No Struggle, No Progress

My contribution to the NY Times section, “Room for Debate” is now online!

Don’t miss Pauline Lipman’s piece as well: 

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/09/11/must-teachers-and-school-officials-be-foes/a-battle-between-education-and-business-goals

Lipman sums up education “reform”:

“These are not education policies, but rather business policies applied to schools with business goals: promoting top-down management, weakening unions, shifting the purpose of education to labor force preparation, and opening up the $2 trillion dollar global education sector to the market.”

And I also recommend the contribution from Carol Burris:

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/09/11/must-teachers-and-school-officials-be-foes/teachers-are-demanding-to-be-heard

Burris writes:

“Although I may not always agree with the positions that teacher unions take, I do believe that unions are important and needed. They stand up for issues like class size and safe schools. They allow teachers to speak up, without fear, about conditions that affect students, educators and parents. By doing so, they provide an important balance in educational debates.”

My piece is here: (and pasted below)

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/09/11/must-teachers-and-school-officials-be-foes/unions-are-striking-back-at-last

The so-called education reform movement decided long ago that change could come only through confrontation. Teachers figured that out when the secretary of education, Arne Duncan, called Hurricane Katrina “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans”; seven years later the teachers union is washed away and the public schools are mostly charter-ized. They figured that out when the White House celebrated the firing of the entire teaching staff in Central Falls, R.I., because of students’ low test scores. And it became clearer to them when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York published teachers’ names alongside standardized test results of their students.

Now, finally, a unionized group of teachers has decided to meet this confrontation head-on.

Teachers have come to realize that the ‘reform movement’ is about confronting them, not working with them.

If evaluating teachers based on standardized test scores is a bad idea for teaching and learning, then the Chicago Teachers Union strike is good for teachers and students. If small class sizes are good for teaching and learning, then the strike is good for teachers and students. For that matter, if air-conditioning is good for teaching and learning, then the strike is good for teachers and students.

Tying teacher pay, tenure and even employment status to standardized test scores corrupts the teacher-student relationship and inspires no one. This carrot-and-stick routine won’t retain great teachers, and may turn our best teachers into test prep tutors. Any experienced classroom teacher will tell you that punishments and rewards at best encourage obedience, but will not promote creativity, intelligence or initiative.

I taught in three different public schools in New York City. Where I was able to be my best depended as much on the class sizes, the conditions, the financing, the materials available to me, the support staff for teachers, the support for students and the climate created by administration, as it did on my own efforts and abilities.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s “reforms” in Chicago will not improve any of those very important factors, and are deleterious to all of them. By confronting the mayor and standing up for things teachers and students desperately need to actually improve our schools, the union is likely to do more to retain the best teachers, and to help more teachers to do their best, than any merit pay scheme ever could.

One of the unintended consequences of the attack on public education is the politicization of educators. Generally speaking, teachers like to close their classroom doors and do their own thing. There doesn’t seem to be any point in getting involved in “politics” and so they mostly don’t. But the times are changing.

Suddenly, like it or not, “politics” is interested in teachers. Suddenly, wealthy and powerful people have become obsessed with them, and with what goes on behind those classroom doors. As the billionaire investors and their political allies attempt to refashion education in their own image, they increasingly force teachers to sit up and take notice.

Does this mean we now have a national movement of teachers united in a collective struggle to defend and improve public education? Not quite. Where teachers already have large organizations — their unions — they rely on them to defend their interests. The problem is that those unions have, by and large, conceded much of the ideological terrain to the billionaire privatizers.

That’s where Chicago comes in. While other unions have jumped at the chance to trade tenure, merit pay, charter schools, and other “free market” reforms for pay increases, the Chicago Teachers Union has drawn a line in the sand. The CTU is the first union to threaten a strike against so-called “ed reform”.

Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, says he wants a longer school day, for example. The CTU has responded, effectively: “No, we want a BETTER school day!” The CTU has boldly pointed out the apartheid-like conditions in the Chicago Public Schools, and demands that funding be restored to the arts, sciences, physical education, counseling, and smaller class sizes. Their research document, The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve is a must read.

Importantly, their stance has galvanized parent support. Erica Clark, a Chicago parent, wrote:

“We formed Parents 4 Teachers because we were fed up with the abuse that teachers were taking from politicians. We saw that there wasn’t recognition of what we saw as parents—that the interests of the teachers in the schools go hand in hand with the interests of our kids… The things that teachers are fighting for in their contract—smaller classes, more nurses and counselors, a better day not just a longer day, art and music for all schools—are the things that parents want. These are the things that teachers want.”

Daring to stand up to Rahm Emanuel — Obama’s former chief of staff — during an election year, is no small feat. But CTU is blazing a new trail for educators in this country.

Check out the Network of Teacher Activist Groups website to find out how you can build solidarity (including by making a donation to the CTU Strike Fund).

If contract negotiations fail, CTU members voted to go on strike on September 10. On that day, teachers, parents and students all over the country will wear RED in solidarity with CTU.

If you’ve got a red shirt, and if you want the CTU to win, you should, too.