Diane Ravitch

Loud Voice Fighting Tide of New Trend in Education

By MOTOKO RICH

Nytimes.com

Diane Ravitch made her name in the 1970s as a historian chronicling the role of public schools in American social mobility. In the 1990s, she went to work in the Bush administration’s Education Department, where she pushed for a rejection of 1960s relativism and a return to basics and standards. After leaving government, she called for the removal of incompetent teachers, for tying school performance to student scores, and for closing failing schools.

Now Ms. Ravitch, 75, is in the full flower of yet another stage in her career: folk hero to the left and passionate scourge of pro-business reformers. She has come to doubt the whole project of school reform, saying it will solve little without addressing poverty and segregation. “We know what works,” she writes. 

“What works are the opportunities that advantaged families provide for their children.”

She pumps out hundreds of barbed words on her blog and thousands of posts on Twitter. She calls the current formulas for evaluating teachers “bad science.” And she says that closing schools solves nothing.

Ms. Ravitch has a new book coming out, called “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools,” in which she criticizes what she sees as a useless distraction from the problems of race and income inequality. She warns of “the Walmartization of American education,” and “promised miracles that would shame snake-oil salesmen.”

While previously well known in education circles, she gained a much broader audience after she publicly rejected almost everything she had once believed. In a surprise 2010 best seller, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” she openly declared that she had been wrong to champion standardized testing, charter schools and vouchers. She says she is trying now to make up for past errors.

“Part of the energy that I have to try to change things is to expiate whatever responsibility I had in terms of advocating something that turned out to be so terribly wrong for children,” Ms. Ravitch said in an interview late last month in the Brooklyn Heights apartment where she has been living with her partner, Mary Butz, a former official with the New York City Education Department, since they sold their nearby brownstone this summer.

She has an army of new backers, but some of them say she can undermine her message when she criticizes with an overly broad brush or resorts to personal attacks.

Robert Pondiscio, a former Bronx schoolteacher who says Ms. Ravitch was influential in his support for a core curriculum, said that after her conversion, she initially offered a “thoughtful and responsible” counterweight to “kind of a distasteful ed-reform machismo.”

But now, he said, “I worry that Diane is preaching to her choir rather than being thoughtful about it.”

Others say that Ms. Ravitch has opened up a much-needed debate about the direction of education reform.

“About two or three years ago people were feeling, ‘Oh, my God, these people are taking over and there’s nothing we can do,’ ” said Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, referring to those who advocate for free-market-based overhaul of schools. “Diane has continued to push that envelope and give people such hope.”

Her critics call Ms. Ravitch a shill for teachers’ unions and accuse her of cherry-picking data to condemn charter schools or test-based accountability.

In print, her righteous anger also fuels critics who say she has become a caricature. Three days after the mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Ms. Ravitch hailed the heroic teachers who died that day and then went on to attack Gov. Dannel P. Malloy for expanding high-stakes testing and charter schools.

In another instance, she wrote on her blog that “there is a special place in hell” for leaders of Parent Revolution, an advocacy group that pushes for state laws allowing parents to force school leadership changes. (She laterapologized.)

Ms. Ravitch regularly skewers individuals, including Joel I. Klein, former chancellor of the New York City schools, a onetime friend, and Arne Duncan, the United States secretary of education. In “Reign of Error,” she devotes a chapter to Michelle A. Rhee, the former chancellor of the Washington, D.C., schools and founder of StudentsFirst, a political advocacy group that pushes lawmakers to overhaul tenure, introduce test-based performance evaluations and expand charter schools.

Both Mr. Klein and Ms. Rhee declined to comment.

She displays a quick temper in print, but in conversation, Ms. Ravitch, with cropped white-and-gray-speckled hair, a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, exuded quiet conviction, speaking steadily for three hours. She raised her voice only slightly to reprimand the 60-pound puppy, a Labrador and German shepherd mix, who bounded around the living room.

“I don’t pick fights with people,” she said, sitting in a rocking chair embossed with the logo of her alma mater, Wellesley College. “But I try to stand up for the weak and powerless and voiceless, and some people don’t like that.”

Critics say she is unwilling to seek common ground. In “Reign of Error,” she sharply criticizes the Obama administration for its education policies, but when she argues for universal preschool, she never mentions the president’s similar proposal.

In a blog post for The Huffington Post last month, Peter Cunningham, a former assistant secretary for communications in the Education Department under Mr. Duncan, wrote that part of his job was to “monitor criticism of our policies” and that he monitored Ms. Ravitch “pretty closely.”

Ms. Ravitch asked a reporter to file a Freedom of Information Act request to find out how the Education Department was “monitoring” her.

Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for the Department of Education, said Ms. Ravitch’s work was followed like that of any other education writer.

When describing her vision for public education, Ms. Ravitch often invokes her own experiences of high school in Houston. What she wants for the nation’s students, she said, is simply what she wants for her own grandchild who attends public school in New York City.

“I don’t know where all this stuff about accountability will take my grandchildren,” she said. “I want them to be good people, I want them to have fun, I want them to laugh.”

Legalized Looting in Closed Schools 
By Slobodan Milosevic



Word is coming in from teachers across the city that the looting has officially begun, or is already in process.

Under the eyes of the Chicago Public Schools, teachers across the city are diving into the schools that were closed, pulling up prized possessions - white boards, classic book sets, projectors, etc.

Much like the Germans looting homes as they rampaged the Russian countryside in World War II, the Chicago Public Schools generals have issued similar orders to its troops across the city to rape, pillage and plunder the schools.

"It was awful," one CPS teacher stated, of course off the record.  "There were these beautiful classrooms set up with the books, and white boards and everything so nicely laid out, and here we were on orders to take whatever we wanted."

Yes, siree!  Nothing like robbing the dead, taking whatever jewelry or other valuables ripe for the taking.  

Of course, CPS would say it's not looting, because these resources would be thrown out anyway.

And who can blame the looters, when the public schools are grossly under-funded these days.  Teachers are scrambling to get what they can.

Isn't this a wonderful system we have!  Let's ridicule and lie and say how we have to close perfectly normal functioning schools, and then dance on their graves.

I just hope next time, Mr. Emanuel is invited to mark the ceremonial opening, and grabbing the first book!

Great PR, Mr. Mayor.  Putting a knife in the heart of public education for our children.

AFT Surrender

Another AFT surrender to education "reform"

ANALYSIS: LEE SUSTAR

http://socialistworker.org/2013/08/21/another-aft-surrender

 

Lee Sustar shows how the American Federation of Teachers' endorsement of a plan to fire "low-performing" teachers plays into the hands of education "reformers."

 

 

THE AMERICAN Federation of Teachers (AFT) has a message for corporate education "reformers" who target "bad" teachers: Let our union help you do it.

 

That's what AFT President Randi Weingarten told reporters [1] on a recent trip to St. Louis, where she touted collaboration between the St. Louis Public Schools and AFT Local 420 that since 2010 has led to the ouster of 100 teachers--40 of them tenured--for being "ineffective."

 

"This should be the model and not the exception," Weingarten said, adding: "For that to happen you need the powers-that-be in this country to celebrate this."

 

Called the St. Louis Plan [2], the program guts teacher tenure--that is, job security. If a principal places a tenured teacher on a Performance Improvement Plan, that individual has a choice. Either they must improve within 18 weeks, according to standards set by the principal, or face a termination hearing. Or they can waive tenure rights and accept the oversight of a mentor teacher. The mentor then reports to an Internal Board of Review (IBOR) of five teachers and four administrators. If six members of the board vote to fire that teacher, the axe falls. If not, the teacher returns to work and regains tenure. A similar process is in place for all first-year teachers, who lose their jobs if they get a thumbs-down from their assigned mentor and the IBOR concurs.

 

The St. Louis Plan blows a hole in tenure and undermines union solidarity. Rather than encourage teachers to support one another cooperatively, it turns a few teachers into straw bosses for the principal. In short, the St. Louis Plan weakens the fundamental basis of teacher unionism--collective action.

 

What's more, the St. Louis Plan dovetails with the accelerated teacher termination sought by education reformers, who have spent the last few years pushing through state legislation that ties teacher job security to student test scores. The driver of that policy was the Obama administration's Race to the Top grant program, which made passage of such laws a precondition for competing for $4.3 billion in federal funds.

 

Thus, Education Secretary Arne Duncan praised labor-management collaboration in the St. Louis Public Schools [3] back in 2009. "I think St. Louis can help to lead the country where we need to go," he said. "St. Louis has the chance to leapfrog ahead of other places based upon the leadership, based on the sense of collaboration, based on the commitment." Speaking alongside Duncan was the AFT's Weingarten and Local 420 officials, who stated their demand for teacher input in evaluations [4].

 

In September 2012, Weingarten was back in St. Louis to tout collaboration between the district and the union [5] as a positive alternative to the Chicago teachers' strike that had concluded a few days earlier.

 

In fact, the Chicago Teachers Union used their strike to win, among other things, a limit administrators' ability to terminate teachers deemed "ineffective." [6] In St. Louis, by contrast, the union is working to accelerate the process of firing teachers, all in the name of the cooperation that Weingarten promotes.

 

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IN AN era when the corporate-driven education reform agenda is driving through--school privatization, union-busting and budget cuts, collaboration between teachers unions and administrators inevitably leads to union concessions.

 

Thus, Weingarten has been directly involved in negotiating contracts in several cities--including New Haven, Conn., Pittsburgh, Baltimore and others--that have systematically abandoned what were once the cornerstones of modern teacher unionism [7]. The traditional defense of tenure, rejection of merit pay, opposition to giving some teachers the power to fire others--all this has been scrapped for the sake of preserving "partnership" with increasingly anti-union school districts.

 

The St. Louis Plan is modeled on Toledo's Peer Assistance Review (PAR) program pioneered by former Toledo Federation of Teachers President Dal Lawrence, who headed the union from 1967 to 1997. Lawrence boasted that he fired more teachers than any school district superintendent in Ohio [8].

 

So it's no surprise that the Harvard Education Review, in an article championing the Toledo Plan [9], would note that the "union has been sued in federal court three times on charges that they have failed to fairly represent a teacher; each time the union won its case. In the late 1990s, an African American teacher who was recommended for dismissal by the PAR Panel appealed the decision. Although the teacher ultimately retained his job, the case highlighted racial tensions among teachers in relation to PAR."

 

Those racial controversies included a 2004 charge by Toledo's Urban Coalition [10] that the teacher mentoring program under the PAR system led to disproportionately high numbers of dismissals for first-year African American teachers. At the time, only 11 percent of Toledo teachers were Black, even though more than 40 percent of students were African American.

 

In response, Francine Lawrence, who had succeeded her husband as president of the Toledo Federation of Teachers, defended PAR by playing the race card herself. Without justification, she wrote a letter to members claiming that the district "is about to establish one set of performance standards for Hispanics and whites and a lesser standard for African-Americans."

 

One might expect such a blatant appeal to racial fears would end the career of any leader of an urban teachers' union. On the contrary, Lawrence rose to prominence in the AFT [11], becoming director of the union's program and policy council from 2006 to 2008--an internal union think-tank on education issues--and became an AFT vice president in 2008.

 

Her big achievement--in the view of AFT leaders and education reformers--was her role in developing the Toledo Review and Compensation System [12] (TRACS), a complicated merit-pay scheme tied to the peer review system. Under TRACS, a voluntary program, some teachers get school-wide bonuses based on performance, but also small numbers of individuals apply to join a special program to get significant pay increases based on their individual performance and/or taking assignments in hard-to-staff schools.

 

Lawrence sold the plan to the membership as a concept [13], not as contract language. "We agreed to a two-page outline of what an alternative compensation system would look like, what some of the key elements were," Lawrence said. "But we did not try to begin to design the system at the table. You just can't negotiate the details at the table." Instead, the plan is run by a committee appointed by the union and the administration, removing it from any accountability to union members.

 

Lawrence stepped down from her Toledo post only in 2011 after 14 years in office, concluding her and her husband's combined 44-year reign over the local teachers' union--a one-family reign remarkable even in a labor movement where union presidents often hold office until they die or are indicted.

 

Lawrence didn't retire, however. Instead, she gained more power, getting promoted to executive vice president of the AFT [14]. It was an unmistakable signal to education reformers that the union was prepared to bargain away its longstanding principles.

 

Indeed, Randi Weingarten underlined the point. In a statement issued about Lawrence taking the union's third-highest position, the AFT president stated: "Fran has been successful because of her insistence that the only way to achieve sustainable education reform is for teachers and management to collaborate."

 

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IS PEER involvement among teachers inherently anti-union? Certainly, input from colleagues can help teachers improve. Those new on the job in public schools welcome the help and support of colleagues as they take on the challenges posed by large classes, a test-driven curriculum and the problems of students from families suffering the impact of the depressed economy. Teachers likewise routinely compare notes and collaborate--for example, to run classes that blend special education students into mainstream classrooms. A strong union chapter can nurture this cooperation by keeping aggressive principals in check and fostering an atmosphere of solidarity.

 

This kind of "peer assistance," though, is profoundly threatening to the education reformers. They want to drive a wedge between teachers to weaken unions in traditional schools while accelerating the creation of nonunion charter schools. Peer review, along with merit pay, are intended to turn teachers into competitors for money and job security.

 

That's why such programs have been promoted at the U.S. Department of Education's conferences on labor-management cooperation. The 2012 event, "Collaborating to Transform the Teaching Profession," [15] held in Cincinnati, highlighted the Baltimore school plan that ties teacher evaluation to "achievement units", which determine their pay. The system resulted in a majority of teachers being at risk of termination [16].

 

The AFT's Weingarten bears direct responsibility for this. When Baltimore teachers initially voted down the deal in 2010 [17], she dispatched the union's national staff to the city to ram through the deal on a second vote. Then, at the Cincinnati collaboration conference, Weingarten and Education Secretary Duncan again held up Baltimore as a model.

 

Ironically, Weingarten left the collaboration conference to attend a Chicago Teachers Union rally that set the stage for the strike later that year. Weingarten said in her speech to union members [18], "There are over 100 districts talking about working together, and here in the second [sic] city in the United States of America, we have to rally just to be heard."

 

The point was clear: The AFT leadership prefers collaboration to the risks of confrontation, even it if means surrendering long-held principles and leads inexorably to a decline in numbers and influence for the union.

 

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WHY DOES Weingarten cling to labor-management cooperation even as it threatens to unravel her union?

 

Back in the 1960s and '70s, the AFT won the right to bargain collectively through illegal strikes in which local union leaders regularly went to jail. The AFT modeled its bargaining strategy on that of the United Auto Worker (UAW), the pacesetting union for improving wages and benefits for the entire working class.

 

Today, the AFT still takes its cues from the UAW--but now, both unions are headed in the opposite direction.

 

Since the late 1970s, the UAW has clung to partnership with the Detroit Three automakers through various "jointness" programs that provided financial support for the union bureaucracy even as membership shriveled through plant shutdowns and outsourcing to nonunion suppliers. Contracts that were purportedly structured to save jobs did the opposite. As labor economist Sam Gindin noted [19], at the end of the 1970s, General Motors employed 450,000 UAW members. After the 2009 auto industry bailout, that number was 40,000. "Thirty years of concessions and a 90 percent loss in jobs," Gindin wrote. "If ever there was a failing strategy for workers, this was it."

 

The crisis facing the AFT and the larger National Education Association is unfolding much faster than the restructuring of the decades-long auto industry. The wholesale privatization of much of the public school system in New Orleans and Detroit, the proliferation of charter schools across the U.S., and the shock-and-awe budget cuts in Philadelphia set for September threaten the end of public education as we know it.

 

The AFT, though, continues to cling to partnership. Faced with the certain destruction at the hands of Republicans like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who gutted public-sector bargaining rights, the union is vainly seeking a reprieve through its relationships with Microsoft founder Bill Gates or supposedly pro-union Democrats--even though Democrats like Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo are also driving the education reform agenda.

 

The AFT, though, has another institutional impulse toward collaboration with employers--its self-identity as a "union of professionals."

 

Fifty years ago, this identity was about winning dignity and respect for teachers, as well as decent pay and collective bargaining. Thus, AFT locals often fought the arbitrary power of principals over transfers between schools or the demand that educators must supervise lunch or recess, without time for class preparation.

 

Today, however, the AFT's version of "professionalism" is being hitched to the education reformers' bandwagon. Instead of leading the fight to give teachers' greater autonomy over their jobs, the union instead provides a cover for a systematic effort to deskill teaching through the increasing use of high-stakes tests and tying teacher evaluation to test scores. AFT leaders apparently believe they can resist this trend by convincing school districts to introduce peer reviews of teacher quality, rather than simply relying on test data and principal observation.

 

To that end, the AFT is trying to one-up the corporate education reformers on the question of teacher quality. Weingarten has proposed that teachers follow the example of the legal profession and create the equivalent of a national bar exam [20]. The union therefore links the need for more rigorous teacher examinations to the incoming Common Core Standards, the rigid, test-oriented, one-size-fits all curriculum that is taking effect in the 2013-14 school year. "All teachers should demonstrate the core knowledge, skills and dispositions needed to implement these new standards," states the union's white paper on the subject--a project overseen by Francine Lawrence.

 

The AFT's approach legitimizes the reformers' narrative that bad teaching is at the heart of the problems of public education--rather than budget cuts, large class sizes and the social consequences of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. So even when the AFT rightly criticizes the widespread use of standardized tests, the union's voice is muffled at best.

 

A year after the Chicago teachers' strike, the attacks on teachers' unions continue to multiply. Unless and until teachers' union members trade the St. Louis Plan for a Chicago Plan--a militant defense of both their union and public education--they'll continue to lose ground.

 

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Published by the International Socialist Organization.

Material on this Web site is licensed by SocialistWorker.org, under a Creative Commons (by-nc-nd 3.0) [21] license, except for articles that are republished with permission. Readers are welcome to share and use material belonging to this site for non-commercial purposes, as long as they are attributed to the author and SocialistWorker.org.

Vultures After Schools

ANALYSIS: LEE SUSTAR

The vultures after our schools

Socialist Worker.com

http://socialistworker.org/2013/08/27/the-vultures-after-our-schools

 

Lee Sustar reports on the latest fronts in the corporate school reformers' offensive.

 

ONE YEAR after the successful Chicago teachers' strike stunned the corporate education reformers, public schools are once again under the gun.

 

School districts in cities across the U.S. are pushing school closings, budget cuts, layoffs, privatization and demands for sweeping concessions from teachers' unions--with Philadelphia leading the way.

 

In Chicago, the school year began this past Monday with 50 fewer schools open [1]. A vengeful Mayor Rahm Emanuel pushed the closures through, while calling for an equal number of charter schools to open--all while pushing budget cuts that will result in layoffs and overcrowded classrooms.

 

To show just who's boss, prior to the school year starting, Emanuel ordered the bulldozing of an elementary school annex [2] used as a parent and community center in a Mexican American community.

 

But this fall, the front line in the battle to defend public education is in Philadelphia, where budget cuts threatened to stop schools from opening at all until the city borrowed $50 million in mid-August.

 

Furious over the cuts and union-bashing, more than 1,000 teachers, parents and supporters marched against unelected School Reform Commission (SRC) [3] at its August 24 meeting.

 

The five-member SRC [4]--three of whom are appointed by Pennsylvania's Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, and two by Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, a Democrat--is demanding that teachers take $133 million in concessions to restore the jobs of some the 3,895 educators and support staff laid off earlier this year, as journalist Daniel Denvir noted.

 

That's twice as much money as the SRC is seeking from the city--and $13 million more than what the school authorities want from the state. The impact on teachers would be devastating: a pay cut of 13 percent for veteran teachers and the imposition of out-of-pocket health care costs for the first time.

 

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THE PHILADELPHIA schools have been under control of the state of Pennsylvania for 12 years, making the state government ultimately responsible for school financing. But Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, has said he's only willing to approve $45 million in state spending on Philadelphia schools--less than half of the requested amount--without additional concessions on work rules and pay from the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT).

 

The SRC has already used the school system's $304 million deficit to abrogate the school code that, among other things, will allow the school board to recall laid-off workers without regard to seniority. This has allowed Philadelphia Schools Superintendent William Hite to call back 1,000 school aides and staff to monitor hallways and operate the schools with what one local broadcast journalist called a "skeleton staff." [5]

 

Philadelphia's business and political establishment are united in attacking the teachers. The PFT, declared a Philadelphia Inquirer editorial [6], "has no one to blame but itself" for its crisis.

 

Driving this agenda is the Philadelphia Schools Partnership [7], a secretive, self-appointed committee dominated by some of the city's most powerful CEOs.

 

Under its tutelage, the SRC has been exploring ways to further dismantle the school system, which by late 2012 had 55,625 students in charter schools [8]--some 40 percent of the total enrollment of 137,512 [9].

 

A plan to turn over the rest of schools to networks of private operators has been stalled [10], but the SRC moved ahead with the closure of 23 schools and squeezed concessions out of the system's blue-collar unions.

 

All this represents an effort to "decimate" the union, said PFT President Jerry Jordan. In fact, the union already took major concessions in 2011 [11], agreeing to allow the school district to skip a $58 million payment into the union health and welfare plan, and agreeing to let the district to repay only $28 million in the future.

 

The PFT has a contract expiration date of August 31. Although teachers' strikes are prohibited under the law mandating the state's control, angry rank-and-file union members are saying preparation for such action is necessary.

 

"Our contract is up August 31," said Philadelphia high school teacher Anissa Weinraub. "There is mounting, energy, anger and frustration. There is a recognition that this is a historical moment--that we have an opportunity because things are so bad. Decades and decades of historical disinvesment [in public education] are being highlighted in this crisis. Parents get it, teachers get it, students get it."

 

As in other cities, school reform in Philadelphia is driven by a coalition of corporate-funded think tanks and local business bigwigs. The Pennsylvania chapter of Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst group praised Corbett for starving Philly schools of funds [12], stating:

 

Continuing to invest in a broken education system only hurts the very people it serves: our kids. We support the governor, Superintendent William Hite and others who are working to provide resources while advocating for reforms that will lead to a better education for all our students.

 

As retired teacher Ron Whitehorne wrote: [13]

 

The Corbett rescue plan for Philadelphia's schools, forged by the likes of Comcast vice president David Cohen, Philadelphia School Partnership's Mark Gleason and the Chamber of Commerce, sets the stage for a full-court press to wring concessions from the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers.

 

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THERE ARE many parallels between the struggle to save public education in Philadelphia and the movement in Chicago that led to last year's teachers strike.

 

Both cities have long been laboratories for corporate-driven education reform. Paul Vallas, the first Chicago schools CEO in the reform era, went on to Philadelphia after a stint handing over New Orleans schools to charter operators following Hurricane Katrina. As former assistant secretary of education Diane Ravitch wrote [14], Vallas pushed privatization to new levels and left the Philadelphia school district with "its finances in shambles, desperately underfunded, nearly 4,000 teachers and other staff laid off, schools under threat of closure or privatization, students with little or no access to the arts and the other essentials of a basic education."

 

In Chicago, the Vallas years gave rise to a reform movement in the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) that ousted the old guard in 2001 for one term. The Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE), formed to resist school closures, won office in 2010 and prepared for the strike that halted the attack on the teachers' union contract and built an ongoing movement to resist school closures and budget cuts [15].

 

The PFT, however, doesn't have a similar history of activism. And now the union literally faces a fight for its continued relevance. Like the CTU, the PFT has the opportunity to strike, not only to defend teachers' compensation and working conditions, but also public education itself.

 

Certainly, striking in violation of the law carries risks of fines and injunctions. However, if the union stands by and does nothing, it could well end up like its sister union local in New Orleans, which represents just a fraction of its former membership, with nearly 80 percent of the city's schools turned over to charter operators.

 

The PFT's national affiliate, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), has sounded the alarm about the Philadelphia school crisis. AFT President Randi Weingarten was arrested during a protest against school closures last spring [16], and the AFT has launched a petition to oppose the cuts [17].

 

And in her prepared remarks [18] at the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington last weekend, Weingarten said, "Let's all of us--not simply educators, parents and kids--stage nonviolent protests in districts that fail to invest in public education and that turn their backs on struggling schools." But Weingarten and the AFT missed the opportunity to highlight the battle for Philadelphia schools and build support for the fledgling movement.

 

The challenges in Philadelphia are great. But so is the potential to fight. "Clergy are talking about calling for a boycott," said Weinraub, the Philadelphia teacher. "Parents are talking about a boycott. Teachers are talking about a strike. If we can connect that to the powerful movement we need in Philadelphia to force our local leaders to go to the capital get the money we need, we can force Harrisburg to fulfill its constitutional duty" to fund the schools.

 

The Chicago strike showed that teachers, parents and community members who take a stand for our schools are far more popular than any corporate education reformer or politician who carries out their program. If Philadelphia teachers follow the Chicago example and take a stand, they can tap support across their city--and around the U.S.

 

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Published by the International Socialist Organization.

Material on this Web site is licensed by SocialistWorker.org, under a Creative Commons (by-nc-nd 3.0) [19] license, except for articles that are republished with permission. Readers are welcome to share and use material belonging to this site for non-commercial purposes, as long as they are attributed to the author and SocialistWorker.org.

 

[1] http://www.wbez.org/news/education/just-months-after-closing-50-schools-chicago-issues-rfp-more-charter-schools-108398

[2] http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/notebook/2013/08/18/25284/parent-group-decries-demolition-whittier-field-house

[3] http://articles.philly.com/2013-08-24/news/41441178_1_top-elementary-schools-philadelphia-public-schools-sla

[4] http://socialistworker.org//www.citypaper.net/news/Schoolyard_Brawl.html

[5] http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=9219712

[6] http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20130825_Inquirer_Editorial__Crisis_requires_union_action.html

[7] http://thenotebook.org/blog/124556/what-philadelphia-school-partnerships-role-great-schools-compact

[8] http://www.philasd.org/about/#charter-schools

[9] http://www.philasd.org/about/#enrollment

[10] http://www.citypaper.net/news/State_of_Emergency_.html

[11] http://articles.philly.com/2011-10-13/news/30275675_1_budget-gap-union-contracts-concessions

[12] http://www.studentsfirst.org/state/pennsylvania/press/studentsfirst-in-pennsylvania-calls-for-long-term-reforms-in-school-distric

[13] http://thenotebook.org/blog/136164/corbett-rescue-plan-sets-stage-attack-teachers-union

[14] http://dianeravitch.net/2013/06/30/the-vallas-record-in-philadelphia-revisted/

[15] http://socialistworker.org/2013/06/18/stripping-schools-to-the-bone

[16] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/07/randi-weingarten-arrested_n_2832306.html

[17] http://action.aft.org/c/44/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=7020

[18] http://www.aft.org/newspubs/press/2013/082413.cfm

[19] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0

Pension Fix?

Possible pension fix could save $145B

By Sara Burnett

The Associated Press

The State Journal-Register, Springfield

CHICAGO -- A bipartisan panel tasked with solving Illinois' multibillion-dollar pension crisis is considering a framework that could save the state about $145 billion over 30 years, largely by ending automatic 3 percent cost-of-living increases for retirees.

The Associated Press on Friday obtained an outline of ideas being considered by the 10-person committee, whose members have said they are making progress on an issue that has vexed the Legislature for years.

Sen. Kwame Raoul, a Chicago Democrat and the committee's chairman, acknowledged the outline but said the document is preliminary and the panel is not ready to issue a final recommendation.

"The committee has not come to a consensus," Raoul said. "Our work is not done."

But the outline is the most detailed information disclosed to date of what the committee is considering or how much savings any proposal on the table could achieve.

It calls for setting retirees' annual cost-of-living increases at half the rate of inflation, though it would set both floors and caps - which were not included in the outline - for what the rate could be. That formula would likely equate to smaller adjustments than the current 3 percent increases, compounded annually.

Unlike previous proposals that would have required employees to contribute more to their own retirement, the outline calls for workers to pay in 1 percent less. It also does not increase the retirement age, as has been previously proposed.

Those elements are an apparent attempt to improve the odds any proposal could survive a legal challenge. They also could make a plan more palatable to public-employee unions and legislators who have said earlier attempts at pension reform went too far.

But the document does suggest retirees' annual pension benefits could be based on their salary over their career, rather than on the higher amount they're making right before they retire. It also calls for the state to put extra money into the retirement funds starting in 2019, when it has paid off its pension bonds.

It would reduce the state's nearly $100 billion unfunded pension liability by about $18.1 billion and fully fund the retirement systems within 30 years, the document states.

Illinois has the nation's worst-funded public employee pensions, mainly because for years lawmakers voted to skip or short the state's contributions. This year the state's payment to the funds is about $6 billion, or nearly one-fifth of the general fund budget - an amount that has led to cuts in funding for areas such as education and public safety and increased the pressure on legislators to come up with a deal.

Read more: http://www.sj-r.com/breaking/x1367232506/Possible-pension-fix-could-save-145B#ixzz2eVfLIWvC

Lawmakers voted in June to create the conference committee after reaching an impasse over two rival pension plans - one advanced by House Speaker Michael Madigan and the other by Senate President John Cullerton, both Chicago Democrats. Madigan's plan would have saved Illinois about $187 billion over 30 years, while the savings in Cullerton's plan - which was backed by the state's public-employee unions - were estimated at $47 billion over the same timeframe.

The unions have said Madigan's plan and others like it that impose across-the-board cuts violate a provision of the Illinois Constitution that states pension benefits can't be reduced. They've also said they will file a lawsuit to stop any proposal they believe violates the constitution.

A spokesman for We Are One Illinois, a coalition of public-employee unions, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

If or when the committee recommends a plan, it would have to be approved by the Legislature and Gov. Pat Quinn.

Rep. Elaine Nekritz, a Northbrook Democrat and the pension panel's vice chairwoman, said the committee is still looking at options.

"No one has signed off yet on the details," she said.

Last month Quinn halted lawmakers' pay because they hadn't come up with a solution. Madigan and Cullerton sued, saying Quinn's line-item veto of the state budget was unconstitutional.

CTU Hosts First HOD Meeting of New Year
By Jim Vail


The first Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates meeting of the new 2013-2014 school year sailed smoothly by, at a time when the assault on the teaching profession and public education is unprecedented.

Absent was the bickering between different caucuses fighting over motions, and points of order or information.

It remains to be seen whether or not weak to non-existent opposition is a good thing.

Whereas the United Progressive Caucus or UPC once ruled the roost, it is now the CORE group that is running the show, quite smoothly.

President Karen Lewis began her speech by focusing on the pension fight.  For now, she told the delegates last Wednesday, September 3, there is no "ugly" pension legislation in Springfield, because the Chicago Public Schools refuses to work on a plan with the CTU.

"I called (Speaker of the House Michael) Madigan and told him CPS is not meeting with us, that CPS was forced to come up with a plan and they never did."

Lewis will refer to her private calls to Madigan, after taking some heat for endorsing the powerful speaker who is a pro-education reform politician, with close ties to UNO charter schools and other privatization forces.

In this case, Lewis is working with Madigan to come up with a compromise pension bill.  However, CPS is refusing to play ball, although they admit that the CTU plan to reform the pension system looks good, Lewis said.

"CPS said we have a 'political problem,'" Lewis told the delegates. 
"They said the CTU needs to give up something...If we give up $100 million, they will give it to charter schools."

Charter schools and politics were big on the agenda at the HOD meeting.  Sharkey said charter schools are an "existential threat" against the public schools.  He and Lewis noted that while there were huge cuts to the public school budgets, the charter schools actually got increased funding (that money may have come from the Gates Foundation).

So the CTU is looking to increase its muscle in the political arena.  

A resolution passed to increase CTU political action committee dues from $2 to $5, and encourage members to contribute to the 2015 campaign fund, as well as provide a voluntary tiering mechanism so that members can give at the $5, $10 or $20 level.

The resolution read:

"This increase will give the Chicago Teachers Union PAC sufficient resources to intensify political and legislative activities, including but not limited to: hosting political education forums, expanding research, canvassing, phone banking, voter registration drives, issue campaigns, grassroots organizing, and financial support to potential candidates in an effort to mount an effective and vigorous campaign in support of those candidates who share our vision or quality public education and strong communities."

It should be noted that the CTU has had a history of financially supporting the mayor.  Even when reform minded PACT took over the union 10 years ago, they still wrote out hefty checks to the pro-education reform mayor.

It was mentioned during the brief debate for the motion that the CTU should be transparent and provide a list of how much money has been contributed from CTU dues monies to support which candidate.  This was provided at one point to members when the UPC was running the show.

Another resolution passed at the HOD meeting was to support Honduras, where more than 25 teachers have been murdered for their political activism by the military, police and government sponsored forces since the US-backed military coup took power in 2009.

Not Very Giving

By ROB REICH

Nytimes.com

STANFORD, Calif. — AS school gets rolling across the country, many parents will be asked to make a large financial contribution to their children’s school. In Hillsborough, Calif., for example, parents receive a letter from the Hillsborough Schools Foundation in which the amount requested is $2,300 per child.

There have always been parent-teacher associations that raise modest or even not-so-modest amounts of money. But increasingly local school foundations are being created expressly for the purpose of raising private funds.

Hillsborough is one of the wealthiest towns in the United States. Median family income is over $250,000, and residents enjoy one of the best school districts in the state. 

It’s not hard for Hillsborough families to donate to their own children’s school. And they do: bids at the foundation’s annual online auction last year went into the thousands for a paid internship at Franklin Templeton Investments and for a trip to the taping of the final episode of “The Bachelor.” Or you could make an offer on a vacation in a luxury home with a dedicated butler on a private island in Belize.

According to the foundation, charitable gifts have financed class-size reductions, librarians, art and music teachers, and Smart technology in every classroom. These funds supplement the annual public spending of $13,500 per pupil. In the process, they increase property values in Hillsborough. In 2012 private contributions to the foundation amounted to $3.45 million, or $2,300 per pupil.

Hillsborough is not an anomaly. The foundation supporting the Palo Alto school district asks for $800 per child; in Menlo Park, it’s $1,500; and at the Ross Elementary School in Marin County, it’s a staggering $3,400.

Less than 20 miles away from Hillsborough is East Palo Alto, which has a school foundation, but where median household income in 2011 was $48,700. The amount of money collected from parents is small. Modesto, in California’s Central Valley, is in an area with some of the highest poverty rates in the nation. Like most poor cities and rural areas, it has no school foundation. In Oakland and San Francisco district foundations raise less than $100 a year per child.

There’s nothing surprising about this stark contrast. Wealthy parents in wealthy towns can raise a lot of money.
Wanting to support your own children’s education is understandable, but it also has unintended, pernicious effects. The school foundations are legally registered as public charities. When donors give to their own child’s school or district, they are making a charitable contribution that the federal government treats in the same way as a donation to a food bank or disaster relief.

But charity like this is not relief for the poor. It is, in fact, the opposite. Private giving to public schools widens the gap between rich and poor. It exacerbates inequalities in financing. It is philanthropy in the service of conferring advantage on the already well-off.

By lowering the taxes of the donor and diminishing the tax revenues that would otherwise have been collected and partly distributed to rich and poor schools alike, federal and state governments are in effect subsidizing the charitable activity of parents who donate to their child’s school. In this respect, the policies that govern private giving to public schools seem perverse. Tax policy makes federal and state governments complicit in the deepening of existing inequalities that they are ostensibly responsible for diminishing in the first place.

Should wealthy parents in well-to-do school districts stop giving to their own children’s schools? That’s not likely to happen, nor is it my recommendation. True, it would be more altruistic to donate to the schools of poorer children, but it is human instinct for parents to support the education of their children.

There is still a lot we can do to improve this upside-down system of charity. First, wealthy school foundations like Hillsborough’s should honor the equality-promoting standards released by the National Commission on Civic Investment in Public Education (on which I served). At a minimum, this would require private giving to be aggregated across schools and shared equally with the entire school district. More ambitiously, it would channel private giving to support poor districts.

Second, because the root cause of inadequate school financing is ultimately political, not philanthropic, donors and school foundations should support political reforms. A movement is afoot in California to amend the property-tax slashing Proposition 13 to require fair market value taxation of commercial real estate, which would raise tax revenues. In effect, by asking parents to donate, the Hillsborough Schools Foundation encourages them to work around the obstacle of Prop 13 rather than confronting the problems it creates directly. It would be better if the foundation organized parents in support of amending Prop 13.

Finally, Congress should differentiate or eliminate charitable status for local education foundations. If a foundation raises money for a district with a high percentage of children eligible for free lunch, it could offer a double deduction; for a district below the average in per-pupil spending, the standard deduction; for a district with few poor children and higher than average per-pupil spending, no deduction. If private giving to public schools exacerbates inequalities, then at the very least we should stop subsidizing such behavior with tax dollars.

The problem is not with America’s parents but with its policies. At a time of rising inequality, school foundations must shrink — not widen — the gap between rich and poor.

Rob Reich is an associate professor of political science at Stanford and co-director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society.