NM, OR, NC Veteran Teacher Quits, Letter Goes Viral

This cross-posted from a very thoughtful student teacher's blog, "Teacher Under Construction: Rutgers Student and Future World Changers Fighting for Educational Equity"

The linked author has also started a blog, Middle Grades Mastery: The Journey to Find the Best Ways to Teach Middle School Students

Teacher’s Letter Stating Why He Quit Goes Viral This entry was posted on November 7, 2012, in Uncategorized and tagged Education, Letter, North Carolina, Opinion, Schools, Standardized test, Teacher. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments
The letter below provides multiple reasons why I fight for my future profession.

See letter covered by The Washington Post [Valerie Straus, The Answer Sheet, with 112 comments] and Diane Ravitch [Diane Ravitch's Blog], and a post covering how he responded to his critics.

I QUIT

Kris L. Nielsen Monroe, NC 28110

Union County Public Schools Human Resources Department 400 North Church Street Monroe, NC 28112

October 25, 2012

To All it May Concern:

I’m doing something I thought I would never do—something that will make me a statistic and a caricature of the times. Some will support me, some will shake their heads and smirk condescendingly—and others will try to convince me that I’m part of the problem. Perhaps they’re right, but I don’t think so. All I know is that I’ve hit a wall, and in order to preserve my sanity, my family, and the forward movement of our lives, I have no other choice.

Before I go too much into my choice, I must say that I have the advantages and disadvantages of differentiated experience under my belt. I have seen the other side, where the grass was greener, and I unknowingly jumped the fence to where the foliage is either so tangled and dense that I can’t make sense of it, or the grass is wilted and dying (with no true custodian of its health). Are you lost? I’m talking about public K-12 education in North Carolina. I’m talking about my history as a successful teacher and leader in two states before moving here out of desperation.

In New Mexico, I led a team of underpaid teachers who were passionate about their jobs and who did amazing things. We were happy because our students were well-behaved, our community was supportive, and our jobs afforded us the luxuries of time, respect, and visionary leadership. Our district was huge, but we got things done because we were a team. I moved to Oregon because I was offered a fantastic job with a higher salary, a great math program, and superior benefits for my family. Again, I was given the autonomy I dreamed of, and I used it to find new and risky ways to introduce technology into the math curriculum. My peers looked forward to learning from me, the community gave me a lot of money to get my projects off the ground, and my students were amazing.

Then, the bottom fell out. I don’t know who to blame for the budget crisis in Oregon, but I know it decimated the educational coffers. I lost my job only due to my lack of seniority. I was devastated. My students and their parents were angry and sad. I told myself I would hang in there, find a temporary job, and wait for the recall. Neither the temporary job nor the recall happened. I tried very hard to keep my family in Oregon—applying for jobs in every district, college, private school, and even Toys R Us. Nothing happened after over 300 applications and 2 interviews.

The Internet told me that the West Coast was not hiring teachers anymore, but the East Coast was the go-to place. Charlotte, North Carolina couldn’t keep up with the demand! I applied with three schools, got three phone interviews, and was even hired over the phone. My very supportive and adventurous family and I packed quickly and moved across the country, just so I could keep teaching.

I had come from two very successful and fun teaching jobs to a new state where everything was different. During my orientation, I noticed immediately that these people weren’t happy to see us; they were much more interested in making sure we knew their rules. It was a one-hour lecture about what happens when teachers mess up. I had a bad feeling about teaching here from the start; but, we were here and we had to make the best of it.

Union County seemed to be the answer to all of my problems. The rumors and the press made it sound like UCPS was the place to be progressive, risky, and happy. So I transferred from CMS to UCPS. They made me feel more welcome, but it was still a mistake to come here.

Let me cut to the chase: I quit. I am resigning my position as a teacher in the state of North Carolina—permanently. I am quitting without notice (taking advantage of the “at will” employment policies of this state). I am quitting without remorse and without second thoughts. I quit. I quit. I quit!

Why?

Because…

I refuse to be led by a top-down hierarchy that is completely detached from the classrooms for which it is supposed to be responsible.

I will not spend another day under the expectations that I prepare every student for the increasing numbers of meaningless tests.

I refuse to be an unpaid administrator of field tests that take advantage of children for the sake of profit.

I will not spend another day wishing I had some time to plan my fantastic lessons because administration comes up with new and inventive ways to steal that time, under the guise of PLC meetings or whatever. I’ve seen successful PLC development. It doesn’t look like this.

I will not spend another day wondering what menial, administrative task I will hear that I forgot to do next. I’m far enough behind in my own work.

I will not spend another day wondering how I can have classes that are full inclusion, and where 50% of my students have IEPs, yet I’m given no support.

I will not spend another day in a district where my coworkers are both on autopilot and in survival mode. Misery loves company, but I will not be that company.

I refuse to subject students to every ridiculous standardized test that the state and/or district thinks is important. I refuse to have my higher-level and deep thinking lessons disrupted by meaningless assessments (like the EXPLORE test) that do little more than increase stress among children and teachers, and attempt to guide young adolescents into narrow choices.

I totally object and refuse to have my performance as an educator rely on “Standard 6.” It is unfair, biased, and does not reflect anything about the teaching practices of proven educators.

I refuse to hear again that it’s more important that I serve as a test administrator than a leader of my peers.

I refuse to watch my students being treated like prisoners. There are other ways. It’s a shame that we don’t have the vision to seek out those alternatives.

I refuse to watch my coworkers being treated like untrustworthy slackers through the overbearing policies of this state, although they are the hardest working and most overloaded people I know.

I refuse to watch my family struggle financially as I work in a job to which I have invested 6 long years of my life in preparation. I have a graduate degree and a track record of strong success, yet I’m paid less than many two-year degree holders. And forget benefits—they are effectively nonexistent for teachers in North Carolina.

I refuse to watch my district’s leadership tell us about the bad news and horrific changes coming towards us, then watch them shrug incompetently, and then tell us to work harder.

I refuse to listen to our highly regarded superintendent telling us that the charter school movement is at our doorstep (with a soon-to-be-elected governor in full support) and tell us not to worry about it, because we are applying for a grant from Race to the Top. There is no consistency here; there is no leadership here.

I refuse to watch my students slouch under the weight of a system that expects them to perform well on EOG tests, which do not measure their abilities other than memorization and application and therefore do not measure their readiness for the next grade level—much less life, career, or college.

I’m tired of watching my students produce amazing things, which show their true understanding of 21st century skills, only to see their looks of disappointment when they don’t meet the arbitrary expectations of low-level state and district tests that do not assess their skills.

I refuse to hear any more about how important it is to differentiate our instruction as we prepare our kids for tests that are anything but differentiated. This negates our hard work and makes us look bad.

I am tired of hearing about the miracles my peers are expected to perform, and watching the districts do next to nothing to support or develop them. I haven’t seen real professional development in either district since I got here. The development sessions I have seen are sloppy, shallow, and have no real means of evaluation or accountability.

I’m tired of my increasing and troublesome physical symptoms that come from all this frustration, stress, and sadness.

Finally, I’m tired of watching parents being tricked into believing that their children are being prepared for the complex world ahead, especially since their children’s teachers are being cowed into meeting expectations and standards that are not conducive to their children’s futures.

I’m truly angry that parents put so much stress, fear, and anticipation into their kids’ heads in preparation for the EOG tests and the new MSLs—neither of which are consequential to their future needs. As a parent of a high school student in Union County, I’m dismayed at the education that my child receives, as her teachers frantically prepare her for more tests. My toddler will not attend a North Carolina public school. I will do whatever it takes to keep that from happening.

I quit because I’m tired being part of the problem. It’s killing me and it’s not doing anyone else any good. Farewell.

CC: Dr. Mary Ellis

Dr. June Atkinson

5 Biggest Lies About America's Public Schools -- Debunked

Kristin Rawls, writing in AlterNet, October 1, 2012:

5 Biggest Lies About America's Public Schools -- Debunked
Here's the truth behind 5 of the most destructive myths about public education.

Just weeks into the 2012-2013 school year education issues are already playing a starring role in the national conversation about America’s future. Because it’s an election year, the presidential candidates have been busy pretending there are many substantial distinctions between them on education policy (actually, the differences are arguably minimal). Meanwhile, the striking Chicago Teachers Union helped thrust teachers unions into the national spotlight, with union-buster Democrat Mayor Rahm Emanuel reminding us that, these days, Republicans and Democrats frequently converge on both education policy and labor-unfriendliness.

Since pundits and politicians often engage in education rhetoric that obscures what’s really going on, here are five corrections to some of the more egregious claims you may have recently heard.

Lie #1: Unions are undermining the quality of education in America.

Teachers unions have gotten a bad rap in recent years, but as education professor Paul Thomas of Furman University tells AlterNet, “The anti-union message…has no basis in evidence.” In fact, Furman points out, “Union states tend to correlate with higher test scores.” As a 2010 study conducted by Albert Shanker Fellow Matthew Di Carlo found, “[T]he states in which there are no teachers covered under binding agreements score lower [on standardized assessment tests] than the states that have them… If anything, it seems that the presence of teacher contracts in a state has a positive effect on achievement” – by as much as three to five points in reading and math at varying grade levels.

Even so, Thomas doesn’t believe that high test-scores should be taken as the primary indication that union teachers are good for kids, noting that “union states tend to be less burdened by poverty while ‘right-to-work’ (non-union) states are disproportionately high-poverty” – and poverty, as we well know, has its own, profound impact on student performance.

For these reasons among others, union presence can never be isolated as the sole relevant factor in producing higher student achievement. But teachers unions are still important to student success. Why? Most importantly, perhaps, because they fight for equality of opportunity in education by, for example, opposing attempts to resegregate American schools. One of the reasons the CTU so resolutely opposed the school closures Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Board of Education threatened was because closures have proven to have disastrous consequences for displaced students in Chicago, who are generally forced to move from one underfunded, low-performing school to another. Teachers unions oppose such injustices because they support the rights of all children to have access to high-quality education -- not just the kids whose parents can afford high property taxes. That’s a good thing for America’s education system, not a bad one.

Lie #2: Your student’s teacher has an easy and over-compensated job.

One talking point that circulated around the Chicago teachers’ strike was that public school teachers are overpaid for easy jobs with plentiful time off. This is a longstanding gem that has little basis in fact. As political scientist Corey Robin of Brooklyn College/CUNY Graduate Center writes in the Washington Post, when he was growing up his affluent childhood community was embattled every year because the community so looked down on teachers. “Teachers had opted out of the capitalist game” in the minds of local parents and the assumption, according to Robin, was “there could be only one reason for that: they were losers.”

But is teaching actually overcompensated? It’s hard to imagine how. The New York Times points out that “The average primary-school teacher in the United States earns about 67 percent of the salary of an average college-educated worker in the United States.” (And given the student debt bubble currently crippling so many young people, this is and will remain an area of real concern for recruiting future teachers.) And notably, the Times points out, the ratio of teacher pay to that of other college graduates is wider in the U.S. than in most other developed countries.

Let’s not forget, too, the very long work hours that define most teaching jobs. Former high school English teacher Carrie Rogers tells AlterNet that most of the young teachers she’s known in North Carolina “leave the profession after their second child” because of the extensive demands on their time. She says the “amount of time and effort it takes to teach effectively is [no longer possible] by the time they have two kids.” A “teacher's salary…minus two daycare bills for the total amount of time [teachers] spend at work doesn't work.” In many states, teacher pay falls into a lower-middle income bracket, and Rogers says teachers “never work 40 hour weeks. They spend nights grading; Saturdays and evenings at grad school and continuing [education] programs; and lunch hours monitoring cafeterias.”

Overcompensated? By whose standards?

Lie #3: If your child doesn’t get picked in a charter school lottery, he or she is doomed.

The popular film Waiting for ‘Superman characterizes charter schools as a silver bullet perfectly positioned to save public education -- if only they could replace traditional public schools as quickly as possible. The film picks up on the consequences of social inequality, but goes a step further, presuming that traditional public schools cannot be redeemed, and charters are the last hope for education.

Yet as it turns out, there’s no proof that charter schools are intrinsically better than traditional public schools. A 2009 Stanford study found that charter school students generally perform no better than students attending traditional public schools. In fact, the study found, “academic growth in 37 percent of charter schools is significantly worse than traditional public schools. In addition, 46 percent of charter schools have the same academic results as traditional public schools. The six states with the largest number of charter schools—Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio and Texas—fared most poorly in the study.”

But in spite of the evidence to the contrary, the public is often told that charter schools are indeed a better option than traditional publics. That’s what has caused so much trouble in the affluent Silicon Valley school district where Eric Lundberg’s children are enrolled. Lundberg tells AlterNet, “The local school district is one of the best in the state…The district is committed to giving our students the best education possible and is supported by an amazing community.”

But Lundberg says the transformation of a public school into a charter school has caused major upheaval in the community. The charter school is currently demanding the closure of an excellent traditional school so it can take over the school building, but traditional school proponents are fighting back with some strong arguments on their side. First of all, Lundberg notes, the charter school doesn’t serve its “share of special needs or low income students” (privately run charter schools can – and frequently do – turn students away whom they fear may lower their standardized test scores, including students with disabilities). In addition, “They have an unelected board that is not accountable to anyone,” and “the board made what appears to be an illegal personal loan ($250,000) to the principal/superintendent.”

This isn’t just a problem in Silicon Valley; mismanagement and exclusionary policies have characterized the proliferation of charter schools throughout the U.S. Combine those facts with their dubious record of academic achievement and it’s clear charters just aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

Lie #4: Your child will automatically be better off if your school district adopts a “school choice” assignment plan.

One way charters often take root in communities is that they’re introduced through “school choice” plans that purport to give parents a measure of autonomy in choosing their child’s school. In some cases, this means parents are offered vouchers that can be used to transfer public school dollars to private (often religiously affiliated) schools; in other cases, parent are asked to select two or three of their top school choices, and will be assigned to one of them. The fact that poor parents working multiple jobs might not have the capacity to fully research their options is never discussed.

If this weren’t problematic enough, “choice” can cause other headaches for parents. In Wake County, NC, parents have widely expressed outrage about the effects of their temporarily instituted school choice plan. Promoted as “convenient” for families, in practice the plan has resulted in widespread transportation problems that have left students stranded at schools well into the evening hours. And in Harlem last month, parents complained to The New York Times that they were not given any “high-performing” school options to choose from in their much-touted school choice plan.

School choice tends to resonate with parents, but as Thomas tells AlterNet, “The evidence on choice shows [that]…parents do a terrible job with that choice.” This is in part because though market-based solutions like “choice” sound good on paper, they are rarely any match for the complex needs of our nation’s schools and the children they educate. And as Thomas has previously noted, both pro- and anti-school choice think-tanks and researchers are now finding that choice yields no academic gains. This has happened both at the local level (a conservative think tank called the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute reported that it was “disappointed” to admit that school choice had failed in Milwaukee) and at the national level, as well. To prove this latter point, Thomas cites a voucher-specific 2008 study, the most comprehensive look at school choice done yet, which argues that,

“… what little evidence exists about the likely impact of a large-scale voucher program on the students who remain in the public schools is at best mixed… [and the] evidence to date from other forms of school choice is not much more promising. As such,…one should not anticipate large academic gains from this seemingly inexpensive reform.”

The short of it? There is just no conclusive evidence that school choice programs actually work. Don’t get caught up in the hype.

Lie #5: Your student’s teacher sees your constructive involvement in your child’s education as an annoyance.

A narrative that pits parents and teachers against each other is part and parcel of the politicized rhetoric about education that you hear in the news. Educators have known for some time that parental involvement is a key component of student success. Indiana University’s Career and Postsecondary advancement center reports that, “66 different studies came to one conclusion based on the evidence: families matter. Whether changing TV viewing habits, providing diverse readings materials around the house or volunteering at school, parents can help their children succeed as students.” But corporate reformers are actively promoting antagonistic relationships between parents and schools.

The Center for Public Education cites a 2008 study by the National Center for Education Statistics which found that parental involvement is one of the top predictors – if not the top predictor – of academic success. But common anti-teacher rhetoric has created some unproductive relationships between parents and teachers. Public school teacher Madeleine Bolden of the Atlanta area tells AlterNet that she’s noticed “parents becoming more adversarial with…teachers.” More than ever before, she says, “I have felt bashed by parents who mask either their children's failings or their own failings by the rhetoric” of school failure. Often, she says, parents approach teachers as if “we are doing everything wrong.”

She concludes, “This kind of attitude erodes teacher student relationships in the classroom. When parents consistently put down the teacher,” it’s not easy for teachers and parents to “bond in a way that promotes optimal learning. Students are suffering as a result.”

Whatever else you may have heard, the truth is, most teachers do welcome constructive parent involvement -- especially involvement that doesn’t put them on the defensive from the outset. The Center for Public Education cites a 2003 study: “Two-thirds of teachers surveyed (Public Agenda, 2003) believed that their students would perform better in school if their parents were more involved in their child’s education.” And the center notes further that “virtually all schools welcome parent involvement,” from attendance at teacher conferences to PTA membership to parental help with homework.

As with much of the other disinformation being spread about public education, the key here is to do your homework: Check in with your child’s teacher before there is a problem, and check the assumptions that he or she doesn’t want you there at the door. Most teachers will be glad to find that you’re an active, willing partner in your child’s education.

Kristin Rawls is a freelance writer whose work has also appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, GOOD Magazine, Religion Dispatches, Killing the Buddha, Global Comment and elsewhere online.

5 So-Called Liberal Pundits Who Are Attacking Teachers

Plusupdates from comments on Diane Ravitch's blog. Scroll to end of this post.

5 So-Called Liberal Pundits Who Are Attacking Teachers Chicago's teacher strike is shaping up to be one of the most important labor actions in a generation. So why are people who consider themselves progressives siding with the bosses? September 12, 2012 | By Sarah Jaffe

Chicago's teacher strike may turn out to be the most important one in a generation, as teachers stand up to a corporate-backed education reform regime that stresses testing and firing teachers as a form of “accountability” while continuing to refuse to invest real money in making educational opportunities equal for all students.

The so-called education reform movement wants high-stakes tests that students take yearly to be used to evaluate teachers and weed out the "bad" ones, and pushes money into charter schools that are privately owned and don't have union teachers. Under the guise of "accountability" for teachers and schools, reformers put taxpayer dollars into the hands of private investors despite the charter schools' negligible results when it comes to actually improving education. The movement has been particularly pernicious because it's crept inside the heart of the Democratic party and taken hold of politicians and commentators who profess to be on the side of working people, but end up bashing teachers' unions.

As Molly Ball at the Atlantic wrote last week ["How Michelle Rhee Is Taking Over the Democratic Party"], Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the chairman of the Democratic National Convention, spoke during the convention at a movie screening hosted by the face of the pro-charter-school movement, Michelle Rhee. “Another Democratic star, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, spoke at the cocktails-and-canapes reception afterward,” Ball noted. “Across the country, Democratic officials from governors like Colorado's John Hickenlooper to former President Clinton -- buoyed by the well-funded encouragement of the hedge-fund bigwigs behind much of the charter-school movement -- are shifting the party's consensus away from the union-dictated terms to which it has long been loyal.”

And of course, Chicago's teachers are facing down Mayor Rahm Emanuel, former White House Chief of Staff for Barack Obama.

It's not just politicians falling for the rhetoric of the union-busters when it comes to teachers. Few would dare to demonize police or firefighters' unions the same way they have teachers, who are mostly women, working for decent middle-class wages but hardly getting rich, and in Chicago often working in horrific conditions ["The Daily Change: 5 Facts You Need To Know About The Terrible State Of Chicago Schools"], with huge classes and in some cases no air conditioning. Yet as the teachers hit the streets and Chicagoans declared support, supposedly liberal pundits echoed far-right talking points about teacher salaries and budget cuts, implied that teachers were hurting students by standing up for their rights and for better conditions in the schools, and argued that not supporting the union was evidence of their independent thought—not their susceptibility to a well-funded message machine or their general contempt for public school teachers.

Here's five of the most egregious examples of otherwise smart liberal pundits repeating the talking points of the corporate education reform movement.

1. Nicholas Kristof. The New York Times' columnist is celebrated for his trips into Global South countries to report heartwrenching stories of women; he's lauded as an activist and a human rights advocate. But when it comes to women and workers fighting for their rights closer to home, he seems to have a big blind spot. He tweeted:

Re the Chicago teacher strike, my take: teachers should have greater pay but more accountability & less job security.

Kristof doesn't seem to have a great grasp on the facts—arguing for “bottom-third” teachers not to have job protections, then suggesting that we should listen to teachers for ideas on how to weed out that bottom third. “In response to your questions, yes, 1 yr value added isn't adequate to judge a teacher. 3 yrs data better. Some subjects not measurable,” he admits, but continues to argue for high-stakes testing as “accountability.”

New York teacher Brian Jones pointed out ["Unions Are Striking Back, at Last"], in the Times as well, that the “carrot-and-stick” routine Kristof implicitly endorses here to try to make teachers perform won't work. "Any experienced classroom teacher will tell you that punishments and rewards at best encourage obedience, but will not promote creativity, intelligence or initiative." Instead, he noted, “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.”

Kristof's admission that teachers should be well-paid would be more welcome if it didn't come along with the call for more testing—as we know, high-stakes testing doesn't lead to better teaching, it leads to lousy learning and in some cases, cheating ["Michelle Rhee Can't Shake Cheating Scandal at D.C. Public Schools"].

Finally, Kristof wraps up with some concern-trolling intended to appease both sides, saying that the real losers are poor kids who attend Chicago's public schools. Of course, if Kristof had any interest in listening to activists, many of them women of color, he'd understand that that's why the teachers are striking in the first place.

2. Joe Nocera. Nocera, also at the Times, tries to soften his critique of the teachers' strike by throwing them a bone midway through his column. “As regular readers know, I have been somewhat skeptical of the reform movement. For those disadvantaged students who get into a good charter school or land in a program that can help them succeed, that’s wonderful. In the grand scheme of things, though, the number of students who get that kind of attention is small.”

Great, Joe. The reform movement is full of it. But where you got your next sentence is completely unclear. “On the other hand, the status quo, which is what the Chicago teachers want, is clearly unacceptable.”

Here's a deep-seated bit of ideology that's really worth unpacking for a second. This is the image of unions in the American psyche these days. Most people think of them as little-c conservative institutions holding on to a dead past, trying to protect what their members have against a sweeping tide of change.

It's wrong, and the CTU couldn't be a better example of just how wrong it is. Karen Lewis and her union are the ones actually fighting for reforms in the schools, starting with things we know work: smaller class sizes, well-rounded curriculum, support for teachers and school staff. They might legally only be allowed to strike over salary and benefits, but they've been out there at every turn arguing for change, not the status quo.

Nocera seems to brush off the points the teachers make about poverty, about the unfairness of statewide tests that hold teachers in schools where families are barely staying afloat to the same standard as white kids in suburban well-funded districts. Just lengthening the school day won't help if you have overfull classes stuffed with kids with empty stomachs and no air conditioning—those aren't conditions for learning.

Nocera might want to ask some people who would know what works. But those would be teachers, and no one seems to actually care what they think.

3. Dylan Matthews. Over at Wonkblog, founded and headed by liberal darling Ezra Klein, Dylan Matthews went two for two, first arguing that teachers' strikes hurt student achievement (measured, of course, by those magical test scores) and then churning out a charming little piece arguing over teachers' wages.

Doug Henwood at Left Business Observer provides an expansive response to Matthews' “attempted heart-tugging” over the damage being done to students. The studies Matthews quotes, Henwood points out, are from Canada and Belgium, and one of them was a six-month long work stoppage. He quotes Michèle Belot and Dinand Webbink, the authors of that study, who are far less interested in fearmongering than Matthews is:

Strikes do not occur randomly and are likely to be correlated with other factors affecting educational outcomes, thereby compromising the identification of a causal effect. A before–after comparison might be biased by other unobserved factors that changed after the strikes.

And then on to the money. He qualifies his eight paragraphs of numbers by admitting that none of his calculations have anything to do with whether teachers deserve to make $56,000 or $71,000 or any other possible rate of pay, he's essentially done the right's work for them: insisting that the teachers make the high end of a possible range of pay opens them up to the charge being flung around that they're greedy.

It also contributes to the myth that the strike is only about pay, when in fact, like most labor actions, it's about so much more than that, from class sizes to standardized tests to the lack of air conditioning in schools and the persistent, grinding poverty of so many of Chicago's public school students. But as Phil Cantor, a striking teacher, told Democracy Now!, due to neoliberal reforms pushed through by Emanuel and others, the teachers are only legally allowed to strike over pay and benefits, but they get blamed in the press for being concerned about their pay. It's almost like the politicians planned it that way to make teachers look greedy and selfish.

As Micah Uetricht notes at Jacobin, CTU president Karen Lewis was asked what the primary issues were that caused the union overwhelmingly to vote to strike. “She replied that all issues, from compensation to smaller class sizes to the increasing reliance upon standardized testing to understaffing of positions dealing with 'wraparound services,' like social workers and clinicians, were causing the impasse.”

By focusing solely on the numbers, Matthews contributes to the idea that a teachers' strike is all about the money, and by insisting repeatedly on the higher number, he contributes to the divide-and-conquer tactics the right has gotten so good at using to split the working class and attack unions.

4. Matt Yglesias. Yglesias' contribution, at Slate, to the teachers' union-busting is one of the most unintentionally ironic things I've ever seen. Just a year and a couple of months out from the biggest labor uprising in decades over the rights of public employees, Yglesias is actually arguing that teachers' unions suck because they are public employees.

Really. Check this out:

If CTU members get what they want, that's not coming out of the pocket of "the bosses" it's coming out of the pocket of the people who work at charter schools or the people who pay taxes in Chicago.

So if the teachers get a better pay rate, it's coming out of the pockets of...other teachers? It escapes Yglesias, of course, because he's firmly bought in to the myth that the teachers just want more money. But one of the things the CTU wants is fewer charter schools, and one of the reasons they want fewer charter schools is that the teachers in them don't have access to the protections of collective bargaining.

As for the idea that taxpayers should hate teachers because they pay their salaries, I don't even know where to begin. Yglesias is responding to a brief post by Doug Henwood ["Why do so many liberals hate teachers’ unions?"] in which Henwood compares teachers to blue-collar workers like autoworkers or janitors, and his argument is that people don't mind janitors striking because it doesn't come out of their bottom line. Except janitors are also employed by public entities sometimes, but whatever, liberal pundits don't want to get too close to those types of workers anyway. (In Chicago the janitors are refusing to cross the teachers' picket lines, standing in solidarity.)

Public workers, of course, were the target of lots of attacks last year, but by Republicans (mostly). The difference between Scott Walker and Rahm Emanuel on this issue is quite slim, actually. Part of the education reform plan is, as Nicholas Kristof points out above, to take away job security from the teachers deemed “bad” by the powers that be. Walker's attacks, like Emanuel's, disproportionately fell on a part of the workforce dominated by women and people of color. CTU president Karen Lewis attended Dartmouth, the only woman of color in her class, and has put race and gender at the center of her analysis.

Even when attacking public employee unions, Scott Walker and his ilk avoid fights with the police and firefighters. Only John Kasich in Ohio had the guts to go after cops and firefighters, and unsurprisingly his bill was defeated. (It's also worth noting that in Chicago, the police union is also standing with the teachers.) There is simply no comparable demonization of these public workers to what happens constantly with teachers. Coincidentally, there is no way for hedge funders to get rich pocketing tax dollars by creating charter police departments or fire departments. Though now that I've said it, maybe they'll start.

The main difference seems to be, on this question, that Emanuel is a Democrat and so belongs to a party that at least feels the need to pay lip service to teachers and their unions—though not long ago an Obama campaign manager bragged about the president's relationship with teachers unions being “anything but cozy.”

Oh, and that this is a strike, and apparently liberal pundits prefer it when unions lie down and wait for the abuses to come. Yet as Matthew Stoller pointed out last year, the lack of strikes has led most people to consider unions ineffective and useless, creating the same kind of thinking that Cohen displays here. “People might only like unions when they see strikes, otherwise all they hear about is backroom negotiations,” Stoller argued. “Perhaps effectively striking is actually the way to force people to ask questions about what kind of country they want to live in.”

If Yglesias is seriously worried about the taxpayers in Chicago getting screwed over by public school funding, perhaps he could start here: according to Bill Barclay at Dissent, “In revealing contrast, nine selective-enrollment high schools (charter and magnet) that make up 1 percent of the total number of schools got 24 percent of the money spent on school construction projects.”

That sounds like misallocation of taxpayer funds to me.

As Henwood replied, “The 'what about the taxpayers?' lament is straight out of the Reagan playbook—from which it’s clear that a lot of Democrats are taking instruction these days.”

5. Jacob Weisberg. It might be easier to understand Yglesias' position on striking teachers when you look at his boss's tweets on the subject. Weisberg, editor-in-chief at Slate, is the most gleeful yet:

Rooting for Rahm to make the Chicago Teachers' Union sorry for this inexcusable strike. Students in class fewest hours of any big city.

It's disconcerting to see such clear desire for punishment of working people (by a multimillionaire politician whose best friends are on Wall Street no less). But Weisberg should know, right? He's an alum of Chicago's schools—or rather, one of Chicago's illustrious private schools. The Francis W. Parker school's Web site stresses its “...small class size and interdisciplinary approach to teaching result in a challenging and meaningful educational experience.”

Now, of course it's possible for someone to have attended a private school and still have solidarity with striking workers, or to have ideas worth listening to about how schools should be run. But when your only answer to the questions raised by a teachers strike is:

Teachers, fire & police shouldn't have right to strike. It's blackmail power over essential services. They have many other protections.

At least Weisberg is consistent here in saying that teachers are just as essential as police and firefighters. But he then argues that none of them should have the right to strike. It's thinking like this that led to the assaults on public workers' collective bargaining rights that flared up last year but haven't really gone away. It's also the same thinking that leads to Republicans arguing that public sector jobs aren't real jobs, that they're simply government waste. Or that leads to a Democratic mayor [in Scranton, PA] cutting wages for all public workers (again, including police and firefighters) to minimum wage.

Striking is the strongest weapon that working people have to fight for their own rights. The bar in Chicago was raised to a height that politicians thought the union would never be able to scale, cutting back what the teachers were legally able to strike over and requiring a larger percentage of the union to vote than they thought possible. But they underestimated the solidarity and determination of the teachers' union, and now Democrats are making Republican-sounding arguments while insisting that they don't hate all unions or all teachers, it's just that this time is different.

“What about the children,” what Weisberg essentially asks here, is a question being used across the board against the unions. We are supposed to believe that wealthy charter school backers and Wall Street Democrats, along with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, the architects of No Child Left Behind, and so many other conservatives, really have the best interests of children at heart instead of the people who willingly take on a thankless career in the nation's poorest schools.

As economist Dean Baker pointed out, “The main determinants of childrens' performance continues to be the socioeconomic conditions of their parents. Those unwilling to take the steps necessary to address the latter (e.g. promote full employment) are the ones who do not care about our children.”

Sarah Jaffe is an associate editor at AlterNet, a rabblerouser and frequent Twitterer. You can follow her at @sarahljaffe.

And these recommendations from a commenter at Diane Ravitch's blog:

reality-based educator
September 15, 2012 at 9:59 am
Add NY Times columnist Tom Friedman and former Tribune editor/current Daily Beast contributor James Warren to the list.

Friedman has been wrong about almost everything he has every written about – from the wonders of global free trade to the wonders of the Iraq war.

Matt Taibbi has done the best take downs of Friedman. Here’s the most famous of those:

http://nypress.com/flat-n-all-that/

Glenn Greenwald points out how Friedman is emblematic of our imperial press corps – shilling for the corporate state, but wrong about everything:

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/25/the_value_of_tom_friedman/

Somehow Friedman, despite being wrong about pretty much everything, gets to continue to pontificate about the horrors of teachers unions and the wonders of standardized test scores in China (not realizing, of course, that only a small segment of children in China take those tests and thus are counted in the scores.)

If there were a value-added score for Tom Friedman, it would be in the negative.

Read something he’s written and you lose brain cells.

As for Warren, he attacked teachers for whining about air conditioning in the Daily Beast earlier this week.

Warren doesn’t seem to care that some Chicago schools are actually in session in July and August and some teachers have to work in classrooms with 40+ students when it’s a 100 degrees.

Warren also called Karen Lewis a “bumbler,” though it seems Warren’s old newspaper thinks Emanuel was the one who bumbled into – and then through – this strike by being tin-eared and sticking to his “Demonize the Unions” strategy he’s been using since NAFTA:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-teachers-strike-emanuel-0916-20120915,0,3383662.story?page=2

As the son of stockbroker, I guess I can see why Warren would side with Emanuel and the Hyatt heiress over the students and teachers of Chicago.

Ravitch: Emanuel Cites Parent Effect on Children's Behavior But Not Their School Performance -Commenters Ask: What Other Profession Demands Perfection?

From Diane Ravitch.net:
What Does Rahm Emanuel Believe? & following Ravitch's post from 9/10, a still timely post from a monthly ago Why Won’t Rahm Talk to Parents?

What Does Rahm Emanuel Believe?, September 10, 2012

When [Chicago] Mayor Rahm Emanuel is talking about youth crime, he assigns responsibility to parents and families for the values and attitudes and behavior of what he calls “gang bangers.”

When he talks about schools, however, he forgets that parents and families have any influence on how students behave and the effort they are willing to expend on their studies. All of a sudden, teachers alone control test scores, no one else.

Categories Chicago, Emanuel, Rahm

Comment
Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL
Linda
September 10, 2012 at 6:34 pm
And what exactly is Rahm responsible for? When is he held accountable? What does he do every day besides shoot his mouth off and blame others for his failings? Despicable human being!
teachingeconomist
September 10, 2012 at 9:57 pm
When he is up for reelection?
Teacher111
September 10, 2012 at 6:47 pm
Exactly! Everyone does that. We see kids do something crazy (like the Jacksonville, FL high school kids who “flash trashed” a Walmart) and you see comments very critical of their families. However, if negative test score data is released on these same kids the next day, all of the blame would fall on the teachers.

ME
September 10, 2012 at 7:19 pm
What’s the best way to move a child out of poverty?

Provide their family with a middle class job, something politicians have not been able to do for the last many decades.

The data speaks very clearly – our middle and upper class kids perform exceedingly well in multiple measures across their schooling career. The nagging problem is that we have more children in poverty now than we ever have – an inexcusable 25%.

As politicians have outsourced our middle class jobs to cheaper labor over seas, our child poverty rates have skyrocketed – more than doubling – since the 60′s. And then we wonder why our students can’t perform?

Quit placing the destiny of this country and its children on the backs of our schools and teachers and place the focus where it ought to be – the family unit. The number of female, single-headed families is astonishing, especially the rise of them since the 60′s. Female, single-headed families are 5 times more likely to be poverty stricken and send their kids to school a couple of grades behind.

And what do you mean “ultimately fail the teachers”? We’ve already done that as the modal teacher experience across the nation has dipped from the 15 year mark in the late 80′s to the 1 year mark at the present time. We lose 50% of our teachers within their rist five years because of people that blame them for why a kid can’t get a job, make it through college, or read or write.

Do you call having more 1st year teachers “championing for kids”?

Carrie
September 11, 2012 at 3:33 am
It’s not what he says, it’s what he does.

Here is an excellent summary of what he’s done during the bit more than a year he has been in office. From the blog, Mayorial Tutorial.

“While you are digesting the fact that the very concept of unionized public service is under attack, that our “free” public education system is grossly underfunded and that education does not respond like a business and cannot/should not be treated like business or a market; know that there are people who champions of a world view that does all of the above. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is one of them. … The Mayor’s point of reflection is that teachers are just workers not civil servants. This makes them obstacles to be overcome not crucial to the functioning of a civil society.

As a result everything the Mayor has done since taking office has been designed to eliminate them from the field of play and to demonstrate to them that they are powerless. He took their 4% raise. He just broke the agreement and stole the money from them. He marshaled out of state help and jammed SB7 down their throats, just like famous weasel Jonah Edelmen said in public on tape. He launched an aggressive campaign of charter expansion, teacher firings across the system via a growing number of Broad Academy-trained principals using redefinition to eliminate problematic and tenured teachers while putting in place “value-added” schemes and turnaround schools at a clip that would shame Richard M. Daley.
His aggression was calculated to show all the unions that the biggest union in the city was powerless to contend with him. The message was simple enough… get on the bus or get run over by it because if he can do this to teachers, firefighters and police officers had better believe that they, not even being able to strike, would be treated to deals only marginally better because at present the public doesn’t believe they should be privatized… but give our neo-liberal friends time and it could happen right here in America soon enough.”
http://mayoraltutorial.com/articles/a_striking_context_rahm_vs._the_ctu [Don Washington's] mayoraltutorial.com

Ari H. Steinfeld
September 10, 2012 at 7:27 pm
This will become the center of education debate and the focal point for real change. God Bless Karen God Bless the C.T.U. and the members of the C.T.U. who are making tremendous sacrifice for the sake of our nation, and our nations core values. Barack Obama, Arnie Duncan, and Rahm Emmanuel should be listening to this and asking one question. How are my policies going to benefit the core values which I profess to believe in? It is time for all children to have the quality education and support services they need to be the best people they can be, and to stop playing a blame game. Our support of politicians with dubious qualifications and ideals should stop. Stop playing politics and support education properly.

mike
September 10, 2012 at 7:33 pm
This reminds me of an excellent editorial written by a teacher some years ago…
http://www.examiner.com/article/in-what-other-profession

“If that entire attitude weren’t bad enough, what other profession is legally held to PERFECTION by 2014? Are police required to eliminate all crime? Are firefighters required to eliminate all fires? Are doctors required to cure all patients? Are lawyers required to win all cases? Are coaches required to win all games? Of course they aren’t.

For no other profession do so many outsiders refuse to accept the realities of an imperfect world. Crime happens. Fire happens. Illness happens. As for lawyers and coaches, where there’s a winner there must also be a loser. People accept all these realities, until they apply to public education.

If a poverty-stricken, drug-addled meth-cooker burns down his house, suffers third degree burns, and then goes to jail; we don’t blame the police, fire department, doctors, and defense attorneys for his predicament. But if that kid doesn’t graduate high school, it’s clearly the teacher’s fault.”

lellingw
September 10, 2012 at 8:33 pm
Are the parents responsible? Maybe some are, but the level of poverty in parts of Chicago and the lack of jobs is a huge problem that parents can’t resolve by themselves. When is the US going to get real about employment and work?

Reply
Carrie
September 11, 2012 at 3:44 am
31% of Chicago children live in poverty, 10,000 are homeless. The homeless children and parents must change shelters every 6 months. Think of the added hardship for them, because they often have to change schools, too.

For original Diane Ravitch post: What Does Rahm Emanuel Believe?, September 10, 2012

= = = = = = = = =
Why Won’t Rahm Talk to Parents?August 6, 2012

This parent activist in Chicago says that parents have good ideas about how to improve the schools but Mayor Rahm Emanuel won’t meet with them.

Parents in New York City say the same about Mayor Bloomberg.

Why won’t the mayor listen to the most informed and most committed stakeholders of all? Not the business community, not the entrepreneurs, but the parents of the children?

It would cost more than the city has which is a nearly 1 billion dollar deficit! Parent groups have proposed plans that would increase art and gym, support after school programs and allow more opportunity for hands-on learning, but CPS and the mayor emphatically refuse to discuss the future of our children’s education with parents. Rahm’s only solution is to impose a longer school day with no additional funding and essentially let schools try to figure out how to make it work, while secretly hoping schools fail so he can close them and create more charters.

Comments

Linda
August 6, 2012 at 9:26 am
It is ironic that they are all about student and parent choice and lettting them vote with their feet. Create good schools and the parents will flock to them. Until the schools they want are their local neighborhood public schools.

And for all of their talk about choice, when the parents choose to talk to their mayors they run and hide.

Rahm, I thought you were so tough….you can’t meet with a few Chicago moms? And I will quote you in reference to the Chick Fil A fiasco: “These are not Chicago values.”

Neither is swearing at people, degrading teachers and refusing to speak to your constituents, Mayor Emanuel. Toughen up…walk the walk.

Teacher111
August 6, 2012 at 5:15 pm
So much for that “parent empowerment” stuff these politicians speak about all of the time.

Teacher111
August 6, 2012 at 5:17 pm
These politicians seem to be following the conservative education policy line. If they truly believe that parents are the most important and the most informed people in regards to educational decisions, then they need to listen to them

Linda
August 6, 2012 at 5:21 pm
They are only for parents when they can turn them against public schools and public school teachers. Once they disagree or question, they aren’t that interested anymore.

Reply
John Foster
August 7, 2012 at 8:28 am
Well, I’m not surprised by this. If Emanuel, and Bloomberg and LA’s mayor all seized control of the schools and eliminated the elected school boards—which they did—then why would they want to hear what parents have to say?

Wouldn’t parents be yet one more “obstacle” in their plans to turn our schools into “investment opportunities” for their hedge fund and Wall Street buddies?

The only parents these miscreants want to deal with are those who have been bought off or brainwashed—I used to be part of the latter group. Parents who question their decisions will be ignored, until they (hopefully) go away.

Message To The Mayors: We parents aren’t going anywhere. And we WILL remember…

For original Diane Ravitch post: Why Won’t Rahm Talk to Parents?

Teacher Job Satisfaction Plummets -Survey

Kenzo Shibata, a member of the Chicago Teachers Union, wrote earlier this week in the Huffington Post, that teacher alienation has worsened to the point that one in three teachers is considering quitting the teaching profession in the next five years, and increase over the one in four teachers that was considering leaving in a survey three years ago.

According to a report on a survey commissioned by Met Life last spring, morale among the nation's teachers is at its lowest point in more than 20 years. Also, roughly one in three said they were likely to leave the profession in the next five years. According to the report, just three years ago, the rate was one in four.
Met Life's results did not shock me. I often felt powerless as one teacher, advocating for the supports my students needed to succeed. In my first two years, not a week went by that I didn't consider changing careers and that had nothing to do with my students or their parents -- it was the system.

And read this posting by Valerie Strauss from The Washington Post, August 7, 2012:
Teacher job satisfaction plummets — Survey

This was written by Kevin G. Welner, a professor of education policy and program evaluation in the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and director of the National Education Policy Center. The center is housed at the university’s School of Education and sponsors research, produces policy briefs, and publishes expert third party reviews of think tank reports.

By Kevin G. Welner

It’s not fun to be repeatedly punched in the gut. And we can now quantify how not-fun it is, at least when teachers are the punchees.

Over the past two years of gut-punching, teacher job satisfaction has fallen from 59 percent to 44 percent. That’s according to the annual ­ MetLife Survey of the American Teacher.

While this 15-point plummet is no doubt caused in part by the bad economy and budget cutting, it’s also hard to overlook things like Waiting for Superman, the media deification of Michelle Rhee, and the publishing of flawed “scores” that purport to evaluate teachers based on students’ test results — an offense first committed by the Los Angeles Times and now taken up by the New York Times and other New York papers. Teachers knew these evaluations were unreliable and invalid even before researchers documented those problems.

Similarly, teachers see states and districts implement policies that largely base their performance evaluations on student test scores. These new policies are layered on top of No Child Left Behind and the subsequent years of narrowed curricula and teaching to the test. Teachers have been watching sadly as the sort of engaging learning that attracted them to the profession is increasingly squeezed out. Further, teachers in many states are facing attacks on their collective voice in education policy by anti-union governors such as Walker (Wisconsin), Scott (Florida), Christie (New Jersey), Daniels (Indiana), Kasich (Ohio), and Brewer (Arizona).

While all those governors are Republican, the trashing of teachers has been a bipartisan effort, led by groups that include Democrats for Education Reform and Stand for Children. In fact, President Obama is widely viewed as part of the problem. He will never achieve a Santorum-esque level of anti-public-school rhetoric, but Race to the Top and related policies have continued the drive toward privatization and test-focused instruction. Although the title of a U.S. Department of Education press release from a few weeks ago read “Obama Administration Seeks to Elevate Teaching Profession,” the headline a couple years ago was, “Obama Official Applauds Rhode Island Teacher Firings.”

None of us would want to have our job performance judged on an outcome that we don’t really control. Research suggests that a student’s teacher for a single given school year influences as little as 5 to 10 percent of her or his test-score growth. Sensible policymaking does not leap from “teachers are important” to “teachers can be evaluated as if they are the only thing that’s important.”

Similarly, none of us would want to have our evaluation based on an outcome, like test scores, that we know represents only a fraction of what we do and why we do it. And we wouldn’t want to pursue a good evaluation by doing our job in ways we think unwise or even harmful.

But that’s where teachers now find themselves. Maybe we should feel grateful that their job satisfaction only dropped 15 percentage points.
-0-

Follow The Answer Sheet every day by bookmarking http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet.

By Valerie Strauss | 12:01 AM ET, 03/07/2012

BREAKING: CTU Might Have 90 Percent for a Strike of Chicago Schools; Obama's Weingarten's Damage Control

Organized labor suffered a demoralizing set-back Tuesday with the failure to recall Scott Walker, the viciously anti-labor governor of Wisconsin.

To its south, the inspiring mobilization of a strike authorization vote.  The Chicago Teachers Union has voted this week on whether to strike.  The media have been variously patronizing or damning.  In some instances, there are glimmers of understanding of what teachers there are facing.
And Chicago Public Schools "CEO" [sic] Jean-Claude Brizzard sent a teacher-bashing letter to homes that got one grandparent considering supporting the teachers' strike. See the grandparent's letter in the Chicago Tribune.  Brizzard criticized teachers for not waiting until a July report has been released.  But he is ignoring the fact that holding a vote in the summer impedes the ability to get a strike vote quorum.
Years of teacher bashing, capped with mayor Rahm Emanuel's demand for a ten percent lengthened school day, without an adequate raise, fueled the climate for a strike vote."He created an incentive for them, the causes and conditions for teachers to mobilize in a way they haven't mobilized before," said Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

(CTU President Karen Lewis casts her ballot.)
BREAKING: NBC reports multiple sources reporting that the CTU has as much as 90 percent of vote-participating teachers voting in support of a strike.  Report at NBC. The state government interfered with union autonomy and forced them to get 75 percent support in order to launch a work stoppage.  "He created an incentive for them, the causes and conditions for teachers to mobilize in a way they haven't mobilized before," said Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"He created an incentive for them, the causes and conditions for teachers to mobilize in a way they haven't mobilized before," said Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

 --an Associated Press Report at ABC.
After the release of an official vote count on Monday, we will see if the CTU exceeded the required percentage.
UPDATE:
Substance News, the best source of accurate news and analysis of Chicago education news, reports that American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten made a trip to Chicago to publicly praise mayor Emanuel.
Read the quote to the end. It is a classic case of Orwellian double-speak.

"Whether it's the mayor's infrastructure program here in Chicago, or eventually everything else we're doing around the country, is that when labor and business start working good together on trying to put people back to work with good jobs, when we start building things, it builds hope around the country," Weingarten said. ABC News, which quoted her above, reported that "Mayor Emanuel is in a love fest with the American Federation of Teachers today."

What a nasty distortion of reality. As Jim Vail of Substance News says, Weingarten's trip to Chicago was a mission from the President Barack Obama White House, a trip to do damage control on what is a public relations disaster [the Emanuel war on teachers and the teachers' fight-back against Emanuel and Brizzard] for President Obama, a trip to actually extend more support for the 1% than for the working teachers of the city.

Kudos to Vail, for pointing out that Weingarten never taught a full program for a full year in her life.

California Teachers declare state of emergency: May 13

California Teachers Association is having a State of Emergency day on Friday, May 13.

See this education blog:
http://www.eiaonline.com/intercepts/2011/04/11/california-teachers-association-1-million-state-of-emergency-protests-may-include-road-closures-plus-labor-union-flavored-ice-cream/

And the California Teachers Association website:
http://www.eiaonline.com/intercepts/2011/04/11/california-teachers-association-1-million-state-of-emergency-protests-may-include-road-closures-plus-labor-union-flavored-ice-cream/ .

Teacher Basher Rahm Emanuel Wins Chicago Mayoralty

Rahm Emanuel, former Illinois Congressman, former Barack Obama White House Chief of Staff, had a sweeping victory in Chicago yesterday, February 22, 2011. Emanuel won 55 percent. His nearest rival, former Chicago schools president Gery Chico, won 24 percent. Former Senator Carol Moseley Braun and City Clerk Miguel del Valle both trailed with 9 percent apiece.See this Associated Press reference, "Rahm Emanuel Wins Chicago Mayoral Election."

Will Emanuel continue Arne Duncan's destructive record of weakening public schools? On the eve of Emanuel's election, "The Chicago Sun-Times" ran this story, "Emanuel Backs Crackdown on Teachers."
By this article, the Democratic mayor-elect sounds like a combination of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and District of Columbia Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.

Mayoral front-runner Rahm Emanuel supports curtailing teachers’ right to strike. And if they won’t agree to work longer hours for extra pay, he’ll ask state legislators to mandate it, he said.

“As we have [rules against strikes] for police and firefighters, I would have it for teachers because they provide an essential service,” Emanuel said.

The “Performance Counts” bill the state legislature is considering would severely limit the right of teachers to strike. The Chicago Teachers Union says it would essentially eliminate the right to strike.

There has been no teachers strike in Chicago since 1987.

Emanuel says he supports the package of reforms, which he says will reward high-performing teachers and give principals greater sway to weed out low-performing teachers.

In this era of teacher blaming and budget slashing, this sounds like a tool for eliminating experienced teachers in favor of less experienced, less expensive teachers.

Will Chicago's unions put up a stronger fight against Emanuel than New York City's unions have done with their anti-teacher mayor?

Brockton HS shows that large schools can be strong, keeping older teachers

Brockton (Massachusetts) High School shows that strong schools can be good, keeping older teachers.

Meanwhile, it is in outer-space, compared to much of the rest of America. Rahm Emanuel (Chicago mayoral candidate) and Michael Bloomberg (New York City mayor), now a mysterious, multi-million dollar media campaign to generalize that younger (and the clincher: CHEAPER) teachers are far better than older, veteran (clincher: with SENIORITY SALARIES).
A LARGE SCHOOL, RETAINING ITS OLDER TEACHERS, SUCCESS STORY
Yet, in Massachusetts a heavily blue collar, heavily English as a Second Language, community, Brockton, the academic performance of the student body had been tremendously turned around, to have a much larger percentage of students that have passed the rigourous English.

Brockton High School did not get chopped into several pieces, small schools, small learning communities, whatever cliche you want. (With a 4,000 student body, it is the largest high school in Massachusetts.) It did not turn out its teachers. (And the English test (MCAS) that Massachusetts students must pass is far more rigourous than the infamously dumbed-down New York States regents English test.)

It developed a new intensive program of English skills, and the integration of literacy skills into other subjects, such as science. The principal did not turn out the school's teachers. It solicited contributions of ideas from teachers.
So, as Brockton High turned its performance, it did so without throwing out its veteran teachers. Read about BHS, for example, in this New York Times story.

...this and other stories on "education reform" that pleasantly, did not rest on teacher-bashing, older teacher-bashing, small-school-touting, charter school-touting, were on PBS, "Need to Know" tonight.