Teachers as a whole are far ahead of their union leadership on educational policy. Union leaders may complain (not the AFT to any great degree) about layoffs and firings, but they shrug their shoulders when it comes to actually doing something about unfair treatment. Fact is, collective bargaining is weaker than it has ever been; strikes are unthinkable now. Thirty years ago teachers were striking in my district for fair pay and benefits. The last strike ended in the eighties. Young, inexperienced teachers take over positions of leadership in the union and are anything but militant--preferring to play footsie with administration rather than confronting it over cutbacks and layoffs. In the end, a strike is not just about teachers getting a fair shake; it is about improving schools and the educational environment. I would like nothing more than to see all union teachers in public schools stage a walkout to protest Obama's education policy. Somebody has to wake up the American population to the injustices that are being perpetrated here.

This is Obama's version of "shock and awe" on teachers across the country. If teachers fail to fight back now, they better prepare for "charter schools" as the new normal and predominant type of school.

Reagan did much the same thing when he busted up the Air Traffic Controllers and other Government unions.

Obama seems intent on busting up the teachers Unions with so many "surplused" they will "compete" for the same job at ever lower pay in an economy that does not offer much in the way of options.

In California Government workers are being paid minimum wage. The Government is one of the last bastions of Unions and it looks like the powers that be want to break them.

First they came for Acorn...

Then they came for the "illegal" aliens (Arizona state precedent)...

Then they came for the teachers/unions...

The pattern is so deeply entrenched. Law of the jungle meets corporate capitalism without conscience, and nothing is outside the realm of being sold-out to the highest bidders with nary a thought for tomorrow.

This article made me cry. It just does not seem that so much can be allowed to go so wrongly in such little time... when EVERY thing is at stake NOW! The rush into the abyss accelerates...

Meanwhile the right is talking Eye of Newt next. I could swear this guy won his past life bona fides as one of the executioners at the Inquisition. He still LOOKS the part, the only thing missing is the right wig.

Unions are a menace to society. Teachers should mind their own business and let Obama do what he wants. Hey kids, how bout some vouchers for the school of your choice? Varmit fascist commie unions !

"Today our members face the most anti-educator, anti-union, anti-student environment I have ever experienced." This is an extraordinary statement. Not only is it true, but it highlights that President Obama is more anti-teacher than was President Bush, who introduced the anti-teacher No Child Left Behind."

By golly, more and more people are figuring out this guy and his Congress. Perhaps these same folks will begin to grasp what is really going on and where we are being led.

If they thought the rejection of Bush was big, the rejection of Obama and his policies will make Bush's rejection look Lilliputian

Weak rhetoric is no substitute for strong action. Teachers are not fighters they are talkers. Soon they will be forced by fear into silence. Fear of the absence of money leads to capitulation. Capitulation leads to the further absence of money. Self damnation disguised by rationalization is double damnation. This is what educational collapse looks like.

The same old 'go to a third party' crap. As if any wins in the next ten years by any third parties could effect any real change. That shows a complete foolishness. And also a left of center liberal ideology of still trying to control the rabble and masses.
Things are so goddamn horribly bad....with a government that has killed one million iraq's if not more....and completely corporate controlled.....I KNOW let's spend ten years trying to get a third party together to win one municipal election here....one congress seat there....
and then put a shitload of time and money in a presidential race to get 5 or 10 million votes.
my god.
you 'progressives' are all goddamn insane. The media is completely corporate controlled, and even with say 20 'left members' of congress you COULD NOT ACCOMPLISH ONE THING.
jesus wake up.

the only way the capitalist democracies have EVER changed was cuz of a non ballot box bottom up force from the left. That's called a peoples' movement via radical unions (not the AFL of SEIU of course)...and community fight back...and general strikes.
it amazes me....even in this time of absolute crises that you 'progressives'....can write such bleary eyed stupid shit.
take responsibility for what your goddamn govt does and at least 'attempt' to attack it.
rather than be all nicey nice and just try to join it...in some facile attempt at 'co governing'.
disgusting. All the blood on your hands.....and you still won't get angry!!!!!

Way ahead of you, Shamus. I never believed Obama was for teachers simply because he said so in his debates. I remember him being asked how he differed as a candidate from his party line. He proudly boasted that he believed in charter schools. From then on, I knew that he was not serious about supporting public education, that he was planning on towing the corporate line and that he was going to do a better job of destroying public education than Bush. It was all over before it even got started.

To a certain degree the AFT and NEA brought this on by not standing up to Bush's joke of education reform called NCLB. When I first started teaching I was a member of the NEA mainly for the liability insurance. Although they do fight the idiotic legislation (mainly at the state level) proposed by those who wish to install a christian fundamentalism in our schools, the NEA joined the "standards" bandwagon to the detriment of education and for the most part did not raise much of a voice against NCLB. As time went on I decided that they were not really protecting the students' interests as much as the NEA's own interest so I quit being a member.

As I have said before on CD the problem is the concept of "standards" and attempting a logical impossibility by trying to "measure" student learning and teacher performance. See Noel Wilson's "Education Standards and the Problem of Error" for an indisputable renunciation of standards and attempts to measure in education. (http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577) Until all realize the inherent harms, injustices, and the terror involved in standards and measurements in education we will be pissing in the wind trying to effect positive changes in public education. A quality cannot logically be quantified and learning and teaching come under the logical category of quality. To use a false concept as the base or root of policy is the same as a house of cards, a potemkin village, or a foundation in sand in an earthquake zone. It cannot hold up to scrutiny.

All who are involved in education from Arne Duncan and Obama to board members and other politicians voting on school issues to administrators, teachers and parents should be required to read and understand what Wilson has explained. Then we might actually make some "real" progress in educating students. Until then all attempts at public education changes based in standards and measurement will cause great harm to those whom we should be serving the most-the children/students. Not to mention the harm caused to the teachers through policies like NCLB and RTTT (yes, I thought I smelled a rat-apologies to the rat).

OYE

The teachers and their union needs to do more than oppose the turning of education into an industrial productivity process. To oppose the easy sloganeering of charter schools, and the penalizing of children from low socio-economic status, they need to have a politically saleable summary slogan for their own vision of what an education system should do.

Without a core of alternative articulated values to rally around, and representation for the wider context in which education takes place, education will be rolled over. Score based evaluation, to be taken seriously as a scientific hypothesis, must have a valid control group. In order to prove that a teacher is at fault for low scores, the strudents and environment of high score achieving and low score achieving teachers need to be swapped, and thus demonstrate that scores move with the teacher, and not the teaching environment. The best way to improve the average education, should be to assign the best teachers to the lowest scoring students. If this does not improve results, then their is little teacher related meaning to the tests. Without proper accounting of all environment, historical and student factors, no test score can have absolute meaning about teacher performance.

The teachers and their union needs to do more than oppose the turning of education into an industrial productivity process. To oppose the easy sloganeering of charter schools, and the penalizing of children from low socio-economic status, they need to have a politically saleable summary slogan for their own vision of what an education system should do.

Without a core of alternative articulated values to rally around, and representation for the wider context in which education takes place, education will be rolled over. Score based evaluation, to be taken seriously as a scientific hypothesis, must have a valid control group. In order to prove that a teacher is at fault for low scores, the strudents and environment of high score achieving and low score achieving teachers need to be swapped, and thus demonstrate that scores move with the teacher, and not the teaching environment. The best way to improve the average education, should be to assign the best teachers to the lowest scoring students. If this does not improve results, then their is little teacher related meaning to the tests. Without proper accounting of all environment, historical and student factors, no test score can have absolute meaning about teacher performance, or about the relevance of education to the small focus of tests.

President Obama is an odd dude. He is supposed to be very intelligent, but he does not know much. He does not know anything about education and his own experience was atypical of most Americans. So he depends on the people he has put in charge to tell him what to do. We've seen the sad effects of the economic/financial team he has chosen. And he has Arne Duncan as Sec of Education who champions charter schools.

As an educator with some experience with charter school, one of the few virtues of charters is the ability to design an educational program at the school level easier than in traditional public school organized into a larger district. So there is greater opportunity (at least in theory) to diversity the program to better meet student needs But the development of national/state curricula tied to standardized tests pushes uniformity in learning not diversity. Tying teacher job performance evaluations to student performance on tests also stifles development of the kinds of creative teaching needed to meet the needs of a wide range of students.

In my experience, the most successful charter schools are ones where there is a significant input of funds from the parents of the kids that attend over and above the public dollars supplied. Failure of charter schools is often tied to a lack of funds/the schools can't survive on public funds alone. They are inviting corporatization and the end of the public school system.

"Rank and file teachers have already quit the Obama administration, and by extension the Democrats as a whole"

I'm not impressed. Fastforward to this same point in the next political cycle, after the honeymoon with the next Demok in sheep's clothing ends in mangled limbs and a limping stampede to the divorce court. Someone needs to suggest to these people that they augment their gentle spirits with torches and pitchforks.

So the teachers are finding out it's their turn. "THEN THEY CAME for me and by that time no one was left to speak up."

Unions have been suffering from Stockholm Syndrome for at least two decades. Year after year, the Democrats in Congress and the White House have crafted and supported policy after policy, taxpayer-financed incentive programs, and treaties that have shipped millions of jobs out of America (and by extension, put substantial downward pressure on pay for jobs that remain here). Yet the unions won't fight back. They're satisfied with "card check" as bait, and keep on voting party line instead of for the needs of workers.

And now the teachers, perhaps on average the best educated of all unionized workers, are finding out it's their turn. Yet even they will not rear on their hind legs and bare teeth. If you get them off the podium for a moment, the answer will be the same one you always hear: if we bail out on the Democrats, the Republicans will win. Well, news flash, teachers. You're finding out what people as educated as you should have seen 20 years ago (since you're all about critical thinking and against those rote-learning-oriented tests, right?). When Democrats lose, Republicans win and implement anti-union policies. But when Democrats win, Democrats implement anti-union policies. Wherein lies the logic of your specific concern? Where is your advocacy for your own membership? Isn't that your mission?

I am fed up to death with the "third parties aren't viable" crap. They're not viable because people would rather be treated like crap than vote in their own interests. It's not just those righties in Kansas who vote against their own interests -- at least they have their ignorance and superstition to explain their malleability. You teachers are always reminding us you have master's degrees. You have degrees in history, literature, arts, education. What is your excuse.

Bail out. Build a new party. No, you won't win the first time. And yes, the Democrats will lose, which they usually do anyway, even with your help, and given their policy record, it sucks for you even when they win. When they lose, decisions will have to be made by other interest groups under their losing umbrella -- do they struggle to enforce party unity, even though that party is now decisively losing, or do they bail out and support the new party, and let the centrists join the Republicans?

Third parties are only unviable in direct proportion to the degree to which progressive interest groups surrender their interests. Unions don't stick with the Democrats because third parties aren't viable -- third parties aren't viable because the unions stick with the Democrats. And the Democrats don't stick with the unions. So what's it going to take to wake up union leaders? Can the well-educated teachers (who also have the benefit of 190 days a year not in the office to give towards organizing work, and the ability to retire at 53 with 90% salary and health benefits to become candidates and full-time organizers) take the lead?

I am absolutely shocked every time I listen to or read vicious comments from the President's or any anti-teacher person. It breaks my heart to hear a president and secretary of education "congratulate" a principal FOR FIRING NOT HIRING teachers especially during this horrific unemployment. To find pleasure in firing teachers is so sick, like a Stalinist dictator. Teachers will always hold a special place in our society since they care for our children like 2nd parents from ages 3 to 18.
If teachers were primarily men, would they talk about teachers so despicably? It is sexist to target middle-aged women at a time in their lives when starting another career is difficult at best. We know teachers work way beyond 8 to 5, at home and on weekends. Why teachers? Because you have a union which negotiates your employment contracts. Just like CEOs and senior management have lawyers to represent them, all workers should have the right to democracy and representation. Teachers are not responsible for the genetic makeup or personal environment of each student. Plus memorization is the worst method to "learn" (for military and clerk jobs--not the best you can be)?. Instead of putting money into turning around poor neighborhoods, focusing on free education, jobs, social services, getting wages up to the 2010 real wage of $65,000, stop arresting brown and black parents for "just being" so some private prison can make quota and have their stock can go up-- they blame teachers. How ill-mannered and cruel. What happened to this country? We didn't vote for any of this nor a policy of "neoiberaliism" which is being distributed in Euro countries all with the deficits in the same ranges all told to cut, cut based on a deficit cranked up by the same banks. Why are they, the Pilgrim Society or whoever runs the country after the 1963 coup. trying to destroy us, our values and the future? And stop insulting us! Keep our schools Public==we the People own them for almost 100 years!
This is really about money. The rich can pool their money together and invest in a charter and make an excellent return in ten years. The schools belong to the people--not private, unaccountable, slave driving corporations. The elites refer to U.S. workers as wage slaves, peasants and serfs. Our friends in Europe feel sorry for us all having these fascist administrations. Continue to fight, fight, fight and don't let this charter school corporate guy I heard on an interview get his wish of having teachers "young and female, from prep school, with that great energy.' --- That's sexist and seeks only the "privileged
as teachers. God Help Us.