Union vs. Anti-Union Movement: Forum on the Controversy over the Role of Teacher Unions to take place on April 20th at WWU

The Woodring College of Education at Western Washington University will sponsor the 13th Annual Educational Law and Social Justice Forum at 5:30-7:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 20 at the Wilson Library Presentation Room on WWU’s campus. The forum will discuss the topic of whether teachers unions are a benefit or an obstacle to the education of students.


Panelists will include: Mary Lindquist, president of the Washington Education Association, William Lyne, president of the United Faculty of Washington State and member of the Washington Education Association Board of Directors, and Liv Finne, Director of Education at the Washington Policy Center.

The forum is sponsored by Woodring’s Journal of Educational Controversy and Center for Education, Equity and Diversity, and is co-sponsored by the Whatcom County Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington

Below are position statements by the panelists.

 

POSITION STATEMENTS

WASHINGTON POLICY CENTER STATEMENT

By Liv Finne

Director, Center for Education

Unions are private organizations of people who join together to advance their economic interests, and every worker has a right to join a union as a basic part of the freedom of association.

 Today, however, unions are a powerful force in public education and their consistent objection to meaningful reform makes them the primary obstacle to the changes needed to improve the education of children. Here are some of the school reforms that unions oppose:


• Allowing local communities to open public charter schools.
• Retaining the best teachers by basing layoffs on performance, not seniority.
• Promoting high-quality teachers with raises based on merit, not time served.
• Rewarding top-performing teachers with year-end bonuses.
• Allowing higher pay for teachers who take on the most challenging students.
• Allowing higher salaries to meet the demand for more math and science teachers.
• Making it easier to fire bad teachers.
• Lifting the ban on letting any qualified professional, not just people with special certificates, teach in a public classroom. State law allows private schools to hire the best person as a teacher, without mandates or restrictions. With few exceptions a college professor cannot teach in a public high school – she doesn’t have the right certificate.
• Letting principals hire and fire teachers based on what’s best for children, not what’s convenient for adults.
• Allowing parents to evaluate teachers and using this input to set raises and teacher assignments.


We need an honest conversation about how to improve our schools. Our research shows schools with the most effective learning environments for children are led by great principals who choose a team of highly effective and committed teachers. (See “Eight Practical Ways to Reverse the Decline of Public Schools,” by Liv Finne, December 2008).


The best schools create a learning environment that is based on high expectations and hard work, and that promotes a culture that values academic excellence. In general unions oppose letting school principals control spending, benefits, salaries, hiring and work assignments in local schools. Promoting excellence in community leadership and in classroom instruction is key to student learning, but these meaningful school reforms are not possible as long as unions oppose them. For these reasons, unions represent a serious obstacle to improving education for all children in Washington state. 

WASHINGTON EDUCATION ASSOCIATION STATEMENT 

by

Mary Lindquist, Washington Education Association President

​Teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions. No one understands those conditions better than teachers, and teachers’ unions are teachers organized and working together to improve our students’ learning environment.

​A recent Harvard Educational Review article highlighted the positive correlation between strong unions and better student SAT and ACT scores. Why? Teacher contracts address critical issues such as class size, teacher quality and team collaboration.

Critics of unions regularly demonizes teachers not in an effort to improve education but as part of a broad, well-organized and well-funded effort to undermine public confidence in public sector unions. Such efforts exaggerate the failure of public schools, do nothing to improve education and ignore the real threat ---- chronic under funding of our schools.

​What’s at stake in this debate is whether or not public education should remain robustly public. Teachers’ unions protect all students' opportunities by remaining committed to the high quality, publicly funded education that fuels the economic prosperity.

UNITED FACULTY OF WASHINGTON STATE STATEMENT

By

William Lyne, President of the UFWW

The so-call education “reform” movement regularly demonizes teachers not in an effort to improve education but as part of a broad, well-organized and well-funded effort to privatize and exploit the education “market” for profit. Efforts to exaggerate the failure of public schools, decrease the funding of public education, and blame teachers do not improve education, but they do create the conditions for the exploitation of students and families for private interests.


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Editor:  A second event will occur on the WWU campus a week later on Wednesday, April 27th at 5:30-7:30pm.  A workshop on Civil Rights in Schools 101 will be take place at the Center for Education, Equity and Diversity in Miller Hall room 005 on the WWU’s campus.   Linda Mangel, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, will facilitate the workshop on possible topics like bullying and harassment, truancy, discipline, the achievement gap,  rights of pregnant students, disparate discipline, athletics. cyberbullying, cell phone searches.  This event is also sponsored by the Journal of Educational Controversy and the Center for Education, Equity and Diversity and co-sponsored by the Whatcom County Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.

Public Sector Unions and Reforms

The current Becker-Posner debate on public sector unions may be of interest to some of the readers here.

I have a feeling unions take on a reflexive life force of their own and often don't accurately reflect the entire preferences of their members. Though I appreciate this may be dubbed rather sanguine it does seem to me that narrowly conceived matters of 'procedural fairness' dominate disputes, and even rulings; beyond reason. The recent rulings on regal privilege days enjoyed by civil servants (and central bankers) seems to demonstrated this.

In any event these issues are likely to become more prevalent once the 'fire' in the banking sector gets under control.

As a thought on this: are social partners able to sit down and discuss national issues other than pay increases and holiday benefits? If not we might question the whole process of partnership agreement that was engaged in over the past 15-20 years. The honest concept of social partnership should not be lost; the arguments for it are now probably as strong as ever. Its up to government to make them! and get all the partners back in the room, on a regular basis.

The Anti-Union Movement in Wisconsin: Myth vs. Fact

The Forum for Education and Democracy has set out to distinguish between the myths and the facts around the turmoil in Wisconsin as thousands continue to march on the Capitol to oppose anti-union legislation.  They ask their readers to rethink some of the myths that are circulating.  We share their ideas about the myths with our readers to rethink also.

•Myth #1: Public employees in Wisconsin and elsewhere are overpaid. The truth is they’re probably underpaid when you factor in things like level of education. In Wisconsin, nearly 60 percent of public employees hold at least a four-year college degree – double the private sector workforce. That’s because many are teachers and other professionals. When you compare apples to apples, they earn 4.8 percent less than comparable private sector workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute.


•Myth #2: Public employees aren’t sacrificing their fair share. In the last round of bargaining in Wisconsin, the American Federation of Teachers alone offered more than $100 million in concessions in the form of higher health insurance premiums, furlough days and increased pension contributions. In Ohio, unions representing public employees gave back more than $200 million in concessions, essentially balancing the budget on their own backs.

•Myth #3: High employee benefits got us into this budget mess. Wisconsin was looking at a budget surplus until Republicans gave $117 million in business tax breaks. The reality is that the state is now facing a budget gap, but the gap is 13 percent of the budget. The average gap in other states is 20 percent, so things in Wisconsin are actually better than the norm.

•Myth #4: The state retirement system is in trouble. Again, Wisconsin is in a better position than many states. The $72 billion Wisconsin Retirement System is over 97 percent funded according to the Center of Retirement Research, a non-partisan think tank. By comparison, the fund in neighboring Illinois is only 52 percent funded.

•Myth #5: The governor has no other option. This is clearly not the case. The public employee unions have already said they will give him concessions to erase the budget gap – if he backs off his pledge to crush their bargaining rights. Also, Wisconsin and other states have large amounts of unspent stimulus funds that could be used to ease the burden. If ever there was a rainy day, this is it!

The Tide Will Rise

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is out for more than money. He's out for blood. He won't quit until he drives a stake through the hearts of public employee unions in the Badger State. That much is clear.

How this current saga will end is anyone's guess. The amazing protests that have taken over the Wisconsin State Capitol and downtown Madison might wear down, if not Walker, the few moderate Republican state senators remaining. Or the GOP might try to eliminate collective bargaining without needing the "Wisconsin 14" -- the Senate Democrats who have crossed the Illinois border to prevent a vote on the budget bill -- by pulling the collective bargaining provisions out as separate legislation (which would require only 17 senators present; there are 19 Republicans). The outcome? A general strike perhaps. Wisconsin unions and Democratic lawmakers have already publicly agreed to accept sizable concessions on health benefits and pensions as demanded by Walker and the Republicans -- on average, an 8 percent cut in public workers' take-home pay -- which would severely cripple the state economy.

The Governor has said that this is about balancing the budget, not destroying unions. Few believe him of course, especially given his track record as Milwaukee County Executive, but that's what his talking points tell him to say. I don't believe him the same way I don't believe that congressional Republicans are serious about the budget deficit and national debt. Walker's first action as governor was to propose and enact corporate tax cuts equivalent to the cost of the cuts he is now seeking to impose upon public employees. Congressional Republicans pushed for the same thing, the extension of Bush-era tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, which added nearly one trillion dollars to the national debt. Republicans are making these fiscal crises worse and are attempting to balance the budget on the backs of public workers, making cuts to programs like food aid for poor pregnant women and women with children, but refusing to ask those with means to sacrifice one whit.

Wisconsin Democrats and union leaders have rightly drawn a line in the sand when it comes to the elimination of collective bargaining rights (over anything other than wage increases below the rate of inflation). Whether you like them or not, Americans have the right to organize and join unions and employees ought to have the right to come together and collectively bargain wages, benefits and working conditions. This right is outlined in the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights. Republicans, however, have succeeded in convincing too many working families that their brothers and sisters in the public sector are the enemy.

As Paul Krugman eloquently writes in the New York Times (2/21/2011), the preservation of unions is also a matter of balancing political power.

For what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.
.....
But Mr. Walker isn’t interested in making a deal. Partly that’s because he doesn’t want to share the sacrifice: even as he proclaims that Wisconsin faces a terrible fiscal crisis, he has been pushing through tax cuts that make the deficit worse. Mainly, however, he has made it clear that rather than bargaining with workers, he wants to end workers’ ability to bargain.
.....

You don’t have to love unions, you don’t have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. Indeed, if America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years — which it has — that’s to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions.

And now Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to get rid of public-sector unions, too.

There’s a bitter irony here. The fiscal crisis in Wisconsin, as in other states, was largely caused by the increasing power of America’s oligarchy. After all, it was superwealthy players, not the general public, who pushed for financial deregulation and thereby set the stage for the economic crisis of 2008-9, a crisis whose aftermath is the main reason for the current budget crunch. And now the political right is trying to exploit that very crisis, using it to remove one of the few remaining checks on oligarchic influence.

Why average Americans are willing to give selfish corporations and capitalist greed a pass, but demonize other working folks is beyond me. Why must so many Americans embrace a race to the bottom rather than the notion of a rising tide? Jealousy of wages and benefits that unionized workers have won for themselves has turned to rage as the economy has soured, even though it is often based on bad information (public employees in Wisconsin make LESS in wages and benefits than their private sector counterparts). That rage can turn in one of two directions -- it can become productive or divisive. The likes of Scott Walker and Republican bankrollers, such as Koch Industries, are counting on the latter.

As an alternative, those oppressed workers, primarily in the private sector, could choose to organize themselves as their public-sector brethren have done to better their lot -- or take political action to strengthen social supports, job training opportunities, and demand greater equity in U.S. tax policy. Or they can choose to embrace a "Life Sucks" mantra. "I suffered [a job loss/salary cut/reduced benefits], so those other working stiffs should have to suck it up, too." But why demand blood from a stone? If one is serious about shared sacrifice, why not demand reasonable concessions from public workers, along with tax reforms to close corporate loopholes and higher tax rates or income tax surcharges on millionaires?

Such concessions from public employees can be achieved through the collective bargaining process, both at a local as well as at a state level. Look what Vermont achieved in 2010 under a Republican Governor by working with unions. Walker's approach was to unilaterally propose something and refuse to negotiate or even discuss it with public employees. Nice guy that, Mr. Walker. But he can't be all bad because, after all, God talks to him. Indeed, his approach sets him apart from some other freshman Republican governors, including Iowa's Terry Branstad, Michigan's Rick Snyder, and Pennsylvania's Tom Corbett. California Governor Jerry Brown (a Democrat), running a state with far worse budgetary problems, won't resort to union busting either.

From the Wall Street Journal (2/18/2011):

"We're going to go negotiate with our unions in a collective-bargaining fashion to achieve goals," the Republican governor [Michigan's Rick Snyder] said in an interview. "It's not picking fights. It's about getting people to come together and say here are the facts, here are the common-ground solutions."

Former Clinton Labor Secretary and Berkeley public policy professor Robert Reich argues
that rising income inequality is at the heart of our nation's and our states' fiscal challenges:

So the problem isn’t that “we’ve” been spending too much. It’s that most Americans have been getting a steadily smaller share of the nation’s total income.

At the same time, the super-rich have been contributing a steadily-declining share of their own incomes in taxes to support what the nation needs — both at the federal and at the state levels.

The coming showdowns and shutdowns must not mask what’s going on. Democrats should make sure the public understands what’s really at stake.

Yes, of course, wasteful and unnecessary spending should be cut. That means much of the defense budget, along with agricultural subsidies and other forms of corporate welfare.

But America is the richest nation in the world, and “we’ve” never been richer. There’s no reason for us to turn on our teachers, our unionized workers, our poor and needy, and our elderly. The notion that “we” can no longer afford it is claptrap.

From an education policy standpoint, have teachers' unions always been on the right side of the issues? Of course not. The Wisconsin Education Association Council is an example of one that has been slow to change as compared with other NEA affiliates such as the neighboring Illinois Education Association and many state AFT chapters. Walker's election finally got WEAC to read the tea leaves and advance a proposal to embrace a number of school reforms rather late in the game. That said, I fully and wholeheartedly support the current organizing efforts of WEAC and its right to represent Wisconsin teachers at the bargaining table.

But this is bigger than education and teaching. There is a larger agenda at play here. Republicans have effectively sought to create a wedge between working people -- a divide and conquer strategy that exploits the economic turmoil and uncertainty currently gripping this country. At the same time, they are pushing an anti-tax agenda with two purposes in mind -- (1) to give huge tax breaks to corporate interests and the wealthiest Americans, and (2) to bleed the public sector dry and reduce the size of government regardless of the impact on the poor and elderly. The result: historic income inequality in the United States.

Too many Democrats are complicit for failing to see the forest for the trees and for allowing Republicans to set the narrative. (President Obama's proposed 50% cut to the Low Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) is a case in point.) Progressives need to take the elephant by the ears and shake some sense into it. We need leaders who will tell it like it is and propose policies to move America forward, not backwards. My hope is that the activism and energy present in Wisconsin will be channeled productively and over the long haul, not just to fight anti-union crusades, but also to build a state and nation that aspires to greatness, excellence and prosperity for all of its people -- from those at the top to the weakest and most vulnerable amongst us.

The tide will rise.

Backwards

Forward. That's the Wisconsin state motto. Our new governor is calling it into serious question. Since arriving in the governor's office in January, Scott Walker has directed his state driver to put the peddle of his gleaming new SUV to the metal ... in reverse.

In my thirty nine years, I have never lived under such a retrograde governor. The likes of Mike Dukakis, Bill Weld, Madeleine Kunin, Dick Snelling, Howard Dean, Jim Doyle each stand in sharp contrast to the arrogance, spitefulness and wrong-headedness of Walker. I am ashamed that this man is the leader of our state. Nice going, Badgers.

Walker's proposal to close Wisconsin's current fiscal year budget deficit includes a de facto salary cut of more than 8 percent (in the form of greater contributions into the state pension system and for health benefits) for all state and university employees. The impact on the state economy -- and on the Madison area, in particular -- from the enactment of such a proposal will be enormous. It will be felt in the form of reduced state income tax revenues, lowered sales tax revenues from reduced purchasing power, and the likely closure of private sector businesses, especially in the retail sector. Standing in sharp contrast to his campaign pledge to create 250,000 jobs over the next four years, in just a month and a half in office Walker has already succeeded in driving high-speed rail and wind energy jobs out of state (primarily to Illinois) -- and this attack on public sector employees who are being asked to bear the entire burden of closing the budget deficit will further torpedo the state economy. Walker's proposal will cost the state $1.1 billion in lost economy activity, according to the Institute for Wisconsin's Future. And it could precipitate a brain drain from the public sector and from the state over time. But, that's OK -- high school grads can run the state.

The coup de grace (that's French, Mr. Walker) is the Governor's proposal -- that has nothing at all to do with the budget deficit -- to eliminate collective bargaining rights for all state employees, university employees, and state teachers. Walker is using the state's economic woes as cover to launch an overtly political attack on unions. He would restrict them from bargaining about anything other than salaries, and only salaries below the rate of inflation. Benefits, leave time, and working conditions would be off the table.

The governor also has issued an unprecedented threat on public employees, saying that he would call out the National Guard to quell any problems. All of these proposals are embedded within a budget repair bill, announced only on Friday afternoon and scheduled to be voted on Thursday by the rubber-stamp Republican-controlled Legislature. The only public hearing on the proposal is scheduled for today in a tiny room in the State Capitol. So much for public input.

What do you think the outcome will be?

That's right. Backwards.

An incredibly important speech on education by Diane Ravitch

That is a brief clip of Diane Ravitch addressing the Representative Assembly of the National Education Association on July 6, where she was receiving an award as the 2010 "Friend of Education."

Please keep reading.

The complete text of Diane's speech can be read here. She has given me permission to quote as much as I deem appropriate, including the whole speech if necessary.

I won't do that. You can follow the link to read the entire text if so inclined.

Let me offer some selections to at least whet your appetite, as well as offer a bit of commentary of my own.

... in all of this time, aside from the right-wing think tanks, I haven’t seen met a single teacher who likes what’s happening? I haven’t met a single teacher who thinks that No Child Left Behind has been a success. I haven’t met a single teacher who thinks that Race to the Top is a good idea.

I remind readers that the Representative Assembly passed a resolution of no confidence in Race to the Top.

And as I talk to teachers, by the end of my talk, I hear the same questions again and again: What can we do? How can we stop the attacks on teachers and on the teaching profession? Why is the media demonizing unions? Why does the media constantly criticize public schools? And why does it lionize charter schools? Why is Arne Duncan campaigning with Newt Gingrich? Why has the Obama Administration built its education agenda on the punitive failed strategies of No Child Left Behind?

Newt Gingrich - now there's a great ally for a supposedly progressive administration, eh? And during the campaign, Obama railed against NCLB, yet too much of the administration policy continues to rely on the failed policies of that approach.

I will continue to speak out against high-stakes testing. It undermines education. High-stakes testing promotes cheating, gaming the system, teaching to bad tests, narrowing the curriculum. High-stakes testing means less time for the arts, less time for history or geography or civics or foreign languages or science.

We see schools across America dropping physical education. We see them dropping music. We see them dropping their arts programs, their science programs, all in pursuit of higher test scores. This is not good education.

I have been told by some people in the Obama Administration that the way to stop the narrowing of the curriculum is to test everything. In fact, the chancellor in Washington, D.C., the other day announced she plans to do exactly that. That means less time for instruction, more time for testing, and a worse education for everyone.

Some of us have worried about this trend for years - I remember a group of elementary school art teachers asking their state for a test on art so their classes would not be eliminated. As it happens, my course is one in which there is a test that has high stakes - students in theory must not only pass a government course but also a state test in government in order to graduate from high school (although the latter requirement has some loopholes). Let me say that for too many students their course in government gets reduced, especially in the Spring as the test approaches, to drill and kill, practice for the test. For a subject that should excite them, because it has direct affect on their lives, they get bored and frustrated.

In speaking out, I have consistently warned about the riskiness of school choice. Its benefits are vastly overstated. It undercuts public education by enabling charter schools to skim the best students in poor communities. As our society pursues these policies, we will develop a bifurcated system, one for the haves, another for the have-nots, and politicians have the nerve to boast about such an outcome.

Public schools, as I said before, are a cornerstone of our democratic society. If we chip away at support for them, we erode communal responsibility for a vital public institution.

Bifurcated - even worse than what we have by geography, where wealthy communities have excellent public schools rich in resources and the students have access to all kinds of elective courses, and poor communities, whether in inner cities, inner rings of suburbs or the hinterlands, lacking equipment, with decaying buildings, and overwhelmed with students arriving st school with less background and current problems.

democratic society - if we really believe in it, economics would not be the sole basis on which we make arguments about our schools.

Last year, a major evaluation showed that one out of every six charters will get better results, five out of six charters will get no different results or worse results than the regular public schools. A report released just a couple of weeks ago by Mathematica Policy Research once again shows charter middle schools do not get better results than regular public middle schools.

Unfortunately, the general media coverage of the Mathematica report was badly flawed, focused on the schools that did 'better' while not including any of the caveats about even these schools. Charters COULD be used to offer alternative ways of teaching/learning to specific groups of students. Diane's next two paragraphs are very important:

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, on whose board I served for seven years, has tested charter schools since 2003. In 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009, charter schools were compared to regular public schools and have never shown an advantage over regular public schools. Charter schools, contrary to Bill Gates, are not more innovative than regular public schools. The business model and methods of charter schools is this — longer school days, longer hours, longer weeks, and about 95 percent of charter schools are non-union.

Teachers are hired and fired at will. Teachers work 50, 60, 70 hours a week. They are expected to burn out after two or three years when they can be replaced. No pension worries, no high salaries. This is not a template for American education.

NAEP is the national report card on education. It is considered the gold standard of educational evaluation. It does not show that charters do better. One reason why some "reformers" like charters is that in many states they are a way around unions, and their teachers can be fired at will.


Let me skip down a bit:

And perhaps we should begin demanding that school districts be held accountable for providing the resources that schools need. Just like No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top requires and pressures districts to close low-performing schools. The overwhelming majority of low-performing schools enroll students in poverty and students who don’t speak English and students who are homeless and transient. Very often, these schools have heroic staffs who are working with society’s neediest children. These teachers deserve praise, not pink slips. Closing schools weakens communities. It’s not a good idea to weaken communities. No school was ever improved by closing it.

Reread that please. Yes, you will read stories that supposedly focus on "high-performing" schools dealing with such students. In some cases the claims for high performance are based on selective use of data. In most cases the schools on which such focus is made get more resources (as do many charters), have longer days, etc. The "success" is claimed on the basis of test scores. What is not yet offered is any evidence that there are long-term gains in learning: that the students are developing skills and knowledge that they can apply outside of the test environment. Meanwhile we reconstitute schools. We use one of the four models approved by this administration, even though NONE has any research to demonstrate that they improve education.

There are passages about the right to unionize, which Diane supports, but which "reformers" oppose. Read this paragraph, and perhaps you will understand two things, (1) why teachers are reacting so positively towards Diane; and (2) why we feel unfairly besieged, that the playing field is tilted:

I have spoken out repeatedly to defend the right of teachers to join unions for their protection and the protection of the teaching profession. Teachers have a right to a collective voice in the political process. It’s the American way. I don’t see the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post or the pundits complaining about the charter school lobby. I don’t see them complaining about the investment bankers lobby, or any other group that speaks on behalf of its members. Only teachers’ unions are demonized these days.

Teachers, and those who support them, ARE being demonized. By constrast, Hedge Fund managers (who are making major investments in things like charter schools for tax benefits) and Wall Street Firms (who came close to destroying the economy of this nation and the international community) get bailed out with our tax dollars, continue to pay bonuses, and spend millions to prevent appropriate oversight and regulation. Then they want to have a voice telling us how we should teach, how our schools should be run.

There is so much of value in the speech. By now I hope I have at least convinced you to take the time to read the entire thing.

Let me offer only a few more snippets, skipping over some very important material:

Around the world, those nations that are successful recognize that the best way to improve school is to improve the education profession. We need expert teachers, not a steady influx of novices.

One argument against Teach for America, for example. Now if those in that program actually stayed in teaching, people like Ravitch and me would have far fewer objections. The constant turnover in the schools in which they serve is unfair to those kids. The program benefits many in the TFA corps, and it certainly benefits TFA. It is not clear that the students are getting all that much benefit, and the model is not something that can really address the needs of the millions of students in inner city and rural schools.

The current so-called reform movement is pushing bad ideas. No high-performing nation in the world is privatizing its schools, closing its schools, and inflicting high-stakes testing on every subject on its children. The current reform movement wants to end tenure and seniority, to weaken the teaching profession, to silence teachers’ unions, to privatize large sectors of public education. Don’t let it happen.

The consequences of letting these "reforms" go forward unchallenged will be great damages far beyond the arena of public education. It will be further destruction of what is left of the union movement in this country. It will be increased privatization of what is left of the commons in this country/ It will be a narrowing of opportunity for too many of our young people. It will diminish us as a people as our young people receive narrower and narrower educations.

Diane urges those listening to her to be politically active, to remind people that there are millions of teachers, we vote, and so do our families, to not support anyone who is an opponent of public education.

Stand up to the attacks on public education. Don’t give them half a loaf, because they will be back the next day for another slice, and the day after that for another slice.

Don’t compromise. Stand up for teachers. Stand up public education, and say “No mas, no mas." Thank you.

Diane Ravitch received a rousing ovation for this speech. As a teacher, as a UNIONIZED teacher in a public school, I understand why.

I thought it important that as many people as possible encounter HER words, not just cursory news accounts. I think it important that voices that speak for teachers and for public schools be given as much of an audience as those who have described themselves as 'reformers' and seek to suppress or denigrate any opposing point of view.

That is why I asked Diane, a friend, if I could quote extensively. That is why Diane told me "You are free to cite or quote whatever you wish."

Thanks for reading.

Please pass on the link for her speech.

Peace.

An incredibly important speech on education by Diane Ravitch

That is a brief clip of Diane Ravitch addressing the Representative Assembly of the National Education Association on July 6, where she was receiving an award as the 2010 "Friend of Education."

Please keep reading.

The complete text of Diane's speech can be read here. She has given me permission to quote as much as I deem appropriate, including the whole speech if necessary.

I won't do that. You can follow the link to read the entire text if so inclined.

Let me offer some selections to at least whet your appetite, as well as offer a bit of commentary of my own.

... in all of this time, aside from the right-wing think tanks, I haven’t seen met a single teacher who likes what’s happening? I haven’t met a single teacher who thinks that No Child Left Behind has been a success. I haven’t met a single teacher who thinks that Race to the Top is a good idea.

I remind readers that the Representative Assembly passed a resolution of no confidence in Race to the Top.

And as I talk to teachers, by the end of my talk, I hear the same questions again and again: What can we do? How can we stop the attacks on teachers and on the teaching profession? Why is the media demonizing unions? Why does the media constantly criticize public schools? And why does it lionize charter schools? Why is Arne Duncan campaigning with Newt Gingrich? Why has the Obama Administration built its education agenda on the punitive failed strategies of No Child Left Behind?

Newt Gingrich - now there's a great ally for a supposedly progressive administration, eh? And during the campaign, Obama railed against NCLB, yet too much of the administration policy continues to rely on the failed policies of that approach.

I will continue to speak out against high-stakes testing. It undermines education. High-stakes testing promotes cheating, gaming the system, teaching to bad tests, narrowing the curriculum. High-stakes testing means less time for the arts, less time for history or geography or civics or foreign languages or science.

We see schools across America dropping physical education. We see them dropping music. We see them dropping their arts programs, their science programs, all in pursuit of higher test scores. This is not good education.

I have been told by some people in the Obama Administration that the way to stop the narrowing of the curriculum is to test everything. In fact, the chancellor in Washington, D.C., the other day announced she plans to do exactly that. That means less time for instruction, more time for testing, and a worse education for everyone.

Some of us have worried about this trend for years - I remember a group of elementary school art teachers asking their state for a test on art so their classes would not be eliminated. As it happens, my course is one in which there is a test that has high stakes - students in theory must not only pass a government course but also a state test in government in order to graduate from high school (although the latter requirement has some loopholes). Let me say that for too many students their course in government gets reduced, especially in the Spring as the test approaches, to drill and kill, practice for the test. For a subject that should excite them, because it has direct affect on their lives, they get bored and frustrated.

In speaking out, I have consistently warned about the riskiness of school choice. Its benefits are vastly overstated. It undercuts public education by enabling charter schools to skim the best students in poor communities. As our society pursues these policies, we will develop a bifurcated system, one for the haves, another for the have-nots, and politicians have the nerve to boast about such an outcome.

Public schools, as I said before, are a cornerstone of our democratic society. If we chip away at support for them, we erode communal responsibility for a vital public institution.

Bifurcated - even worse than what we have by geography, where wealthy communities have excellent public schools rich in resources and the students have access to all kinds of elective courses, and poor communities, whether in inner cities, inner rings of suburbs or the hinterlands, lacking equipment, with decaying buildings, and overwhelmed with students arriving st school with less background and current problems.

democratic society - if we really believe in it, economics would not be the sole basis on which we make arguments about our schools.

Last year, a major evaluation showed that one out of every six charters will get better results, five out of six charters will get no different results or worse results than the regular public schools. A report released just a couple of weeks ago by Mathematica Policy Research once again shows charter middle schools do not get better results than regular public middle schools.

Unfortunately, the general media coverage of the Mathematica report was badly flawed, focused on the schools that did 'better' while not including any of the caveats about even these schools. Charters COULD be used to offer alternative ways of teaching/learning to specific groups of students. Diane's next two paragraphs are very important:

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, on whose board I served for seven years, has tested charter schools since 2003. In 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009, charter schools were compared to regular public schools and have never shown an advantage over regular public schools. Charter schools, contrary to Bill Gates, are not more innovative than regular public schools. The business model and methods of charter schools is this — longer school days, longer hours, longer weeks, and about 95 percent of charter schools are non-union.

Teachers are hired and fired at will. Teachers work 50, 60, 70 hours a week. They are expected to burn out after two or three years when they can be replaced. No pension worries, no high salaries. This is not a template for American education.

NAEP is the national report card on education. It is considered the gold standard of educational evaluation. It does not show that charters do better. One reason why some "reformers" like charters is that in many states they are a way around unions, and their teachers can be fired at will.


Let me skip down a bit:

And perhaps we should begin demanding that school districts be held accountable for providing the resources that schools need. Just like No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top requires and pressures districts to close low-performing schools. The overwhelming majority of low-performing schools enroll students in poverty and students who don’t speak English and students who are homeless and transient. Very often, these schools have heroic staffs who are working with society’s neediest children. These teachers deserve praise, not pink slips. Closing schools weakens communities. It’s not a good idea to weaken communities. No school was ever improved by closing it.

Reread that please. Yes, you will read stories that supposedly focus on "high-performing" schools dealing with such students. In some cases the claims for high performance are based on selective use of data. In most cases the schools on which such focus is made get more resources (as do many charters), have longer days, etc. The "success" is claimed on the basis of test scores. What is not yet offered is any evidence that there are long-term gains in learning: that the students are developing skills and knowledge that they can apply outside of the test environment. Meanwhile we reconstitute schools. We use one of the four models approved by this administration, even though NONE has any research to demonstrate that they improve education.

There are passages about the right to unionize, which Diane supports, but which "reformers" oppose. Read this paragraph, and perhaps you will understand two things, (1) why teachers are reacting so positively towards Diane; and (2) why we feel unfairly besieged, that the playing field is tilted:

I have spoken out repeatedly to defend the right of teachers to join unions for their protection and the protection of the teaching profession. Teachers have a right to a collective voice in the political process. It’s the American way. I don’t see the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post or the pundits complaining about the charter school lobby. I don’t see them complaining about the investment bankers lobby, or any other group that speaks on behalf of its members. Only teachers’ unions are demonized these days.

Teachers, and those who support them, ARE being demonized. By constrast, Hedge Fund managers (who are making major investments in things like charter schools for tax benefits) and Wall Street Firms (who came close to destroying the economy of this nation and the international community) get bailed out with our tax dollars, continue to pay bonuses, and spend millions to prevent appropriate oversight and regulation. Then they want to have a voice telling us how we should teach, how our schools should be run.

There is so much of value in the speech. By now I hope I have at least convinced you to take the time to read the entire thing.

Let me offer only a few more snippets, skipping over some very important material:

Around the world, those nations that are successful recognize that the best way to improve school is to improve the education profession. We need expert teachers, not a steady influx of novices.

One argument against Teach for America, for example. Now if those in that program actually stayed in teaching, people like Ravitch and me would have far fewer objections. The constant turnover in the schools in which they serve is unfair to those kids. The program benefits many in the TFA corps, and it certainly benefits TFA. It is not clear that the students are getting all that much benefit, and the model is not something that can really address the needs of the millions of students in inner city and rural schools.

The current so-called reform movement is pushing bad ideas. No high-performing nation in the world is privatizing its schools, closing its schools, and inflicting high-stakes testing on every subject on its children. The current reform movement wants to end tenure and seniority, to weaken the teaching profession, to silence teachers’ unions, to privatize large sectors of public education. Don’t let it happen.

The consequences of letting these "reforms" go forward unchallenged will be great damages far beyond the arena of public education. It will be further destruction of what is left of the union movement in this country. It will be increased privatization of what is left of the commons in this country/ It will be a narrowing of opportunity for too many of our young people. It will diminish us as a people as our young people receive narrower and narrower educations.

Diane urges those listening to her to be politically active, to remind people that there are millions of teachers, we vote, and so do our families, to not support anyone who is an opponent of public education.

Stand up to the attacks on public education. Don’t give them half a loaf, because they will be back the next day for another slice, and the day after that for another slice.

Don’t compromise. Stand up for teachers. Stand up public education, and say “No mas, no mas." Thank you.

Diane Ravitch received a rousing ovation for this speech. As a teacher, as a UNIONIZED teacher in a public school, I understand why.

I thought it important that as many people as possible encounter HER words, not just cursory news accounts. I think it important that voices that speak for teachers and for public schools be given as much of an audience as those who have described themselves as 'reformers' and seek to suppress or denigrate any opposing point of view.

That is why I asked Diane, a friend, if I could quote extensively. That is why Diane told me "You are free to cite or quote whatever you wish."

Thanks for reading.

Please pass on the link for her speech.

Peace.

MERITORIOUS CONDUCT

Interesting juxtaposition of Ed Week articles this week—a commentary from James Starkey, 40-year classroom veteran from Colorado, Please Don’t Do Me Any Favors, and an article in the news section, Principals’ Group Seeks Influence on Incentive Pay. Subtext question in both pieces: What motivates people to improve their performance?

Starkey’s observations about hard-working and undervalued teachers rang true for me. Like Starkey and his wife, I have been prejudged and patronized dozens of times by those who pigeonhole teachers as noble, but benevolent and underpaid missionaries to the unschooled young. His points about the recurring churn in K-12 standards development, and the insulting assumption that mere teachers would have no idea what critical content and solid achievement markers look like in their subject disciplines, are spot-on. But then he says,

“ProComp [Denver’s performance pay plan] and similar programs arise from the assumption that teachers could work harder, and I simply reject that notion.”

Meanwhile, over at the National Association of Secondary School Principals, Executive Director Gerald Tirozzi declares that the NASSP doesn’t endorse performance pay for school administrators, then disingenuously offers a carefully constructed template for how to pay principals for their, umm, performance. Tirozzi does note, correctly, that it’s wise, when an issue is politically hot, for an organization to get out ahead of the rolling train and develop some policy recommendations of its own. I have no idea if the list of administrative performance indicators that the NASSP offers is complete and/or valid, but it’s certainly a good starting point for discussion:

The organization suggests looking at other variables, such as graduation rates and promotion rates, student enrollment in rigorous coursework like that developed by the Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs, college-attendance rates, school climate data, parent-participation data, and teacher-retention and -transfer rates.

It’s really too bad that the term “merit pay” has been so thoroughly co-opted by the aggressive conglomerate of those who believe that testing and punishment are the only effective policy levers for improving schools. It’s impossible to start a discussion on how we pay educators in America without two knee-jerk notions popping up: a) merit pay means paying teachers or principals more for raising test scores and b) educators should be offended by the idea that increasing compensation will lead to better results. Indeed—the first on-line commenter on the NASSP article says she’s insulted by the implication that she could work any harder than she does.

Directly linking standardized test scores to compensation bonuses is an intellectually dishonest, even dangerous, idea with fairly predictable “unintended” consequences—some teachers will behave just as B.F. Skinner might predict, conditioned by rewards, and others will struggle with their personal moral compass around what it means be a measurably good teacher. Meritorious teaching is a real thing, however—most parents could give you a quick sketch of its characteristics and benchmarks, without needing a standard deviation or statistic. And meritorious teaching should be recognized, deconstructed, modeled, emulated, studied, nurtured—and rewarded. The same goes for exemplary school leadership.

I understand and appreciate the origins of the single-salary schedule for teachers, a half-century ago: equal pay for equivalent work, providing strong incentives for teachers to complete academic degrees and strengthen their professional educational attainment. And I don’t buy the specious argument that educational institutions should follow a “business model” and pay teachers based on productivity. Teaching is not piece work, and there is also very little evidence that the highest-paid employees in most businesses are necessarily the most efficient or resourceful. Businesses don’t have the compensation-incentive problem knocked, either.

The difficulty here is that lockstep teacher pay is no longer moving us toward best use of available resources to reach our educational goals. The single salary schedule penalizes exceptional talent, innovation and effort, and rewards staying put and accruing credits.

There is nothing morally wrong with figuring out what meritorious teaching looks like, then actively pursuing and rewarding it. I would respectfully suggest that James Starkey has the causal direction of pay for performance backwards. We should not offer performance pay to teachers under the assumption that they will work harder for more money. We should offer performance pay to outstanding teachers and educational leaders because they deserve it.

MERITORIOUS CONDUCT

Interesting juxtaposition of Ed Week articles this week—a commentary from James Starkey, 40-year classroom veteran from Colorado, Please Don’t Do Me Any Favors, and an article in the news section, Principals’ Group Seeks Influence on Incentive Pay. Subtext question in both pieces: What motivates people to improve their performance?

Starkey’s observations about hard-working and undervalued teachers rang true for me. Like Starkey and his wife, I have been prejudged and patronized dozens of times by those who pigeonhole teachers as noble, but benevolent and underpaid missionaries to the unschooled young. His points about the recurring churn in K-12 standards development, and the insulting assumption that mere teachers would have no idea what critical content and solid achievement markers look like in their subject disciplines, are spot-on. But then he says,

“ProComp [Denver’s performance pay plan] and similar programs arise from the assumption that teachers could work harder, and I simply reject that notion.”

Meanwhile, over at the National Association of Secondary School Principals, Executive Director Gerald Tirozzi declares that the NASSP doesn’t endorse performance pay for school administrators, then disingenuously offers a carefully constructed template for how to pay principals for their, umm, performance. Tirozzi does note, correctly, that it’s wise, when an issue is politically hot, for an organization to get out ahead of the rolling train and develop some policy recommendations of its own. I have no idea if the list of administrative performance indicators that the NASSP offers is complete and/or valid, but it’s certainly a good starting point for discussion:

The organization suggests looking at other variables, such as graduation rates and promotion rates, student enrollment in rigorous coursework like that developed by the Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs, college-attendance rates, school climate data, parent-participation data, and teacher-retention and -transfer rates.

It’s really too bad that the term “merit pay” has been so thoroughly co-opted by the aggressive conglomerate of those who believe that testing and punishment are the only effective policy levers for improving schools. It’s impossible to start a discussion on how we pay educators in America without two knee-jerk notions popping up: a) merit pay means paying teachers or principals more for raising test scores and b) educators should be offended by the idea that increasing compensation will lead to better results. Indeed—the first on-line commenter on the NASSP article says she’s insulted by the implication that she could work any harder than she does.

Directly linking standardized test scores to compensation bonuses is an intellectually dishonest, even dangerous, idea with fairly predictable “unintended” consequences—some teachers will behave just as B.F. Skinner might predict, conditioned by rewards, and others will struggle with their personal moral compass around what it means be a measurably good teacher. Meritorious teaching is a real thing, however—most parents could give you a quick sketch of its characteristics and benchmarks, without needing a standard deviation or statistic. And meritorious teaching should be recognized, deconstructed, modeled, emulated, studied, nurtured—and rewarded. The same goes for exemplary school leadership.

I understand and appreciate the origins of the single-salary schedule for teachers, a half-century ago: equal pay for equivalent work, providing strong incentives for teachers to complete academic degrees and strengthen their professional educational attainment. And I don’t buy the specious argument that educational institutions should follow a “business model” and pay teachers based on productivity. Teaching is not piece work, and there is also very little evidence that the highest-paid employees in most businesses are necessarily the most efficient or resourceful. Businesses don’t have the compensation-incentive problem knocked, either.

The difficulty here is that lockstep teacher pay is no longer moving us toward best use of available resources to reach our educational goals. The single salary schedule penalizes exceptional talent, innovation and effort, and rewards staying put and accruing credits.

There is nothing morally wrong with figuring out what meritorious teaching looks like, then actively pursuing and rewarding it. I would respectfully suggest that James Starkey has the causal direction of pay for performance backwards. We should not offer performance pay to teachers under the assumption that they will work harder for more money. We should offer performance pay to outstanding teachers and educational leaders because they deserve it.

GET OUT YOUR POM-POMS: PREP ASSEMBLY

As a retired NEA member, I get their monthly Works4Me e-newsletter, a cheery little number usually dedicated to small, homey tips and tricks for making a classroom run more smoothly—items on the order of inexpensive (but cute!) bulletins boards and what to do when those darned kids forget their pencils.

I skim W4M because I want to know what’s important to teachers, what they care deeply about—enough to share with a million of their colleagues. The well-established gap between practice and policy is usually on full display, but I hold out hope, every month, that Works4Me will feature a hard-hitting column on six ways to retain promising novice colleagues, or a creative lesson on inspiring civic awareness and responsibility in high school juniors. But no.

This month’s Works4Me left me slack-jawed, however. The lead article was titled “Peppy Test Prep.” Quoting:

"We have a pep assembly for the third and fourth graders a couple of days before standardized testing starts. Two teachers pretend they are cheerleaders and shake pompoms as they give a ‘pep’ talk about doing a good job on the tests, getting a good night's rest, etc. We have three teachers sit in desks and pretend to be examples of how not to take the test. One keeps turning around and bothering his neighbor, one cries, and one is not paying attention to directions.”

If I had any doubt about the piece being legitimate, the use of the phrase “bothering his neighbor” was pure teacher-speak. This was the real deal, sent from a teacher in South Dakota, who felt that a good dose of, unh, pep was the ticket to raising student achievement, and was generously sharing some bright ideas on effective ways to boost those all-important scores:

“Another teacher is showing the ‘right’ way to take the test. Breakfast is provided for the students and the teachers/helpers on testing mornings. We also borrow an archway from the local hardware store and put Christmas lights on it with a sign that says, ‘Entering Testing Zone’. We set it up in the hallway that leads to the third and fourth grade rooms. The lights are on whenever we are testing."

There’s a disclaimer from the NEA printed on the page—they’re just providing space for their members to “share” (and soliciting advertisers to pay for that space). Still—showcasing a member who feels that putting up the third grade equivalent of prom decorations and offering a special full breakfast on testing days is the right way to prepare kids for the rigors of standardized testing seems more than a little schizophrenic to me.

I live in union country. And I know that many—maybe most—of my teaching colleagues are marginally interested in the state and federal policies that shape their work. I understand--they’re busy. But blanket testing of kids beginning in the third grade has a major impact on the instructional cycle, curriculum development and resource distribution. We need a more thoughtful response than a pep assembly.

How about organizing members to demand that tests mandated by NCLB be spaced throughout the school year to minimize disruption to the instructional flow and actually assess progress? Why not lobby for teams of third grade teachers to write the tests, to ensure their alignment to reasonable but challenging third-grade skills and knowledge? And if a good breakfast makes such a difference in academic success, why isn’t the NEA sending out articles on rallying the community to feed kids every morning?

GET OUT YOUR POM-POMS: PREP ASSEMBLY

As a retired NEA member, I get their monthly Works4Me e-newsletter, a cheery little number usually dedicated to small, homey tips and tricks for making a classroom run more smoothly—items on the order of inexpensive (but cute!) bulletins boards and what to do when those darned kids forget their pencils.

I skim W4M because I want to know what’s important to teachers, what they care deeply about—enough to share with a million of their colleagues. The well-established gap between practice and policy is usually on full display, but I hold out hope, every month, that Works4Me will feature a hard-hitting column on six ways to retain promising novice colleagues, or a creative lesson on inspiring civic awareness and responsibility in high school juniors. But no.

This month’s Works4Me left me slack-jawed, however. The lead article was titled “Peppy Test Prep.” Quoting:

"We have a pep assembly for the third and fourth graders a couple of days before standardized testing starts. Two teachers pretend they are cheerleaders and shake pompoms as they give a ‘pep’ talk about doing a good job on the tests, getting a good night's rest, etc. We have three teachers sit in desks and pretend to be examples of how not to take the test. One keeps turning around and bothering his neighbor, one cries, and one is not paying attention to directions.”

If I had any doubt about the piece being legitimate, the use of the phrase “bothering his neighbor” was pure teacher-speak. This was the real deal, sent from a teacher in South Dakota, who felt that a good dose of, unh, pep was the ticket to raising student achievement, and was generously sharing some bright ideas on effective ways to boost those all-important scores:

“Another teacher is showing the ‘right’ way to take the test. Breakfast is provided for the students and the teachers/helpers on testing mornings. We also borrow an archway from the local hardware store and put Christmas lights on it with a sign that says, ‘Entering Testing Zone’. We set it up in the hallway that leads to the third and fourth grade rooms. The lights are on whenever we are testing."

There’s a disclaimer from the NEA printed on the page—they’re just providing space for their members to “share” (and soliciting advertisers to pay for that space). Still—showcasing a member who feels that putting up the third grade equivalent of prom decorations and offering a special full breakfast on testing days is the right way to prepare kids for the rigors of standardized testing seems more than a little schizophrenic to me.

I live in union country. And I know that many—maybe most—of my teaching colleagues are marginally interested in the state and federal policies that shape their work. I understand--they’re busy. But blanket testing of kids beginning in the third grade has a major impact on the instructional cycle, curriculum development and resource distribution. We need a more thoughtful response than a pep assembly.

How about organizing members to demand that tests mandated by NCLB be spaced throughout the school year to minimize disruption to the instructional flow and actually assess progress? Why not lobby for teams of third grade teachers to write the tests, to ensure their alignment to reasonable but challenging third-grade skills and knowledge? And if a good breakfast makes such a difference in academic success, why isn’t the NEA sending out articles on rallying the community to feed kids every morning?

FEBRUARY DISCUSSION FORUM: Empowerment and the Failure of Progressive Education

[Note: this summarizes and extends on an argument made in this forthcoming article and in a book I am currently revising. Related discussions can be found at educationaction.org]

Perhaps to most, probably to many, the conclusions which have been stated as to the conditions upon which depends the emergence of the Public from its eclipse will seem close to the denial of realizing the idea of a democratic public.

--John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems

Fights for decent housing, economic security, health programs, and for many of these other social issues for which liberals profess their sympathy and support, are to the liberals simply intellectual affinities. . . . [I]t is not their children who are sick; it is not they who are working with the specter of unemployment hanging over their heads.

--Saul Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals

The field of education is often a decade or more behind intellectual developments in other fields. It is perhaps for this reason that the full impact of revisionist histories of progressivism (e.g., Fink, McGerr, Rauchway, Sinyai, Southern, Stromquist) has yet to emerge in our writings. It is important to understand, however, that the cumulative impact of this new work represents a fundamental challenge to the proponents of progressive democratic education. What these books show is the extent to which the progressives were trapped within the horizon of their own privileged experience. Collectively, with more or less sophistication, they developed a vision of a democratic society that expressed the utopian hopes of middle-class professional work-sites, families, intellectual dialogues, and social gatherings. Few had any significant experience with the less privileged. And even those who did, like Jane Addams, held tight to a vision of a democratic society where everyone would be able to collaborate intelligently and caringly with each other, where stark facts of unequal POWER would cease to rule.

From the perspective of turn-of-the 20^th Century progressives, those with less privilege and education appeared much like children, to be taken care of until they grew into full citizenship by internalizing the advanced practices of democratic engagement that grounded the dreams of privileged reformers (so did the upper class, but they had less influence there). On this point, thinkers as divergent as Walter Lippmann and John Dewey were essentially in agreement, even if Dewey had much more hope and respect for the less educated. Everyone had much to learn, but the ignorance and practical limitations of the lower classes in terms of their capacity for true democratic participation was a if not the crucial impediment to true democracy.

The progressives did accomplish much that was significant for the impoverished in America. But the key word is FOR. It is difficult to point to any significant accomplishments in actually empowering people who looked and spoke and acted differently than them.

Progressive educators today are the inheritors of the progressivism of yesterday. The focus of progressive education research is on making our classrooms places for holistic learning and collaborative engagement. And these are quite wonderful goals. But they have little or nothing to do with empowerment. The fact is that skills for collaborating with equals are only useful when one is working with equals.

(The progressive dream of our society as a room full of people from different places and experiences that all learn to work together and benefit from their unique capacities is increasingly proving to be just that: a dream. To his own chagrin, Robert Putnam of “Bowling Alone” fame found that relational “social capital” is built most effectively in places where people are similar, not where they are different—he sat on this data for quite a while to see if he could figure out how to interpret it differently, and he couldn’t. Research on power inequalities in classrooms indicates that one achieves some equality of participation not when you treat the less powerful like unique individuals but instead when you “empower” them as representatives of particular groups.)

The heroes education scholars look to are people who think and act like we do. We have generally failed to be self-critical enough to ask why we find particular approaches to democracy and inequality compelling. We look to Dewey, but almost completely avoid what Gramsci would call the “organic intellectuals” of labor movement and the field of community organizing.

The Civil Rights Movement is a perfect example. The collaborative, non-hierarchical visions of Ella Baker and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the similar vision of Myles Horton and the Highlander School are often held up as shining examples of democratic empowerment. Almost always obscured is the fact that the leaders of these groups represented the educated elite, mostly from the North. Further ignored is the fact that SNCC fell apart when indigenous working-class members began to assert themselves and their distinct cultural model of empowerment. It is at least arguable that many of the most effective actions of the Movement in the South emerged more out of these indigenous practices than from Baker and Robert Moses’s SNCC or Horton’s Highlander (see Hill).

Of course SNCC and Highlander were critically important. And Dewey was no ignoramus. Instead the key point is that these progressive visions are most useful as supplements to practices of collective empowerment that have been developed in contexts of inequality. Ironically, there is no real way to understand the real usefulness of these progressive visions until we can honestly bring them together with working-class and other models of empowerment on some level of equality. Each side, I believe (and there are more than two sides, here) has the potential to inform the other. But we can’t do this if we know little or nothing about the alternatives to progressivism that progressivism might inform.

Empowerment for those on the bottom is a collective and not an individual accomplishment. The problem is not a lack of knowledge. Even the most profound critical examination of oppressive social forces is not of much use if you don’t know what to do about what you have learned. (In fact, knowledge of this kind, by itself, is often quite disempowering.)

There is a paradox, here, of course. On the one hand we need to be more respectful to indigenous practices and ways of seeing. We need to seek out and value “organic intellectuals” who reflect the best and most effective practices of these communities. On the other hand, there is much too little happening to contest oppression and inequality in America. There are, in fact, skills that people in oppressed contexts need to learn if they are even going to begin to resist.

The problem with progressives was not that they wanted to teach people who needed to learn. The problem was that they tried to make “others” into mini-versions of themselves.

In the end, I think one useful criteria would be: what is the minimum that people need to learn for them to become empowered? What is the smallest intervention in someone else’s culture that we can make that will actually be effective? I am not under the illusion that these are easy questions to answer.

We know this, at least:

Many of our children grow up in cages; lie in bathtubs at night in fear of stray bullets; curl themselves into fetal balls from the gut-wrenching terror of post traumatic stress disorder; steel themselves from the pain of rotting teeth, wake coughing at night from treatable asthma; and tolerate school as long as they can with the full knowledge that it won’t do much for them just as it didn’t for their parents and neighbors.

These kids are not hopeless victims. They are often quite sophisticated in their analyses of their own conditions. But in most cases they also don’t really know what to do to change the futures they can see so clearly ahead of them.

So, a call to action:

1) Middle-class, professional education scholars should take some time to consider the possibility that we find progressive visions of education compelling because of who we culturally are as much as because of some inherent relevance in these theories and practices themselves. (Note: I include most scholars from working-class backgrounds in this broad call—success in any cultural milieu requires people to take on the characteristics valued there. Counter-intuitively, it may in fact be true that resisting middle-class ways of thinking is easier, in a pragmatic sense, for those of us who are the most thoroughly initiated into this culture in the first place. No one will ever accuse people like myself of not being able to play the academic game.)

2) Every once in a while, all of us should reflect on the fact that, regardless of how pissed off we are that we didn’t get much of a raise this year, we are some of the most privileged people ever to walk on this planet. In what ways does this privilege affect our work on a daily basis?

3) We should acknowledge that schools are usually places where less privileged parents feel unsafe and judged. Schools are not likely places for scholars, teachers, and working-class people to meet on any level of equality.

4) Education scholars whose work is not relevant to student and community empowerment should stop for a moment and justify to themselves why they have chosen the topics and focus they have. (You don’t need to justify this to someone else, just to yourself). Repeat as necessary.

5) Courses on the history and philosophy and sociology of education, at the least, should include works from the world of community and union organizing that reflect visions of education linked directly to collective empowerment from the perspective of impoverished and working-class people.

6) Graduate students should be encouraged to look beyond traditional visions of “learning” and “democratic education” to explore practices of empowerment focused on collective action. Ask them: “Who will this help and how?” “Maybe this will help kids do math better, but will that fact really help them much in their lives?” “Is education about ‘learning’ or about life success? And if it isn’t about life success, then why bother?” (Of course, it is possible to use mathematics education in empowering ways (see Moses). Again, in the end they need to justify it to themselves, not to established scholars, although established scholars may need to choose who they have the time to work with).

7) Scholars at top universities should explore innovative ways to find people who may not have great GRE scores but may have the experience and inner fortitude to produce unique and powerful work that can shift the field.

8) We should ditch the term “social justice.” Social justice is a goal, not a practice. You don’t teach social justice, you teach practices that will help you achieve social justice. Focusing on social justice often allows scholars to spin wonderful utopian visions of a beautiful world without thinking concretely about how it will be achieved.

9) The field of education as a whole should support a range of creative efforts that explore how more effective practices of student empowerment might be initiated in traditional public schools given the severe limitations such efforts will inevitably face. These efforts might include ways of concealing the teaching of practices of leadership and collective action within efforts that at least seem non-threatening to the powerful.

10) Scholars working in alternative education settings that can allow more radical efforts should explore ways for engaging students more directly in social action projects in ways that might educate them about how to resist power and oppression. (The fact is, students should be required in every school to master practices of community empowerment just as they are required to master mathematics).

11) Schools of education should find a way to integrate efforts to foster community empowerment into their offerings. Most important would be the development of new or adapted programs that ensure long-term student enrollment in these areas. Only when there is student enrollment that requires the hiring of professors with expertise in community organizing and engagement can we hope to escape the limitations of “faddism,” especially given the increasing economic pressures faced by most universities. This would require a fundamental rethinking of the “charge” of schools of education. It would involve a willingness to embrace challenges of “education” that emerge in the community and not just in schools. And it would necessarily include the acknowledgement that significant and durable school reform is unlikely to happen in impoverished areas unless these communities are empowered to demand, supervise, evaluate, and maintain these innovations.

12) Scholars interested in these issues in schools of education should join together with scholars in other fields with similar interests to form collaborative teams to share knowledge and develop multidisciplinary projects. (Other key areas would include: social work, public health, sociology, urban studies, communications, etc. I’m currently part of a team developing a Ph.D. in Public Health at my university, and the group has agreed—so far—to focus on knowledge of community empowerment as a key goal.)