reports that earlier this spring, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg board approved a new policy that put a heavier focus on performance. In a context where TFA supporters bring millions, is it unreasonable to question to degree to which local TFA hype influences perceptions of competence? (the C.D. Spangler Foundation donated $4 million to expand the Charlotte TFA program this school year and next.) The policy directs the district “not to renew any teachers whose licenses are not current, those who do not meet minimum standards on local evaluation instruments, part-time teachers, and retired teachers who have returned to teaching. After that, it exempts TFA teachers and a handful of others in shortage subject areas, such as math, science, and foreign languages, over traditionally certified teachers with more seniority or equally high performance ratings” (emphasis added). Superintendent Peter Gorman is reported to be planning to “hire additional TFA teachers for 2009-10, rather than giving priority to teachers who are receiving pink slips.”

Are TFA graduates, with the Ivy League test scores, more effective teachers, or just cheaper and not likely to join the union ranks? Caplain reports that TFA

has attracted a list of accomplished critics in its adolescence. Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor at Stanford’s school of education, is the lead author of the best-known study, which concluded that students of uncertified teachers of TFA lagged significantly behind students of certified non-TFA teachers. Deborah Appleman, the chairwoman of education studies at Carleton College, shadowed a former student of hers through the summer training of TFA’s first class in 1990. She came away disappointed and has been been a persistent critic ever since. She discourages her students from applying and refuses to write letters of recommendation for them. TFA also contends with the fear that the public will lose patience, since progress in closing the achievement gap has been so modest, given the large sums spent on education, including on Kopp’s brainchild.

It should be noted that Caplan writes:

In its defense, TFA cites a study from Mathematica Policy Research that looked at how students of corps members fared compared with students of the teachers hired instead (rookies and old hands, some certified and some not) in hardest-to-staff schools. Reading scores were the same, math scores notably higher.

A more careful review of the merits of that study can be found here, although this line of criticism has its limits too, as I hope to argue in the future (along these lines).

So with such limited prospects for “success”, why such public praise in the big media outlets? Certainly data are not driving this decision…

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In April, three-quarters of the Civitas teachers and staff at the three schools signed cards stating they wanted the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff (Chicago ACTS) to represent them as a union. Under state law, that was enough for the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board to automatically certify Chicago ACTS as the union representative, which the board did. But school officials filed a petition with the NLRB, claiming Civitas was a private entity that required an NLRB-supervised election.

“We continue to believe that these charter schools are public schools because they are funded with taxpayer dollars,” said Brian Harris, a special education teacher at CICS/Civitas Northtown Academy and a member of Chicago ACTS. “We are prepared to proceed with an election as soon as possible and are confident that our union will prevail.”

Civitas argued that its charter schools are essentially private schools not accountable to the public, despite receiving taxpayer dollars. In the brief Civitas submitted to the NLRB, it claimed it is a for-profit company not required to provide any type of annual presentation to any government body to justify its annual expenditures, and that it has no “direct personal accountability” to any government public officials.

“We urge Civitas administrators to work with the teachers and staff at the school to ensure the election is conducted fairly and quickly,” said Martha Biondi, chair of Chicago Workers’ Rights Board and an associate professor of African American studies and history at Northwestern University. “We applaud the teachers and staff at the school for working to have a say in their school in order to improve learning and teaching conditions that will ultimately benefit the children.”

Chicago ACTS is a joint project of the American Federation of Teachers, the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Chicago Teachers Union. Chicago ACTS is an affiliate of the IFT.

Links:

Chicago ACTS brief to National Labor Relations Board

CICS/Civitas brief to National Labor Relations Board

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In reviewing a front page item from Education Week (“Unions Set Sights on High-Profile Charter-Network Schools”), I’m reminded of how frustrated I have become the by vague and self-serving language of “accountability” that appears in news reports and speeches. Witness the law of diminishing accountability as one climbs the social hierarchy.

In discussing the “culture clash” of unions with philanthropy-backed academic sweatshops, Stephen Sawchuk writes: “Charter school advocates say unionization has historically carried a set of policies—such as seniority provisions and lengthy appeals processes for dismissed teachers—that discourage accountability and the recognition of differences in performance.”

But as Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, points out: “Collaboration [the buzzword of corporate charters used in the article] without having some balance of power is not collaboration, if a teacher knows that he or she can be fired for any reason at all.”

So what is the actual problem? The problem is not “accountability” but different standards of accountability for different people holding different offices. When administrators fire teachers for “no reason at all” they are rendered as masters of innovation, serving the public good as “no excuses” educators who have, finally, rescued poor, minority children from the grips of uncaring, lazy teachers.

How can setting up an arrangement where management cannot be challenged be described as somehow more accountable than collectively agreed upon contractual arrangements that stipulate rights and responsibilities of both parties? While much in the media aims to discredit collective bargaining, especially seniority and the right to challenge management, as the root of all that is wrong with public schools, I caution pause. The problem is not peoples right to collectively organize themselves in their own interests.

The notion of accountability is fundamentally relational, and refers both to the party who must give account, and to whom they must account. But also implicit in this notion is the idea of checks and balances. The present landscape of discussion about education is littered with conceptions of accountability rendered as a one way street, with those screaming the loudest about accountability simultaneously the most unaccountable. Has KIPP been held to account for its infractions against students, and the public? Has the growing list of corporate charter school fraud caused pause for those pushing expansion of the very charter school models that are associated with the fraud?

While democratic renewal is required in unions as in other spheres, attacking the right to collectively bargain the conditions of work and procedures for challenging decisions will not contribute to improving education.

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