So, what have unions ever done for us?

Help Wanted

I retired after teaching for 35 years. If I were starting out again would I do the same thing over? Would I go back to school after spending a few years in the world of retail music to become a teacher? What if this, by P.L. Thomas at Schools Matter, was the job description...

Wanted: 21st Century Teachers

U.S. Department of Miseducation

Wanted: 21st century teachers for public education in the U.S.

Experience: N/A

Education: undergraduate degree (no education degrees considered)

Certification: N/A

Job Description: Teachers will be required to implement Common Core Curriculum in order to prepare students for the state and national tests administered each academic year. Teachers will be assigned 40 students per class. Teacher benefits will not include due process or academic freedom, and each year the bottom 25% of teachers will be dismissed.

Compensation: Teachers will receive a minimum base salary based on working 3/4 of a year and determined by each state and then awarded merit pay based on the outcome of student test scores. Those test scores will rank all teachers' effectiveness and determine the bottom quartile to be dismissed each year.

Who Should Apply: The best and brightest who seek to work in a competitive environment and want a rewarding profession.

I don't know if I would have left the music business to become a teacher, or, having spent all the time in school working on a teaching degree and license, Master's degree, computer and reading specializations and Reading Recovery certification, I would have stayed.

A career in education was good for me. I learned a lot about myself and the struggles I had as a student. I hope I did some good over the length of my career. I hope that my understanding of what it meant to be a struggling learner gave some encouragement to those who were struggling. I hope that I helped students find their way to success. Truthfully, though, I'm not sure I would do it again.

How will we get the best and the brightest when we, as a nation, tell our children that being a teacher is not worthy of decent working conditions? Which best and brightest scientist will give up a job in the private sector for the frustrations and the disrespect that accompany teaching chemistry or physics to teenagers? Which best and brightest journalist will give up the success and stability of a steady job at a magazine or newspaper for the day to day struggle of trying to teach 8 year olds to read and write...knowing that their job depends on the ability of the children to parrot back the right answers on a multiple choice test? Who is going to choose special education when their job depends on student test scores? Who is going to choose to teach in high poverty areas where their job depends on how children who are hungry, or tired, or living on the street do on a test?

Where are the best and brightest going to come from and why would they choose teaching in America's public schools?

Maybe there will be young people who, despite the low pay, weakened employee position, and public disrespect, still want to capture the joy of learning and pass it on. Maybe some of the best and the brightest will give up solid salaries and support for test prep and long, unacknowledged hours of planning and grading. Maybe someone will be able to work around the test-insanity and push towards privatization that's captured the country and feel success helping one student at a time learn to read, write or cipher.

Wouldn't it be better to attract young, capable teaching candidates with good working conditions, and stability so half of them won't quit in the first five years? Wouldn't it be better to make a career in education stable enough so people will stay, gain experience and be around to mentor new teachers? If we want the best and brightest teachers we need to make the career more appealing...not less.

Indiana DOE Gives Public Schools Away

The Indiana State Department of Education proposed that the state take over four high schools and one middle school in Gary and Indianapolis. By "state takeover" the DOE means that the schools will be run by private companies and eventually become charters. The superintendent of Indianapolis schools has threatened a lawsuit.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett said he had mixed emotions in asking the State Board of Education to approve the takeover of a Gary high school and three Indianapolis high schools and a middle school. But he said the step is necessary for the students’ sake. The schools have been on academic probation for five years because of poor test scores.

“This is not about blame, this is about the future,” Bennett said at a news conference in Indianapolis. “Our intent is to use everything we have in this state to restore these schools to what they should be for the students in these communities.”

The state intends to use "everything" they have for the schools? Does that include restoring the funding cuts passed by the legislature and signed by the governor? Do we have to go through the list again? Superintendent Bennett, Governor Daniels, State School Board...listen carefully please:

1. Test scores should not determine the success or failure of a school, but if you're going to use test scores remember that the most reliable determiner of test success is family income. It's poverty -- a failed society, a failed economy...not a failed school.

2. Charter schools do NOT perform better than regular public schools.

3. Replacing staffs and administrators does not improve schools.

May I suggest that the state follow the lead of the world's education leaders, Finland for example. Reduce our poverty level to that of Finland's (or most of the other industrialized nations of the world) and we will have solved the main problem.

When students in Finnish schools have academic problems are the schools closed? Are the teachers fired? Are the unions dismantled? Are the administrators shuffled? No. The students are given more support. The schools are given more support. Teachers who are having trouble are given support. When they need help they are helped. The entire system benefits.

Are we serious about helping students or are we just manipulating the system to increase privatization of our school system?

In Indiana this year, the legislature passed laws which include a voucher program, increased charters and various things to weaken teachers and their unions, none of which help students and most of which suck money away from the public schools and into the coffers of private corporations or parochial schools.

In 'Comprehensive' school reform? Not without preschool, Karen Francisco, a blogger for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette wrote;

...charter school supporters got what they wanted by keeping quiet about the millions in public school support being siphoned off to parochial schools through vouchers.

She was speaking about the fact that Indiana doesn't do a very good job of supporting preschools, another proven method of helping students, and the charters, private and parochial schools are going to have to deal with children who come to school with deficits...just like the traditional public schools.

The point is, however, that closing schools, busting unions, and pushing vouchers and charters is not about student success. It's about taking the schools of Indiana (and elsewhere) out of the hands of the public and putting them into the hands of corporate "reformers."

Mirror of the National Character: The Nation's AYP

"A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." ~ Mahatma Ghandi

Corporate and political critics of the nation's public schools often state that it's the responsibility of schools to prepare our children to compete in a global economy. As true as that might be, it's equally true that the responsibility lies with the government...with parents...with all of society and with each of us individually. It is disingenuous to blame public schools, public school teachers, and teachers unions for the entirety of the problem. In addition to improving curriculum and instruction in our public schools we, as a nation, also need to attack the most important factor in low school achievement: Childhood poverty.

The case against poverty has been made over and over again. In Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success, David Berliner of Arizona State University, wrote

As wonderful as some teachers and schools are, most cannot eliminate inequalities that have their roots outside their doors and that influence events within them. The accountability system associated with NCLB is fatally flawed because it makes schools accountable for achievement without regard for factors over which schools have little control. In part, for this reason, NCLB is failing to show reductions in the achievement gaps on which it is focused. A broader, bolder approach to school improvement is indeed required. It would begin by a reasonable level of societal accountability for children’s physical and mental health and safety.

Berliner lists 11 strategies which would do more to close achievement gaps that just focusing on schools. The gaps, he writes,

might shrink more readily if we spent our nation’s precious resources on such strategies...

The strategies are:

• Reduce the rate of low birth weight children among African Americans,
• Reduce drug and alcohol abuse,
• Reduce pollutants in our cites and move people away from toxic sites,
• Provide universal and free medical care for all citizens,
• Insure that no one suffers from food insecurity,
• Reduce the rates of family violence in low-income households,
• Improve mental health services among the poor,
• More equitably distribute low-income housing throughout communities,
• Reduce both the mobility and absenteeism rates of children,
• Provide high-quality preschools for all children, and
• Provide summer programs for the poor to reduce summer losses in their academic achievement.

"The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children." ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

P.L. Thomas, at Schools Matter, wrote in his latest blog entry, Childhood Well-Being: A Mirror of the American Character that

...we mask and avoid ascribing accountability for childhood poverty to the powerful in the U.S., we also maintain a Utopian claim that public education can and will eradicate that poverty if we simply increase standards, find the right tests, weed out bad teachers and replace them with elite teachers, and eradicate the influence of teachers’ unions.

Thomas continues, citing statistics comparing us to other "rich" nations.

• According to a study for UNICEF from 2007, the U.S. ranks 20th out of 21 industrialized countries in child well-being.
• The U.S. fares poorly in income equity when compared to other countries: “To no one's surprise, the ratio between rich (households in the top 10% of the income distribution) and poor (those in the bottom 10%) is considerably larger in the US than in any other rich democracy.”

The way we treat our children is, as Thomas' title suggests, a mirror of our national character. With nearly 25% of our children living in poverty the method we have chosen to deal with this is to withdraw services for the poor, cut school funding, and allow the rich to increase the percentage of national wealth they hold.

Schools don't operate in a vacuum. The outside world has its impact. Until our nation decides to deal with the growing economic inequities between rich and poor and the level of poverty in our society, the achievement gaps will continue to plague our schools. Harping politicians may get votes by blaming schools, teachers and teachers unions, but nothing will erase the fact that teachers and schools alone can't make up for all the ills of society.

"...the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children..." ~ Hubert H. Humphrey

~~~~~

I strongly recommend Thomas' post, Childhood Well-Being: A Mirror of the American Character, and the included references and links.

Corridor of Shame - a documentary about the neglect of South Carolina's Rural Schools.
A 60 Minutes piece about children in poverty
The Children's Defense Fund's State of America's Children® 2011 Report
Kid's Count 2011

And at the end he includes a list of Recommended readings...

Recommended:

“Poverty. Just Say It,” truthout
“One in Four California Families Can't Afford Food for Their Kids,” New America Media
“Children in Poverty: How Are Kids in Your State Faring?” PBS Newshour
“Class Warfare: Fact checking pages 1 through 100”
“Poverty and education reform—and those caught in the middle,” The Hechinger Report
“Americans Don't Realize Just How Badly We're Getting Screwed by the Top 0.1 Percent Hoarding the Country's Wealth,” AlterNet
“Children are hidden victims of the economic crisis, report says,” LA Times
“What No School Can Do,” James Traub
“Poverty worsens, and children are hit hardest,” The Tennessean
“Taxing the Poor”
Summer 2011 Issue of PATHWAYS: A magazine on poverty, inequality, and social policy
“On Turning Poverty Into an American Crime,” truthout
James Baldwin on Education