The Big Lies (Part Three)

Core of Knowledge." These are, of course, not policies but advertising slogans designed to convince you that those in power have your best intentions in mind. I'm here, again, to remind you, that maybe they don't. Part One  Part Two 

Unions make no sense for "Professional" teachers

In 1962 the doctors in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan went on strike for over three weeks in an attempt to block the introduction of Universal Health Insurance. Though the strike failed when the government held firm and brought in doctors from Britain to staff clinics and hospitals, the threat of this type of labor action was used repeatedly by the American Medical Association over the next 30+ years to derail attempts to bring a contemporary single-payer health system to the United States.

U.S. Republicans always point out that associations of lawyers make massive campaign contributions in order to preserve rights to legal actions on behalf of medical patients.

This is just to point out that teachers are not the only organized group of professionals in the United States. This is because, in a democracy, people have a right to association, and a right to organized action. According to the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights (a treaty ratified by the United States of America), this includes "the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests."

Andrew Jackson's Spoils System, undone by
Chester A. Arthur, reinstated by New Jersey
Governor Chris Christie?

Unions, whether for private employees or public employees, and the collective bargaining which is the heart of union rights, exist to balance out power inequalities. In private business unions balance a few things - first, the legal "fiction" of the corporation - which allows "capitalist" investors to hide their actions from personal responsibility. Because corporations are created by governments to protect owners, unions exist - in most industrialized nations with similar government protections - in order to protect workers. In private business unions also balance the power of trade associations. Whether Chambers of Commerce or industry groups or purchasing co-ops such as American hardware and drug stores belong to, businesses are allowed to organize, so workers must as well.

In public service unions provide another kind of balance. To begin, public service unions provide protection for the civil service system which, however flawed it might seem, is far superior to the political graft system of public employment which dominated life in America before the Chester A. Arthur administration. In the "spoils system" all government jobs were dependent on who got elected, and most importantly, who had contributed to who got elected. Elections would turn over all public office holders, with political loyalty and out-and-out bribery replacing judgments of competence.

But more importantly public service unions provide the only possible balance for workers with both very limited employer choice and very limited strike opportunities. And they protect employees from the kind of political wrath being unleashed by bullies like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who would legislate working conditions and compensation for political revenge.

But let's talk teachers' unions specifically. And as we do so, let me state that I don't begin from a neutral point-of-view. I am a member of the American Federation of Teachers, my mother was an organizer of the AFT local in her school district. I am old enough to remember her being paid minimum wage with few benefits in the "minimally unionized" early days of her career.

That is not to admit that I think, at times, certain teachers' unions, especially some components the National Education Association, have been agents of professional conservatism. And yet I understand that unions - and how they operate - are always a response to an environment. If a teachers' union acts as if its members are industrial line workers this is really no surprise, since teachers are often treated by school boards - and today by the United States Government - as industrial line workers.

Still, most often, I see teachers' unions doing the hard work of professionalism. It is only because of unionization that teachers' salaries have become middle class salaries. Still far below lawyers and doctors and others with equivalent educational expectations, but middle class. Beginning at about $25,000 in most states and topping out a bit under $50,000. It is only because of unionization that teachers are working on their jobs at night instead of working second jobs (as I see most non-unionized private and charter teachers doing). It is only because of unionization that teachers have planning time and professional development days. It is only because of unionization - and the tenure it has brought - that great teachers are willing to take chances to move their students and the profession forward.

No union, no tenure

In my experience, just as a student, I watched unions fight for educational re-design, for open classrooms and alternative schools. I watched them fight for the jobs of great teachers who otherwise might have been fired for "rocking the organizational boat." I watched them insist on ongoing professional development. And I watched them keep great teachers in schools by paying them decently. At the same time I've watched school boards and governments change educational policy by whim and by election. I've seen school administrative and political vendettas. I've seen curriculum and practice politicized.

So, in my mind, unions are essential, and the evidence seems to show that unions make education more successful: "Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows: South Carolina – 50th, North Carolina – 49th, Georgia – 48th, Texas – 47th, Virginia – 44th. If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country." Yes, that's only one measure, but it backs up much other data, from the US and elsewhere, that by the measures prized by "educational reformers," unionized teaching staffs produce better results.

Teachers should be paid less than Wall Street bankers or brokers (or Governors)

"[aveeno89] is not difficult to become a teacher, so why should they be paid so much? teaching is such a cake job.... it may be stressful but simply look at their hours and their education background"

That is a typical anonymous blog response to the question of teacher pay. It follows the line promoted by Bill Gates, by Wendy Kopp, and by Arne Duncan that teaching is both easy and relatively unimportant.

And that is the societal position. In the United States, where the power structure constantly argues that high pay is justified - not just justified but essential - to bring good workers to important jobs, teacher salaries remain among the lowest of all professionals.

Yes, we can laugh at Republican (US) - Tory/Lib Dem (UK) - Liberal (Australia) hypocrisy on this. CEOs won't work unless paid a billion. Brokers won't work unless paid millions. Teachers need "merit pay" to motivate them, but, teachers, police officers, firefighters don't really need to be paid well, but the fact is that these capitalist societies demonstrate "value" of a profession through pay. And by this measure, these societies see teachers, and education, as unimportant.

Now I think differently. I think teachers save more lives every year than doctors. I think teachers protect more people's rights every day than most lawyers will in their careers. I don't think that there is anything society does which is more important than moving our next generation forward. So, to me, teachers deserve to be among the best paid professionals in a society.

They also need to be among the best trained, with ongoing in-service training as a part of every schedule, just as it is for doctors. 

Chris Christie, $400,000 a year is "middle class"

What's well paid? Well, Republicans and right-wing Democrats claim that $250,000 per year in salary is "just middle class" and that group cannot pay more taxes. So, if that's true, $250,000 seems a fair annual salary for a veteran teacher (in New Jersey, according to Governor Chris Christie, this figure is $400,000).

This is really not a question of national resources. It is a question of distribution of national resources. Every time taxes on the wealthy are high, or are raised, and resources are shifted to public service and public works, the American economy improves as the health of the middle class improves and as opportunity improves because of better public services. So when Eisenhower was U.S. President and the top marginal tax rate was 91%, those funds built schools and universities, paid teachers and professors, and opened up professional careers to many. Research funds created computers and jet engines and nuclear power, cured polio, and made measles rare. When Bill Clinton raised taxes and invested in police protection for America's cities, it created a safer society in which entrepreneurship could flourish in urban areas. These two "high tax" eras represent the real growth moments for the post World War II United States economy.

So raising taxes on the rich in order to pay teachers salaries Republicans consider "middle class" makes sense all around.

corollary - Superintendents are overpaid

Chris Christie, home above,
thinks you are overpaid

From Gov. Christie in New Jersey to Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York, and sure to come to a state near you soon, comes the idea that not just teachers are overpaid, but that school superintendents are particularly overpaid.

“We must wake up to the new economic reality that government must be more efficient and cut the cost of the bureaucracy,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement on Monday. “Reducing back office overhead, administration, consultants and encouraging consolidations are the best targets to find savings.”

Remember, these are the same governors who won't raise taxes because "talent" might leave their states if take home pay is in any way reduced.

Now superintendents are easy targets. They are the highest paid people in each school district (except maybe in Texas, where no pay limit has been suggested for high school football coaches), and superintendents tend to make enemies as they negotiate the competing interests pulling at their organizations.

But I always wonder why businesses must pay big bucks to get the best employees (see above) but government requires no incentives to attract talent? And I wonder why a CEO making 262 times the average worker's pay is 'appropriately compensated' but asuperintendent making, say, $250,000 in an organization with thousands of employees (averaging, say, $40,000) is 'grossly overpaid'?

- Ira Socol

next: parents, poverty, system change

An Easter Monday Proclamation of Liberation

On Easter Monday, 1916, a group of Irish patriots seized Dublin's General Post Office and other key, symbolic points in the city, and proclaimed the independence of the Irish Republic.

The Easter Rising Éirí Amach na Cásca lasted seven days and ended with the British Empire murdering the greatest leaders of a generation in Ireland in a yard at Kilmainham Gaol. But those events began not just Ireland's liberation from Britain but the entire 20th Century of Liberation which would sweep across Africa and Asia for the next 60 years. Tiny Ireland became not just a symbol, but a literal exporter of revolution to the globe - the leaders of national liberation movements - from the Jews of Palestine to the Vietnamese, from Indians to Kenyans, came to learn  how to free themselves from their oppressors from Michael Collins - the Easter Rising survivor who led Ireland to victory in the Anglo-Irish War - and his lieutenants.

This is not about Irish history, though, this is about education.

On the night of Easter Sunday 2010 a few of us gathered electronically to battle with the Governor of New Jersey, Christopher Christie, an extremely wealthy ex-federal prosecutor elected as a Republican in 2009. The Governor, allowing his $60,000-per-year paid twitterer to spend the holiday with his family, was on Twitter himself, explaining why his first mission as governor is to cut teacher pay and funding for education in his state. (see the conversations, with @mritzius, with @lgesin, with me, and the Gov himself)

The Governor, not unexpectedly, comes across as a series of Fox News talking points, constantly demanding "shared sacrifice" - though the sharing extends neither to himself nor his class of taxpayers, who typically live in New Jersey to avoid the actual tax bills they'd receive in New York or Pennsylvania, and insisting that New Jersey needs a solution to its extraordinarily high property taxes while refusing to consider any actual solution to that (an increased sales tax or VAT, a rise in the top marginal rates for New Jersey's income tax). In fact, he is simply bullying the teachers, the group charged with developing New Jersey's future, because he knows that their commitment to their students makes them unlikely to strike or otherwise really resist.

When "reformers" in America today talk about education, they are, of course, not discussing students or children or learning or development - they are talking about political economics. They are interested in "efficiencies" not to make schools better, but to make government smaller. They are too often interested in Charter Schools not as innovative examples which lead to new thinking, but as a way to bust some of the last remaining American unions. They are interested in "choice" not for opportunity, but to continue the vicious racial and class divides in the United States. Yes Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates, Joel Klein, Mike Bloomberg, Arne Duncan, Paul Vallas, Chris Christie - I am talking about you.

On the same evening, Pam Moran, a Virginia school superintendent, posted a wonderful statement on the always fascinating Edurati Review on why we need to move our conversations about true educational re-design to the "front channel." For, in our backchannels, on Twitter and elsewhere, we spend our time discussing re-design, how to make education work for the most kids in the most places, how to move beyond a system designed to fail kids to one which moves kids forward, how to inspire and support teachers to be their best, how to bring parents in - in all the best ways. And these conversations are great and powerful, but they are hidden, as Pam says, from the "mainstream media" and the current political conversation, and that is a recipe for disaster.

Education is a colonial project - oh, not always as obviously or viciously as Teach for America or the KIPP schools - but it is a colonial project. The idea is to take our children and convert them to the uses of our society. And how our schools do that literally determines our collective future. We live in an American society right now in which everyone from the President on down denigrates teachers as somehow greedy, lazy, badly trained, irresponsible people. We send our children off to schools after the President has applauded firing their teachers, after Governors call teachers greedy. We defer maintenance in schools, we close schools, we refuse to equip schools with the technologies used everywhere else on the planet, we reduce education to filling in multiple choice bubbles on standardized tests - and then we are shocked - "shocked," as Casablanca's police chief said, that kids don't care and don't do well during their school day.

So, today, Easter Monday 2010 we need a new Proclamation of Educational Liberation.

Today we must say that we will stand up for our children and our future. We will do it aggressively and publicly. Today we must say we will challenge our "leaders" - Governor Christie, why do lawyers in New Jersey outearn teachers? Isn't teaching, isn't bringing up our children, the most important thing we as a society do? Governor Christie, shouldn't you and Bill O'Reilly pay a bit more of your income in taxes so teachers can earn a decent living, kids can go to great schools, and middle class families can afford property taxes? President Obama, can you please stop calling education a "race" - races have winners and losers, and we want all of our kids to succeed. Texas "Education" Leaders, please stop using schools for indoctrination and use them to help children grow in to critical thinkers. Mr. Duncan, please stop equating test scores with learning.

We need to raise these questions and challenges every day, to every leader, to demand that they break from their talking points and explain what they mean and why they mean it. We need to engage them on Twitter, on blogs, in letters to the newspaper, in phone calls to radio stations, in letters to reporters and editors and TV anchors demanding better conversations. We must bring this all to that "front channel."

But we have to do more than that. Padraig Pearse played to the grand stage in the Easter Rising and set the spark, but Michael Collins took to the hills and won the war, and we must do the same. Stop being circumspect. Talk to your neighbors, your friends, your families. Speak up at church or synagogue or your yoga retreat. We must change the national conversation not just from the top down but from the bottom up. We must explain our visions of education, and our passion for education, to all who we can get to listen. Because this really, really matters.

Americans have always been conflicted about education and educated people. This might be the only place in the world where we might think someone "too smart" to lead us, the only place where "I'd like to have a beer with him" trumps "how smart he/she is" in electing a president. And without the history of clergy/teachers that Europe and other continents have, Americans have always had minimal respect for teachers. Back in the mid-19th Century Henry Barnard wanted women as teachers because he could pay them less and listen to them less - and that was a bad start. The other "professions," lawyers, doctors, architects - almost entirely male around 1900 - raised their statuses and their salaries through exclusive organizations, teachers - mostly female - were left scrambling to create industrial-style unions to meet their role in industrialized education. So teachers, who have more education behind them than lawyers, work longer hours than lawyers, and are far more essential to the general society than lawyers, get less respect and much less income. And we often build schools as concrete block bunkers because it is cheap, while our restaurants are far more engagingly designed - thus we are fat and stupid.

So, if there is to be another "American Century" we must be better. We must make education desired, respected, and fundamentally understood. And if we don't do it, who will?

"We will loft education anew when we generate an ever-increasing ratio of educators who believe in a mission to create spaces of inspiration for learners and learning.  It will take more than 1 or 10 percent of us speaking the poetic and political voices of passion, joy, and drive to create those spaces in which young people and educators can thrive in these contemporary days. Our vision must become a vision of lift, influence, and power that creates a front channel for our voices, shifting us out of the backchannel.  We need our best educational technologists, our courageous leaders, our creative geniuses to create the front channel we must become. It’s our job, and our time, to increase the inspiration ratio in every community in this nation." - Pam Moran

Padraig Pearse and his compatriots were shot to death for their efforts. I'm not asking for that - just for a bit of time, a bit of discomfort, a bit of effort.

This is something we must do.

- Ira Socol