Hypocrisy Again

Walt Gardner in his Reality Check blog takes the "backlash" to task for hammering teachers for their "cushy" jobs. If teaching is such a great job, why is there a 50% dropout rate among beginning teachers?

The backlash should be against millionaires and billionaires who brought us the "Great Recession."

Walt says it best. Hypocrisy of Education Free Marketeers:

The rolling demonstrations that began in Wisconsin over collective bargaining rights for public sector unions have been the subject of exhaustive coverage by the media. But there's one aspect that so far has escaped their examination: The reaction to the protests by supporters of free markets exposes the basic contradiction of their position.

The essence of the backlash is that in the Great Recession teachers have it too good at a time when employees in the private sector have it very bad. They get Cadillac pensions, enjoy lavish benefits, have summers off, go home at 3:00, and receive substantial salaries.

If all of these things are true, then why don't these critics become teachers? After all, if teaching is such a sweet deal, then in a free market it should be attracting overwhelming numbers of applicants. That's how the law of supply and demand works. It's the basis for claiming that competition between schools and parental choice will result in good schools thriving and bad schools closing.

These free marketeers, however, engage in selective perception. They could have become teachers if teaching were the plum job they imagine. Instead, they chose to work in the private sector for reasons known only to themselves. No one forced them to follow that route. But rather than looking inward, they misdirect their anger and frustration at teachers, who fought for what they have over the decades through their unions. If unions are as powerful as they maintain, then why don't they form their own unions and fight for similar benefits?

The fact is that these critics would be shellshocked if they were to become teachers. They would quickly find out that their conception of teaching is a fantasy. It is damn hard work that nothing in their years of experience in business every prepared them for. Otherwise, why would teacher turnover be so high? No business reports a 50 percent churn rate in personnel in five years. In some urban districts, the time frame is three years, according to a 2006 study by the Haberman Educational Foundation. Even Teach for America, which recruits only the elite of the elite, can hold on to only 17 percent of its graduates beyond their two-year commitment.

Teaching is neither for missionaries nor mercenaries. It is a career for those who understand from the outset the sacrifices and payoffs. Whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages is a personal decision. But remember that no career is without tradeoffs. That's something for critics of the demonstrations to bear in mind.

By the way, teaching is a great job...if you have the patience, intelligence, and perseverance to do it well. The rewards are priceless. That's why I did it for 35 years.

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Support Unions and Collective Bargaining

Mr. Talk at Accountable Talk brought this video to our attention. It's a video of Candidate Obama...the same one who said this about NCLB:

Don't label a school as failing one day and then throw your hands up and walk away from it the next. Don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend too much of a year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles in a standardized test...You didn't devote your lives to testing. You devoted it to teaching, and teaching is what you should be allowed to do...

In the following video, then Senator Obama talked about the rights of American workers to collectively bargain...the very right that is being threatened by state legislatures and governors around the country. As President, Mr. Obama has come down, softly, on the side of the workers...but we haven't heard anything from him since the first day of the Wisconsin situation. Listen to what he said as a candidate...

"And understand this, if American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I'm in the white house I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I'll walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America, because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner." -- Barack Obama, Spartanburg SC, 11/3/07

This man...this candidate would get my vote. Where is he?

Mr Talk had this to say to the President.

Mr. President, we can't wait for you to find that pair of comfortable shoes. In fact, there's no need for you to picket for hours on end--teachers and other union members will do that. But if you would just go to Wisconsin and stand with the picketers for one minute--one minute--and voice this same kind of support for collective bargaining that you promised us as a candidate, you would change the game immediately.

This action doesn't require 60 votes. It doesn't force you to choose between extending the Bush tax cuts or extending unemployment benefits. So there's no excuse not to live up to your promise. All you have to do is stand up and say a few words.

And you are good at words. Now let's see some action.

It's time that the President puts his political money where his mouth is.

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It's Spreading

The Main Street Movement is spreading. In Indiana House Democrats have left the state -- most joining Wisconsin's Democrats in Illinois -- to prevent the passage of "worker unfriendly" bills.

Both Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meier have blogged about Wisconsin on their shared Bridging Differences blog.

Failing Schools has also stepped in writing about Due Process, one of the rights that teachers have been asked to give up as a "Reform."

The voices are finally getting louder all over the country -- Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, California, Colorado, Idaho, Georgia, Montana, and Washington. It's about time, too.

The news from Wisconsin tells it all. The unions have agreed to the monetary demands made by the Governor, but that's not enough. Governor Walker won't back off of the demand that collective bargaining be eliminated. It's not just the budget, despite what the governor has said. His drive to "bust the union" is now apparent. He has threatened to lay off workers unless the Democrats return and do his bidding. He, like his colleagues in other states, is a bully, determined to get his way no matter what the cost.

When will teachers stand up?

Today...now. Finally.

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Diane Ravitch...Follow Up

Diane Ravitch has an opinion article on CNN today.

Why America's teachers are enraged

(CNN) -- Thousands of teachers, nurses, firefighters and other public sector workers have camped out at the Wisconsin Capitol, protesting Republican Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to reduce their take-home pay -- by increasing their contribution to their pension plans and health care benefits -- and restrict their collective bargaining rights.

Republicans control the state Legislature, and initially it seemed certain that Walker's proposal would pass easily. But then the Democrats in the Legislature went into hiding, leaving that body one vote shy of a quorum. As of this writing, the Legislature was at a standstill as state police searched high and low for the missing lawmakers.

Like other conservative Republican governors, including Chris Christie of New Jersey, John Kasich of Ohio, Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Rick Scott of Florida, the Wisconsin governor wants to sap the power of public employee unions, especially the teachers' union, since public education is the single biggest expenditure for every state.

Public schools in Madison and a dozen other districts in Wisconsin closed as teachers joined the protest. Although Walker claims he was forced to impose cutbacks because the state is broke, teachers noticed that he offered generous tax breaks to businesses that were equivalent to the value of their givebacks.

The uprising in Madison is symptomatic of a simmering rage among the nation's teachers. They have grown angry and demoralized over the past two years as attacks on their profession escalated.

The much-publicized film "Waiting for 'Superman'" made the specious claim that "bad teachers" caused low student test scores. A Newsweek cover last year proposed that the key to saving American education was firing bad teachers.

Teachers across the nation reacted with alarm when the leaders of the Central Falls district in Rhode Island threatened to fire the entire staff of the small town's only high school. What got their attention was that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama thought this was a fine idea, even though no one at the high school had been evaluated.

The Obama administration's Race to the Top program intensified the demonizing of teachers, because it encouraged states to evaluate teachers in relation to student scores. There are many reasons why students do well or poorly on tests, and teachers felt they were being unfairly blamed when students got low scores, while the crucial role of families and the students themselves was overlooked.

Teachers' despair deepened last August when The Los Angeles Times rated 6,000 teachers in Los Angeles as effective or ineffective, based on their students' test scores, and posted these ratings online. Testing experts warn that such ratings are likely to be both inaccurate and unstable, but the Times stood by its analysis.

Now conservative governors and mayors want to abolish teachers' right to due process, their seniority, and -- in some states -- their collective bargaining rights. Right-to-work states do not have higher scores than states with strong unions. Actually, the states with the highest performance on national tests are Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Vermont, and New Hampshire, where teachers belong to unions that bargain collectively for their members.

Unions actively lobby to increase education funding and reduce class size, so conservative governors who want to slash education spending feel the need to reduce their clout. This silences the best organized opposition to education cuts.

There has recently been a national furor about school reform. One must wonder how it is possible to talk of improving schools while cutting funding, demoralizing teachers, cutting scholarships to college, and increasing class sizes.

The real story in Madison is not just about unions trying to protect their members' hard-won rights. It is about teachers who are fed up with attacks on their profession. A large group of National Board Certified teachers -- teachers from many states who have passed rigorous examinations by an independent national board -- is organizing a march on Washington in July. The events in Madison are sure to multiply their numbers.

As the attacks on teachers increase and as layoffs grow, there are likely to be more protests like the one that has mobilized teachers and their allies and immobilized the Wisconsin Legislature.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Diane Ravitch.

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