As Chicago Teachers Head Toward Strike, Democrats Turn on Their Union
Theresa Moran
| September 7, 2012
With Chicago teachers preparing to strike Monday, unionists say it's a “which
side are you on?” moment for Democrats. But from the looks of
this week's convention, it would seem Democrats have already made their
choice. Photo: CTU.
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Have Democrats abandoned teacher unions in their pursuit of a
corporate-backed education overhaul? From the looks of the Democratic
National Convention, it would seem so.
At the podium, speakers like Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and
former North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt praised the Obama
administration’s willingness to embrace such change, singling out the
controversial Race to the Top program for special attention. The program
requires states to link teacher evaluations to student standardized
test scores and pushes charter schools and ‘turnarounds’—in which at
least 50 percent of teachers are fired—to replace struggling public
schools.
The program fits perfectly with the corporate reform agenda of
destroying job security for teachers, privatizing public schools,
testing everything, and turning whatever can be quantified into a
statistic, no matter how disconnected from the realities of teaching
children.
As he praises corporate reform on the federal level, Emanuel has
fomented a confrontation over education reform in his hometown. The
26,000-member Chicago Teachers Union looks to be heading for a strike
Monday over class size, better funding for school programs and services, fair
pay, and job security.
Observers see the strike as a “which side are you on?” moment for Democrats. On
one side is the teacher union, which says too big class
sizes, too few school services, and too little support for teachers are
the problems. On the other are the corporate-education pushers, who heap blame
on bad teachers.
“There are two distinct constituencies with conflicting goals and we’re going
to highlight that with a strike. You can’t gloss over it
very easily,” says Bill Lamme, a Chicago public high school teacher.
Some Chicago teachers think Obama could not stomach a strike in
his hometown on the eve of the November election and will lean on
Emanuel, his former chief of staff, to settle. Others fear national
Democrats could welcome the chance to look tough by fighting the union.
If the Democratic convention is any indication, their fears may be
warranted.
Parent Tricker
The teacher-bashing at the Democratic convention started
Monday with a pre-release screening of the anti-union drama “Won’t Back
Down,” sponsored by Democrats for Education Reform.
DFER is a political action committee made up of hedge fund
managers seeking investment opportunities in education. The group
supports privatization, vouchers, merit pay, teacher evaluations based
on student test scores, and doing away with teacher tenure. It flaunts
its hostility toward teacher unions.
The film, starring Maggie Gyllenhall and Viola Davis, shows a
mother and a teacher battling an evil teachers union to convert their
struggling public school into a charter through a “parent trigger” law.
While at first blush it sounds like a feel-good tale of community empowerment,
the film has drawn sharp criticism from teacher advocates
for its unfavorable portrayal of urban teachers and their unions.
The film shows “bad teachers” locking students in closets, making personal
phone calls during class, forbidding bathroom breaks, and
refusing to help students after school, citing fictitious “union rules”
that prohibit them from doing so. The union, in turn, is cast as these
teachers’ self-interested protector, with one union official attributing a
made-up quote to teachers union leader Albert Shanker, saying she’ll
start caring about children when they start paying dues.
“I don’t recognize the teachers portrayed in the movie, and I
don’t recognize that union,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the
American Federation of Teachers in a press release last week.
The average viewer would never guess that teachers across the
country work an average of 53 hours per week, planning lessons, talking
to parents, grading papers, and giving struggling students on-on-one
help in addition to their daily classroom duties. In Chicago, the
average number of hours worked is 58, according to a University of
Illinois study.
They’d never guess that teacher unions like the CTU would be
willing to walk out not only for better working conditions, but also in
pursuit of a well-rounded, well-resourced education for their students.
Instead, viewers see lazy teachers who need to be removed and an
obstructionist union standing in the way of making improvements for the
kids.
Despite the mismatch with reality, the Democratic National
Committee showed the film, which also played to a standing ovation at
the Republican National Convention last week. The White House declined
to weigh in on the decision to screen it. Reports say DNC Executive
Director Patrick Gaspard, who spent nine years at SEIU 1199, made the
call to show the film.
The DNC not only signed off on the screening, but some of the
party’s best and brightest joined in on a panel to promote the “parent
trigger” afterward. Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, wunderkind Newark
Mayor Cory Booker, and Antonio Villaraigosa, Los Angeles mayor and
convention chair, joined corporate-education champion Michelle Rhee and
Ben Austin of the California-based astroturf group Parent Revolution for the
discussion.
In fact, Democrats aligned with the corporate education agenda
were instrumental in the US Conference of Mayors’ endorsement of parent
trigger as part of their education platform. Villaraigosa voiced his
support for the measure at a June press conference after the resolution
was passed, saying, “parent trigger is one of a number of tools we need
to achieve the highest standards in our urban schools.”
The real story of parent trigger, however, is not exactly Hollywood material.
Parent trigger laws, in place in seven states, allow for schools
to be gutted of their staff, turned over to private charter operators,
or shut down completely, by a simple majority vote of parents.
Parent Revolution, which gets funding from foundations backed by
Walmart billionaires, is behind the only two attempts thus far to pull
the trigger.
At McKinley Elementary in Compton, outside Los Angeles, the group had already
chosen a company to operate the hypothetical new charter
school when Parent Revolution staffers began canvassing parents with
petitions for “school improvements.”
Parents alleged intimidation and the Compton school board
ultimately rejected the petition due to the lack of a legally required
review process in choosing the charter operator.
When parents at Desert Trails Elementary in Adelanto, California, began
questioning Parent Revolution’s proposed restructuring plans, a
judge ruled that they couldn’t take back their signatures from the
trigger petition. So much for democracy.
In March, a parent trigger bill was introduced in Florida, backed by Parent
Revolution and Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Florida’s Future.
Heavy lobbying by the very parents the legislation’s supporters said it would
empower defeated the bill.
The 330,000-member Florida Parent Teacher Association led a
coalition of parent groups against the bill, including Parents Across
America and Fund Education Now. They alleged that the legislation,
called “parent tricker” by opponents, had nothing to do with empowering
parents and everything to do with privatizing public schools.
Bashing Unions at Home
Watching these Democrats whip the anti-teacher wagon is no surprise to those
who’ve dealt with them back home.
Villaraigosa, a former union organizer with the United Teachers
of Los Angeles, has pulled away from his labor roots to become one of
the corporate education agenda’s most vocal proponents. In a 2010
Huffington Post editorial, he called teacher unions an “unwavering roadblock to
reform.” The L.A.
mayor has also been a huge backer of school privatization, particularly
through the city’s School Choice program that has closed scores of
schools and handed them to private entities. (Teachers, meanwhile, fought
alongside parent and student groups to keep schools in public hands and launch
reform initiatives that met student needs.)
Villaraigosa was an active supporter of the corporate reform
groups’ successful lawsuit that tied L.A. teacher evaluations to student test
scores, going so far as to personally file an amicus brief advocating the
change. Teachers say basing everything on test scores
kills student inquiry and reduces learning to rote memorization and test
practice.
Booker, a rising star in the Democratic Party and 2016
presidential hopeful, sits on Democrats for Education Reform’s advisory
board. He has called teacher tenure “poisonous” and not only supported
Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s sweeping attack on
tenure, but also said it didn’t go far enough. The new law ties the granting of
tenure to student standardized test
scores, but still allows for seniority to be used in the case of
layoffs.
Booker, who’s been a strong proponent of charters in Newark, has
gotten some flak for his ties to hedge fund managers and venture
capitalists. In his first mayoral race, Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital was among
his biggest funders.
Even Democratic Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who’s been
openly skeptical about charter schools, supported an initiative that
gutted seniority rights for teachers in the state. He even went so far as to
say that he’d intended to tackle the issue himself.
Taking a Stand
And of course there’s Rahm Emanuel in Chicago, who has
continued a decades-long push by Democrats in the city to starve schools in
Black and brown neighborhoods of resources, implement test-score
evaluations, close schools and fire staff, and open charters. Lately,
he’s been pushing a longer school day and year, ignoring the many hours
teachers put in after school and at home, and acting like more time—not
resources—will fix what ails public schools.
Chicago teachers have pushed back against Emanuel and have gained ground even
without a settlement, getting the city to create 500 new
teaching positions for understaffed schools, securing recall rights for
recently displaced teachers, and forcing merit pay off the table.
In a report last year, CTU noted that research on merit pay has showed no
benefit to student achievement or in retaining better teachers, and has harmed
trust and collaboration among peers. Merit pay schemes, however, have further
skewed
instruction toward test prep.
Lamme says Democrats know that a defeat of the corporate education agenda in
Chicago could reverberate on the national stage. “They can’t give in too much
and allow for a turning point,” he
said. “They see the stakes like we do. That’s why we’re trying to turn
the tide on these horrible policies.”
http://labornotes.org/2012/09/chicago-teachers-head-toward-strike-democrats-turn-their-union
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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