Where have All the Union Leaders Gone?

When teacher union leaders lose their will to fight the bloated bureaucracy of the school district, they have to give the membership some hope of improvement. Many of these leaders then substitute fighting for real union issues by becoming advocates of reform.
Unions and management are natural adversaries. Teachers don’t always understand this but the administrators do and are trained how to win disputes with union members. School administrators are not good at not having their way. Their attitude is usually, my way or the highway. Teacher unions are the only powerful interest that will fight to save public schools. Politicians only support schools as long as the union contributions roll in, even then that support is usually lukewarm at best. Most parents don’t support public schools, they would prefer private schools for their children. Unions work to improve public schools while being attacked as corrupt and protectors of “bad teachers”. In this atmosphere, union leaders have to be strong. This is not a world for the timid and faint hearted. The English Historian John Keegan wrote in his recent History of the American Civil War that General George McClellan
“ was psychologically deterred from pushing action to the point of result; he did not try to win.” He wrote “General U.S. Grant, turned out to be both an absolutely clear sighted strategist and ruthless battle winner”. Union leaders have to be latter day Clarence Darrows in the defense of their profession and the institution they serve. As President of the United Teachers Los Angeles from 1984 to 1990 (self analysis, always dangerous), I tried to strongly advocate for what was fair and fight that which was not fair or equitable. I seldom missed a chance to go on the offensive, always looking at the end game. The objective was to win the war. This scared a lot of teachers and engendered the hatred of a lot of civic leaders and district officials. Improving the lives of our 32,000 members was all that mattered. As Harry Truman said, “If you want to be loved, get a dog.” What UTLA accomplished between 1984-1990 had not occurred before or since. During those years we increased salaries 54%, ended all elementary teacher yard duty, negotiated lifetime medical benefits for retired teachers and created a good school based management program. Future union leadership killed SBM by creating a phony program under the direction of corporate Los Angeles called LEARN. It was never intended to work and no longer exists.
UTLA won one of the largest teacher strikes in U.S. history. In May of 1989 twenty five thousand teachers went on strike and the school district collapsed in nine days. A great example of what teachers can do when they get organized and fight. Current teacher leaders have to stop being George McClellan and turn themselves into U.S. Grant. Fight everyday for your kids and your teachers. Be the best Clarence Darrow you can by defending the interest of your kids, teachers, and the institution that has made America great.
Free public education in the United States depends on these leaders
and their members.








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OBAMA’S RIGHT WING EDUCATION POLICY

President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently advocated rating teachers based on their students standardized test scores. This was also unstated approval of the terrible federal law, No Child Left Behind.
The federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, also known as the No Child Left Behind Act) has made things much worse for our public schools.
“This law sets teachers up for certain failure,” says Dr. James Popham UCLA professor emeritus and an expert on testing and student evaluation. “Improvement is set so high that it will be impossible to attain.”
George Mason University professor Gerald Bracey holds the same opinion. He agrees with Popham that the ESEA has “a number of impossible-to-meet provisions.”
All schools must test all children in grades 3 through 8 each year in reading and math and two years later in science. Schools must also show adequate yearly progress (AYP). After 12 years, all schools and all students will again be required to meet “proficient” levels.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has come up with a set of educational terms, such as basic, below basic, advanced, as well as “proficient.” NAEP achievement levels and their definitions have been, including such prestigious groups as UCLA, the Center for Research and Evaluation, Student Standards and the National Academy of Sciences.
Lyle Jones of the University of North Carolina points out that American fourth-graders ranked third in the world on TIMSS science tests, but only 12 percent ranked “proficient” on the NAEP Science Assessment.
The ESEA requires NAEP standards for all states. All states must participate in the NAEP reading and math test to confirm their own state results.
“Most states will never reach ‘proficiency’ levels on NAEP tests,” says Bracey. “When they don’t, districts will then be subjected to increasingly severe and unworkable sanctions. Teachers can be fired, kids sent to other districts, districts abolished.”
North Carolina and Texas have been singled out as having great improvement on test scores. But if the ESEA’s new provisions had been in place for a few years, 90 percent of schools in these two states would be labeled “failing.”
As Professor Bracey reports, conservative public school critic Denis Doyle has written, “No Child Left Behind (legislation) means that the U.S.A. is about to be inundated in a sea of bad news and tht (public) schools are going to get poleaxed.”
The school system has proven it as an ossified government monopoly that can’t reform itself,” chimed in public-school basher Chester Finn (former under-secretary of education) in the Wall Street Journal.
“When these preordained high failure rates occur,” says Bracey, vouchers and privatization will be touted as the only cure.”
Finn insists, “It is time to apply American business expertise to educaton,” just like Wall Street, no doubt.
Bracey, replies, “(As it did) with Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, ImClone, and WorldCom?”
We can thank California congressman George Miller for the No Child Left Behind Act. He and Ted Kennedy were big backers of the bill. Miller advocated requiring tests of veteran teachers. I assume that he will be a big backer of the Obama plan to rate teachers based on their students standardized test scores. I had hoped that with the election of Obama that we would get a sane national education policy. It looks like we will have to wait a little longer for that dream to come true.

"FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU; FOOL ME TWICE, SHAME ON ME"

“FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU; FOOL ME TWICE, SHAME ON ME”

When the education community voted for Barack Obama, we thought we were getting a progressive reformer. Ten months later it looks like we got a right of center very Blue Dog Democrat. It was announced on 11.3.09 that he wants to bribe public education with a few dollars. In exchange for a few pieces of silver, teachers will be evaluated on the standardized test scores of their students.

I will not deal here with these tests and how their validity is seriously questioned by experts. The White House does not take into account how poverty and language affect the test scores. I have dealt with these topics in previous blogs. I will say at this time that in the Los Angeles Unified School District there are over 120 native languages spoken.
There are over 5,000 homeless children enrolled in the classrooms of Los Angeles and there is a special school for homeless children in downtown L.A. We know for a fact that only a small percentage of these students will score well on Standardized tests.

Standardized tests are normed every year. That means that no matter how hard teachers work, fifty percent of all test takers will score in the bottom half. The teachers can’t win under the Obama plan.
This proposal is like investing with Bernie Madoff. A few suckers will win, but 99% will lose. Obama is a democrat in the tradition of ex Democrat Ronald Reagan. The President has swallowed the urban myth that most teachers are bad and are being protected by corrupt teacher unions. He has drunk the Kool-Aide that teachers need incentives and competition. This right wing myth is a cruel hoax that will not improve education. With this plan who will want to teach students with learning disabilities? Who will want to teach English language learners, low ability kids or very poor inner city kids? All of these children score poorly on standardized tests and live with problems that preclude much improvement.
This plan would be like holding Doctors accountable for lowering the cancer rate or reducing birth defects.

Obama is not a progressive; he is a right wing Democrat with a strong anti-teacher and teacher union bias! His proposal for “reform” is just another repackaged right wing attack on public education and teacher unions.
No doubt many Obama supporters like me have a new slogan, “Never Again”.