NEA

The NEA And Our Absurd Education 'Debate'

Jeff Bryant — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:24:14 -0400

Down here on the ground in public schools, what school children, parents, and teachers are experiencing are the first tremors of what will likely be seismic shifts in the reality of our nation's education system. As teacher layoffs start to roll-out in Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and elsewhere in the country, report after report warn us of the massive cutbacks in teaching staff and funding that will severely restrict instructional time for school children, even though "virtually everyone involved in education" thinks this is the exact opposite of what we should be doing.

However, faced with this widespread calamity, people in the lofty circles of government and punditry are less worried about the destruction than they are about the current obsession with supposed innovations such as testing four-year-olds and using reams of bubble tests as a "lever" to lift, believe it or not, "school spirit".

This week's absurd focal point in the education debate shifted back once again to the notion of using standardized test scores to evaluate teachers. In a report from The New York Times on the annual meeting of the National Education Association, the reporter chose to emphasize the news that the largest teachers' union in the Unites States now "affirmed for the first time that evidence of student learning must be considered in the evaluations of school teachers." But, as the Times story quickly pointed out, "the union also made clear that it continued to oppose the use of existing standardized test scores to judge teachers." In other words, while the theory of using student "outputs" to evaluate teachers may be relevant, the fact is that standardized tests currently in use and under development can't deliver on that theory -- which has also been the conclusion of numerous, in-depth studies.

In the current tit-for-tat that characterizes dialogue about our nation's school policy, what appears to be a reasonable conclusion by the NEA was quickly spun by those in favor of so-called reform as a"diversionary tactic", a "meaningless" gesture, and a suck-up to the Democratic Party.

Coincidentally, while these pundits were having their say about the importance of test-based evaluations, the internet exploded with the news of a massive new cheating scandal in Atlanta.

Indeed, no matter what the NEA proposed for teacher evaluations, it probably would have been dismissed as either caving in or flip-flopping. The views of teachers are so frequently either held in contempt or dismissed outright that the education debate has come to resemble this famous skit from Monty Python's Flying Circus in which the comedian Michael Palin earnestly seeks the service of an agency providing arguments. As you watch, consider the hapless Palin to be a teacher trying to have a voice in our current education debate . . .

This really is what the education "debate" has come down to, isn't it? Rather than an exchange of coherent "propositions," what teachers get first is abuse ("bad teachers"), followed by contradiction ("poverty is no excuse"), then complaints about the "budget crisis, until they're just getting beaten on the head. And when those who've been anointed with "authority" attempt to intercede, they accuse educators with legitimate complaints of being"nasty, personal, and petty."

Surely this is no laughing matter. While the nation's public schools head toward the brink, what we're getting from those who should know better is cognitive dissonance: test-based accountability that produces widespread cheating, "miracle" schools whose successes are achieved by getting rid of low-performing students, and "high expectations" that actually influence more students to drop out. While at the same time school budgets are being slashed to the bone. No wonder educators sometimes respond with anger.

But the NEA's resolution on teacher evaluation is not an outburst from "angry teachers." It's an attempt at clarity. And those who claim that it doesn't go far enough need to not only prove that tests which were never designed to evaluate teachers in the first place will somehow miraculously do this, but also explain why, at a time when resources and time for essential instruction is being cut back, we should even be talking about this.

And those who profess to want to"make a difference in the lives of children" need to shift their focus away from this absurd debate about force-feeding public schools with a "basket of reforms" and instead put forward a coherent proposition for how our country can better support and fund the schools our children deserve.

Greedy Troglodytes Attack Teachers

Tula Connell — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:45:54 -0400

What is it about teachers that reactionaries don't like?

Maybe it's because an educated electorate poses a threat to those who seek to control the public—"Danger: Educated Union Member" is one of our favorite phrases—and so teachers pose an easy target for the antediluvians among us. (Remember John Stossel's ABC trash piece, "Stupid in America"?).

The success of teachers' unions also draws particular ire from the anti-education crowd.

This week, you may have seen full-page ads in USA Today or teevee spots on CNN and Fox attacking teachers. The ads are part of a $1 million advertising assault on teachers' unions launched days ago.

Two questions emerge.

Who would spend this amount of money trashing teachers? And who stands to make tons of money off this campaign?

The second question is the simplest to answer. The egregiously misnamed Center for Union Facts is the money-making entity pushing the campaign. The organization is another front group by sleaze propagandist Richard Berman. Among Berman’s list of hatchet jobs is a PR campaign through his American Beverage Institute to slam Mothers Against Drunk Driving on behalf of the alcohol industry. Via the Center for Consumer Freedom, Berman wielded a literally toxic campaign for the tuna industry to encourage pregnant women to eat tuna—never mind the mercury. (AFT's NCLBlog also points out Berman's attacks on Robert Redford here.)

Berman regularly reproduces organizations with innocuous-sounding names to perpetrate the opposite of what they seem.

As a result, Berman makes money. Lots of it. He runs five campaigns out of his offices in Washington, D.C., with backers paying "huge fees" to his lobbying firm, according to the Union Busting Network at the non-profit American Rights at Work. Citing USA Today, American Rights at Work notes Berman's company has 28 employees and earns $10 million a year, but "only Berman and his bookkeeper wife" know how much of the $10 million ends up in their own pockets. Or as the Las Vegas Sun puts it:

[Berman] never discloses his financial backers, allowing large, mainstream companies to fund him without having to associate their brand names with his sharp-elbowed approach.

At the Conservative Leadership Conference in Nevada last October, the Las Vegas Sun notes that when Berman described the tactics behind his teacher attack campaign, he approvingly quoted mobster Al Capone: “You can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word.”

In Ohio, where Berman is aiming his "gun" at the Columbus Education Association, the association sums up his mission:

Not enough Columbus City teachers have been fired between the 2003–04 and 2006–07 school years to satisfy the Center For Union Facts. The anti-labor group posits that it is too easy for many Columbus City School teachers to obtain a continuing contract (known as tenure in other states) and they are therefore able to escape the accountability and scrutiny of the evaluation process.

Berman's sights clearly are off. Columbus was one of the first National Education Association (NEA) locals to host a Peer Assistance and Review Program, winning a Saturn Award for the program and becoming a centerpiece in former NEA President Bob Chase’s concept of “New Unionism." The program involves intensive hands-on training, conferences, evaluation and mentoring to ensure the highest skill levels among teachers. Further, as Columbus Education Association President Rhonda Johnson stated:

I find it highly ironic, that on the day that this smear campaign begins, the [Peer Assistance and Review Program] panel is meeting to consider whether to make a recommendation to the Superintendent to non-renew 4 intern teachers and to receive reports on three experienced teachers whose [Peer Assistance Review] consulting teachers have grave concerns about their classroom performance.

AFT President Ed McElroy describes Berman as "a shameless lobbyist who has shilled for pesticide, alcohol and tobacco companies."

Berman has a record of using hidden funders to attack groups that contribute a great deal to society. Now, he is coming after teachers at a time when most Americans support education and want to make improving education a top national priority.

The groups funding Berman have lots of money to spend. As part of his teacher attack campaign, he's inviting nominations for a contest to determine the nation's worst unionized teachers. The "winners" will be offered $10,000 each if they permanently resign or retire from any career in education—if they sign a release agreeing to have their name and the reasons for their selection published by the group.

This leads us back to the first question: Who would spend this amount of money trashing teachers?

Behind Berman's Center for Union Mis-Facts, are an array of organizations, such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that have an ideological and pecuniary axe to grind. They hate unions and more importantly, the workers who join together in unions to assert their rights as human beings are entitled to decent wages, affordable health coverage and retirement security.

The Las Vegas Sun puts his attack on teachers unions in perspective, saying it is "really a small front in a much bigger battle over the future of the labor movement and its role in American politics."

It’s not clear Berman cares at all about education policy. His real target is the broader labor movement offers profiles of anti-union organizations with details on their lobbying, litigation and media outreach, as well as their connections to each other.

The Sun article goes on:

If the public doesn’t trust the teachers unions, he reasons, surely they won’t trust steel workers or other unions that don’t have such a seemingly beneficent pedigree.

Berman wants lots of money and will do what it takes to keep the feeding at the pig trough. Those paying him to do their dirty work don't want us, as individuals, joining together to face the boss, the Big Business employer, the corporate conglomeration that profits when we don't challenge a wage system that means we must work two and three jobs to support our families, or go without prescription medication so we can pay the rent.

Workers in unions challenge that ideological mindset every day. And that's why Berman is being paid millions to go after us.

This is a crosspost from Firedoglake.