CTA the Worst Union in America!

In Response to Troy Senik’s Article: Worst Union in America

Originally Posted on May 21, 2012 by admin

caindependentteachers.com

CTA spent over $200 million on politics in the decade prior to 2010. What should be an outrage to CTA members is that it was ONLY $200 million! That is a little more than 10% of their huge budget, where is the other 90% going?

Of course, it goes to a bloated CTA and NEA organization that has hundreds of very well-paid employees. It certainly does not go towards CTA labor negotiators or attorneys. Local CTA associations rely on teachers to do the heavy lifting on bargaining and negotiations teams, getting CTA negotiators only when absolutely necessary. Discipline cases and school site problems are handled primarily by teachers (stewards) instead of CTA attorneys (they only have 11 CTA attorneys on staff and actually say on their website that they would be too busy if CTA members were allowed to call them directly with questions…!).

California teachers pay about $1,000/year in union dues and 80% goes to CTA and NEA. Of the rest that stays local, a huge chunk goes to CTA and NEA anyway, in the form of conference and training fees for CTA and NEA events.

Teachers do have an alternative. They can decertify from CTA and be independent teacher associations. http://caindependentteachers.com/

Police, fire and many other public sector employees in California often do not belong to a big union, but rather pay much more modest dues to their local association, which uses those dues to hire labor attorneys and negotiators to handle the association’s needs. There are certainly problems with California’s economy and budget woes, but public employees did not cause the recession. Public employee associations that work collaboratively with the City, County or District they work for can and have been able to keep public services working despite the economy and the state government’s ineptitude.

CTA, though, is simply sucking money from teachers without giving much in return, other than helping perpetuate a broken system statewide.

   

Read the Article below or click here http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_2_california-teachers-association.html

TROY SENIK

The Worst Union in America

How the California Teachers Association betrayed the schools and crippled the state

In 1962, as tensions ran high between school districts and unions across the country, members of the National Education Association gathered in Denver for the organization’s 100th annual convention. Among the speakers was Arthur F. Corey, executive director of the California Teachers Association (CTA). “The strike as a weapon for teachers is inappropriate, unprofessional, illegal, outmoded, and ineffective,” Corey told the crowd. “You can’t go out on an illegal strike one day and expect to go back to your classroom and teach good citizenship the next.”

  

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SEAN DELONAS

Fast-forward nearly 50 years to May 2011, when the CTA—now the single most powerful special interest in California—organized a “State of Emergency” week to agitate for higher taxes in one of the most overtaxed states in the nation. A CTA document suggested dozens of ways for teachers to protest, including following state legislators incessantly, attempting to close major transportation arteries, and boycotting companies, such as Microsoft, that backed education reform. The week’s centerpiece was an occupation of the state capitol by hundreds of teachers and student sympathizers from the Cal State University system, who clogged the building’s hallways and refused to leave. Police arrested nearly 100 demonstrators for trespassing, including then–CTA president David Sanchez. The protesting teachers had left their jobs behind, even though their students were undergoing important statewide tests that week. With the passage of 50 years, the CTA’s notions of “good citizenship” had vanished.

So had high-quality public education in California. Seen as a national leader in the classroom during the 1950s and 1960s, the country’s largest state is today a laggard, competing with the likes of Mississippi and Washington, D.C., at the bottom of national rankings. The Golden State’s education tailspin has been blamed on everything from class sizes to the property-tax restrictions enforced by Proposition 13 to an influx of Spanish-speaking students. But no portrait of the system’s downfall would be complete without a depiction of the CTA, a political behemoth that blocks meaningful education reform, protects failing and even criminal educators, and inflates teacher pay and benefits to unsustainable levels.

The CTA began its transformation in September 1975, when Governor Jerry Brown signed the Rodda Act, which allowed California teachers to bargain collectively. Within 18 months, 600 of the 1,000 local CTA chapters moved to collective bargaining. As the union’s power grew, its ranks nearly doubled, from 170,000 in the late 1970s to approximately 325,000 today. By following the union’s directions and voting in blocs in low-turnout school-board elections, teachers were able to handpick their own supervisors—a system that private-sector unionized workers would envy. Further, the organization that had once forsworn the strike began taking to the picket lines. Today, the CTA boasts that it has launched more than 170 strikes in the years since Rodda’s passage.

The CTA’s most important resource, however, isn’t a pool of workers ready to strike; it’s a fat bank account fed by mandatory dues that can run more than $1,000 per member. In 2009, the union’s income was more than $186 million, all of it tax-exempt. The CTA doesn’t need its members’ consent to spend this money on politicking, whether that’s making campaign contributions or running advocacy campaigns to obstruct reform. According to figures from the California Fair Political Practices Commission (a public institution) in 2010, the CTA had spent more than $210 million over the previous decade on political campaigning—more than any other donor in the state. In fact, the CTA outspent the pharmaceutical industry, the oil industry, and the tobacco industrycombined.

All this money has helped the union rack up an imposing number of victories. The first major win came in 1988, with the passage of Proposition 98. That initiative compelled California to spend more than 40 percent of its annual budget on education in grades K–12 and community college. The spending quota eliminated schools’ incentive to get value out of every dollar: since funding was locked in, there was no need to make things run cost-effectively. Thanks to union influence on local school boards, much of the extra money—about $450 million a year—went straight into teachers’ salaries. Prop. 98’s malign effects weren’t limited to education, however: by essentially making public school funding an entitlement rather than a matter of discretionary spending, it hastened California’s erosion of fiscal discipline. In recent years, estimates of mandatory spending’s share of the state’s budget have run as high as 85 percent, making it highly difficult for the legislature to confront the severe budget crises of the past decade.

In 1991, the CTA took to the ramparts again to combat Proposition 174, a ballot initiative that would have made California a national leader in school choice by giving families universal access to school vouchers. When initiative supporters began circulating the petitions necessary to get it onto the ballot, some CTA members tried to intimidate petition signers physically. The union also encouraged people to sign the petition multiple times in order to throw the process into chaos. “There are some proposals so evil that they should never go before the voters,” explained D. A. Weber, the CTA’s president. One of the consultants who organized the petitions testified in a court declaration at the time that people with union ties had offered him $400,000 to refrain from distributing them. Another claimed that a CTA member had tried to run him off the road after a debate on school choice.

Weber and his followers weren’t successful in keeping the proposition off the ballot, but they did manage to delay it for two years, giving themselves time to organize a counteroffensive. They ran ads, recalls Ken Khachigian, the former White House speechwriter who headed the Yes on 174 campaign, “claiming that a witches’ coven would be eligible for the voucher funds and [could] set up a school of its own.” They threatened to field challengers against political candidates who supported school choice. They bullied members of the business community who contributed money to the pro-voucher effort. When In-N-Out Burger donated $25,000 to support Prop. 174, for instance, the CTA threatened to press schools to drop contracts with the company.

In 1993, Prop. 174 finally came to a statewide vote. The union had persuaded March Fong Eu, the CTA-endorsed secretary of state, to alter the proposition’s heading on the ballot from PARENTAL CHOICE to EDUCATION VOUCHERS—a change in wording that cost Prop. 174 ten points in the polls, according to Myron Lieberman in his book The Teacher Unions. The initiative, which had originally enjoyed 2–1 support among California voters, managed to garner only a little over 30 percent of the vote. Prop. 174’s backers had been outspent by a factor of eight, with the CTA alone dropping $12.5 million on the opposition campaign.

As the CTA’s power grew, it learned that it could extract policy concessions simply by employing its aggressive PR machine. In 1996, with the state’s budget in surplus, the CTA spent $1 million on an ad campaign touting the virtues of reduced class sizes in kindergarten through third grade. Feeling the heat from the campaign, Republican governor Pete Wilson signed a measure providing subsidies to schools with classes of 20 children or fewer. The program was a disaster: it failed to improve educational outcomes, and the need to hire many new teachers quickly, to handle all the smaller classes, reduced the quality of teachers throughout the state. The program cost California nearly $2 billion per year at its high-water mark, becoming the most expensive education-reform initiative in the state’s history. But it worked out well for the CTA, whose ranks and coffers were swelled by all those new teachers.

The union’s steady supply of cash allowed it to continue its quest for political dominance unabated. In 1998, it spent nearly $7 million to defeat Proposition 8—which would have used student performance as a criterion for teacher reviews and would have required educators to pass credentialing examinations in their disciplines—and more than $2 million in a failed attempt to block Proposition 227, which eliminated bilingual education in public schools. In 2002, the union spent $26 million to defeat Proposition 38, another school voucher proposal. And in 2005, with a special election called by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger looming, the CTA came up with a colossal $58 million—even going so far as to mortgage its Sacramento headquarters—to defeat initiatives that would have capped the growth of state spending, made it easier to fire underperforming teachers, and ensured “paycheck protection,” which compels unions to get their members’ consent before using dues for political purposes. (A new paycheck-protection measure will appear on the November 2012 ballot.)

Cannily, the CTA also funds a wide array of liberal causes unrelated to education, with the goal of spreading around enough cash to prevent dissent from the Left. Among these causes: implementing a single-payer health-care system in California, blocking photo-identification requirements for voters, and limiting restraints on the government’s power of eminent domain. The CTA was the single biggest financial opponent of another Proposition 8, the controversial 2008 proposal to ban gay marriage, ponying up $1.3 million to fight an initiative that eventually won 52.2 percent of the vote. The union has also become the biggest donor to the California Democratic Party. From 2003 to 2012, the CTA spent nearly $102 million on political contributions; 0.08 percent of that money went to Republicans.

At the same time that the union was becoming the largest financial force in California politics, it was developing an equally powerful ground game, stifling reform efforts at the local level. Consider the case of Locke High School in the poverty-stricken Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts. Founded in response to the area’s 1967 riots, Locke was intended to provide a quality education to the neighborhood’s almost universally minority students. For years, it failed: in 2006, with a student body that was 65 percent Hispanic and 35 percent African-American, the school sent just 5 percent of its graduates to four-year colleges, and the dropout rate was nearly 51 percent.

Shortly before Locke reached this nadir, the school hired a reform-minded principal, Frank Wells, who was determined to revive the school’s fortunes. Just a few days after he arrived, a group of rival gangs got into a dust-up; Wells expelled 80 of the students involved. In the new atmosphere of discipline, Locke dropped “from first in the number of campus crime reports in LAUSD [Los Angeles Unified School District] to thirteenth,” writes Donna Foote in Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches with Teach for America. Test scores and college acceptance also began to rise, Foote reports.

But trouble arose with the union when Wells began requiring Locke teachers to present weekly lesson plans. The local CTA affiliate—United Teachers Los Angeles—filed a grievance against him and was soon urging his removal. The last straw was Wells’s effort to convert Locke into an independent charter school, where teachers would operate under severely restricted union contracts. In May 2007, the district removed Wells from his job. He was escorted from his office by three police officers and an associate superintendent of schools, all on the basis of union allegations that he had let teachers use classroom time to sign a petition to turn Locke into a charter. Wells called the allegations “a total fabrication,” and the signature gatherers backed him up. The LAUSD reassigned him to a district office, where he was paid $600 a day to sit in a cubicle and do nothing.

Luckily for Locke students, the union’s rearguard action came too late. In 2007, the Los Angeles Board of Education voted 5–2 to hand Locke High School to Green Dot, a charter school operator. Four years later, as the final class of Locke students who had attended the school prior to its transformation received their diplomas, the school’s graduation rate was 68 percent, and over 56 percent of Locke graduates were headed for higher education.

One of the most noticeable changes at Locke has ramifications statewide: when Green Dot took over, it required all teachers to reapply for their jobs. It hired back only about one-third of them. That approach is unimaginable in the rest of the state’s public schools, where a teaching job is essentially a lifetime sinecure. A tiny 0.03 percent of California teachers are dismissed after three or more years on the job. In the past decade, the LAUSD—home to 33,000 teachers—has dismissed only four. Even when teachers are fired, it’s seldom because of their classroom performance: a 2009 exposé by theLos Angeles Times found that only 20 percent of successful dismissals in the state had anything to do with teaching ability. Most terminations involved teachers behaving either obscenely or criminally. The National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington-based education-reform organization, gave California a D-minus on its teacher-firing policies in its 2010 national report card.

Responsibility for this sorry situation goes largely to the CTA, which has won concessions that make firing a teacher so difficult that educators can usually keep their jobs for any offense that doesn’t cross into outright criminality. With the cost of the proceedings regularly running near half a million dollars, many districts choose to shuffle problem employees around rather than try to fire them.

Even outright offenses are no guarantee of removal, thanks to CTA influence. When a fired teacher appeals his case beyond the school board, it goes to the Commission on Professional Competence—two of whose three members are also teachers, one of them chosen by the educator whose case is being heard. The CTA has stacked this process as well by bargaining to require evidentiary standards equal to those used in civil-court procedures and coaching the teachers on the panels. One veteran school-district lawyer calls the appeals process “one of the most complicated civil legal matters anywhere.” As the Times noted, “The district wanted to fire a high school teacher who kept a stash of pornography, marijuana and vials with cocaine residue at school, but [the Commission on Professional Competence] balked, suggesting that firing was too harsh.” The commission was also the reason that, as the newspaper continued, the district was “unsuccessful in firing a male middle school teacher spotted lying on top of a female colleague in the metal shop”; the district had failed to “prove that the two were having sex.”

Another regulatory body dominated by CTA influence is the state’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC), the institution responsible for removing the credentials of misbehaving teachers. A report released in 2011 by California state auditor Elaine Howle found that the commission had a backlog of approximately 12,600 cases, with responses sometimes taking as long as three years. Because the CTC—which was created by an act sponsored by the CTA—is made up of members appointed by the governor, the CTA is able to bring its political pressure to bear on determining the commission’s makeup. In September 2011, for instance, one of Governor Jerry Brown’s appointments to the CTC was Kathy Harris, who had previously been a CTA lobbyist to the body.

The CTA’s most recent crusade for job security made clear that the union was prepared to jeopardize the financial future of California’s schools. Last June, it vigorously pushed (and Governor Brown hastily signed) Assembly Bill 114, which prevented any teacher layoffs or program cuts in the coming fiscal year and removed the requirement that school districts present balanced budget plans. The bill also forced public schools to prepare budget estimates that didn’t take into account the state’s downturn in revenues—meaning that schools could budget for activities even though there wasn’t money to pay for them. Since then, state officials have forecast that revenues for the 2012 fiscal year will be $3.2 billion lower than they were when the schools were making their budgets. Eventually, accommodations to reality will have to be made—at which time the CTA will, of course, use them to plead hardship.

Such pleas seem impudent coming from the highest-paid teachers in the nation, with an average annual salary of $68,000. For a bit of perspective, if two California teachers get married (not an unusual occurrence) and each makes the average salary, their combined annual income would be $136,000, nearly $80,000 more than what the state’s median household pulls down. That’s for an average annual workload of 180 days, only two-thirds of the average total in the private sector. Don’t forget retirement benefits: after 30 years, a California teacher may retire with a pension equal to about 75 percent of his working salary. That pension averages more than $51,000 a year—more than working teachers earn in more than half the states in the nation. And that’s just an average; from 2005 to 2011, the number of education employees pulling down more than $100,000 a year in pensions skyrocketed from 700 to 5,400.

With the state’s economy in tumult, however, prospects for the teachers’ retirement fund look grim. CalSTRS is now officially estimated to have about $56 billion in liabilities and about 30 years left before it runs dry, though many outside analysts think that those numbers are too optimistic. A report by the Legislative Analyst’s Office in November 2011 estimated that restoring full funding to CalSTRS would require finding an extra $3.9 billion a year for at least 30 years.

If California is to generate the economic growth necessary to mitigate its coming fiscal reckoning, it will need to retain its historical role as a leading site for innovation and entrepreneurship. But that won’t be possible if its next generation of would-be entrepreneurs attends one of the Golden State’s many mediocre or failing schools. And what little economic dynamism is left in California will be impeded if the union gets its way and the state increases its already weighty tax burden.

Meaningful change probably won’t come from elected officials, at least for now. The CTA’s size, financial resources, and influence with the state’s regnant Democratic Party are enough to kill most pieces of hostile legislation. For years, school reformers fantasized about a transformative figure who could shift the balance of power from the union through force of charisma and personality, taking his case directly to the people. Yet when that figure seemed to emerge in Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, even he proved unable to alter the status quo, with his 2005 ballot initiatives to reform tenure, school financing, and political spending by unions all going down to decisive defeat. It’s unlikely that salvation will come from Governor Brown, either. The man who originally opened the door for the CTA’s collective bargaining has remained a steadfast ally of the union, firing four pro-reform members of the state board of education in his first few days in office and appointing a new group that included Patricia Ann Rucker, the CTA’s top lobbyist. Brown also avoided including any changes to CalSTRS in his October announcement of proposed pension reforms, probably because he had learned Schwarzenegger’s lesson that irking the CTA can lead to the demise of a broader agenda.

Parents, however, are starting to revolt against CTA orthodoxy. Unlike elected officials, parents—who want nothing more than a good education for their kids—are hard for the union to demonize. In early 2010, a Los Angeles–based nonprofit called Parent Revolution shocked California’s pundit class by getting the state legislature to pass the nation’s first “parent trigger” law, which lets parents at failing schools force districts to undertake certain reforms, including converting schools into independent charters. The law caps the number of schools eligible for reform at 75, but if early results are successful, it will become hard for Californians to avoid comparing thriving charter schools with failing traditional ones.

The CTA is fighting back, of course. In 2010, when 61 percent of parents at McKinley Elementary School in the blighted L.A. neighborhood of Compton opted to pull the trigger, the CTA claimed that “parents were never given the full picture . . . [or] informed of the great progress already being made”—despite the fact that McKinley’s performance was ranked beneath nearly all other inner-city schools in the state. Several Hispanic parents in the district also said that members of the union had threatened to report them to immigration authorities if they signed the petition. Eventually, the Compton Unified school board—heavily lobbied by the CTA—dismissed the petition signatures, with no discussion, as “insufficient” on a handful of technicalities, such as missing dates and typos. Though the union’s power had proved too much for the McKinley parents, an enterprising charter school operator opened two new campuses in the neighborhood anyway.

Institutions like Locke High School, Green Dot, Parent Revolution, and the Compton charters are glimmers of hope for California’s public school system. Despite their inferior resources, they have fought the CTA not by participating in direct political conflict but by undermining the union’s moral standing. These organizations reframe the education question in starkly humanitarian terms: In the California public school system, are anyone’s interests more important than the students’? It was a question that the CTA itself might have asked back when teachers entered the classroom to “teach good citizenship.”

Troy Senik is a senior fellow at the Center for Individual Freedom and an editor at Ricochet.com.

Five Myths (Lies) About Teaching in America - Edited by yours truly.

Originally Published  2/29/2012
Myth #1:  Teachers make more than the average American. Their salary is not less than it should be.

Let’s take a look at those claims… the average teacher salary in the United States is $52,900 and the average salary for all workers in the United States is $52,544 so yes, teachers make slightly more than average. However, the average income for American workers with a bachelor’s degree or better is $77,293 (1) well above the average teacher.

Looking at total compensation (includes insurance, paid holidays, retirement etc.) the private sector average is $71,000 and the public sector average is $69,000.(2)

It should be clear that teacher’s pay lags well behind that of our similarly educated peers. It should also be clear why we have the paid retirement and insurance we do – it helps bring our compensation in line with our private sector peers. And we still lag behind our private sector peers.

Myth #2: Teachers should not have a “Job for Life.” The teacher’s unions protect bad teachers and make it impossible to fire bad teachers.

Nothing could be further form the truth. First, it is important to be clear on what teacher tenure is and what it is not. “Unlike tenure for university professors, tenure for K-12 teachers does not shield them from dismissal. Instead, it's simply a guarantee of due process — that if a teacher is fired, it will be for cause.”(3)

Teachers and their unions are not the least bit interested in hiring or protecting poor teachers. Nor are teachers hired for life. Teachers and their union are interested only in protecting good teachers from abuse and arbitrary firings and this requires due process. The fact that poor teachers can hide behind these protections is really a reflection of administrators who are unable or unwilling to clearly articulate a case against a poor teacher and that we DON'T have any valid standardized way of evaluating performance. Currently, many administrators who were poor teachers themselves that moved on  to get out of the classroom, subjectively write the final evaluation of teachers through a process where personalities and non-teaching agendas come into play.

Myth #3: We have to do something; we are lagging far behind other countries in education.

I do not know a teacher who does not believe that education in America has critical flaws. Teachers also believe that we are lagging behind other industrialized countries and there are grave concerns about our failure to keep up. However, how we come to that conclusion and how we measure ourselves against the world is flawed. (See the preceding article.)

The “Us versus Them” comparisons are flawed and causing grave harm to education in this country due to the reliance on standardized testing to measure student and teacher performance.

There are major issues with this comparison.

For starters, China, India et. al. Do not test every student, nor do they attempt to educate every student.(4) Schools in the United States (excepting private schools and in many cases charter schools) are required to accept and teach any student who appears at their door. This includes well qualified students, motivated students, unmotivated students, students with special emotional or mental needs ( read - not enough school counselors,) unprepared students, students with little support outside of schools, students who don’t speak a common language, the list goes on. Most of these students would not be accepted to, or be allowed to remain in most foreign schools. Up untell the Bush administration, most Americans were proud of this fact. Further, the fact that we have chosen to educate all children is the only socially progressive achievement we can lay claim to ahead of any other country.

This is in no way a complaint about providing instruction to these students or an excuse or even a claim that these students can’t or shouldn’t be taught, but simply a clear reason why the comparison of test scores is problematic at best, and faulty and harmful in the extreme.

Not only is the comparison flawed, it has led us to the point where we are basing our educational decisions on standardized tests and even trying to evaluate teachers on how well their students do on these tests. (5)

The problem is, a test does not provide information on how well a teacher has taught a subject, at best a test tells us how well a student has learned the subject. In the absence of other data, a test does not even do that reliably.

While there is plenty of research on the subject – enough to write a book – the simple explanation is this: a teacher cannot control all of the variables that go into how well a student learns. The support a student receives at home is far more important than what goes on in their school. How motivated a student is to learn will effect how well they learn.

Interestingly, China is attempting to rely less on standardized test and create a more American system. (6) Chinese policy makers are beginning to realize that teaching to the test has created generations of very good test takers who are unable to critically analyze and solve complex problems or creatively think of new ideas.

"We have just seen 43 states and DC adopt a Common Core curriculum that will have a Common Core national test (common “yardstick”) in 2014-15, and another name for that national test is “gao kao.” It will drive U.S. education for decades and we may never be able to get off of it. The American teacher was always unique in deciding what to teach, when to teach, and how to teach it…and the variability in creative questioning has gained us 270+ Nobel Prizes. (Score for China-educated doing research in China is zero…but that will soon change due to many who return after receiving a graduate education in U.S.) But now, partly from test envy and international ignorance, we have headed down a path to standardization in testing that we will not be able to get out of in our lifetime." (7)

Is this really where we want to head?

“But [the] intention is to use the Special Curriculum as a laboratory to experiment with a curriculum that will help all Chinese students, not just those who study abroad. Special Curriculum students may be encouraged to exercise and play, watch movies and read novels, engage in chit-chat and extracurricular activities. But in tests they do just as well as – or even better than – students who are given no choice but to study all day. This fact has profound implications for curriculum design and implementation in China. (8)

Scientific research and the experience of Finland’s highly praised education system show that a varied and flexible schedule that incorporates play and pleasure with study and work produces the best learners. Fitness and nutrition, music and arts, sports and games are not unnecessary distractions to learning but healthy supplements.” (9)

Myth #4: In this economy teachers are lucky to have a job.

No, teachers are not lucky to have a job.

This should not minimize the severity of our current economic situation, but unemployment is near 9% (10) meaning that if you selected 100 people at random 91 of those people would be employed. Having a job isn’t lucky, not having employment is unlucky.

In addition, many teachers worked very hard to earn degrees and employment that is relatively stable. Having a job now is the result of making good choices when selecting a career. Many teachers chose to forgo maximum profit for security and it is paying off now.

Myth #5: Why shouldn’t teachers be held accountable when everyone else is accountable for their performance?

Teachers are and should be held accountable. For good teaching. Not politically driven misconceptions by people without Credentials to even understand the complexity of issues. Bill Gates stole the idea behind Windows from Apple Inc, who had stolen the actual code for their PC interface from the scientists at Bell Laboratories with no repercussions. In spite Gates' many books,  Gates' is intellectually, experientially and functionally unqualified to comment on Education change. He hasn't taught one day in a public school. He could not qualify to teach. He dropped out of college. Leaving him approximately five years of college to even qualify.

Most teachers want to be the very best teacher they can be and that is impossible without being regularly and properly evaluated. It is difficult to make specific comments because how teachers are evaluated varies from district to district but it is fair to say that most teachers don’t have an issue with being evaluated.

However, teachers want to be evaluated on their teaching. Tying their evaluations and pay to student performance is unfair. There are far too many variables that are outside a teacher’s control. And unlike a manager in the private sector a teacher cannot interview potential students and pick the best nor can a teacher fire those who choose to ignore their responsibilities in school.

A teacher’s role is to teach the best they are able. To implement best practice and the best teaching strategies. To continually adapt to the needs of their students and to learn new ways to reach them and teach them. Additionally, an ability to form positive relations with most if not all of their students. As we all know certain personality traits and false expectations lend to negative impact on the learning process In those developmental years.


That is what a teacher should be evaluated upon.

A student’s role is to be in class and to complete the tasks a teacher asks – whatever those task may be – to the best of their ability. If a student does not do this, for whatever reason, they are not doing their job and they will not learn as well as they are able. A teacher does not control this, and no matter how well the teacher teaches a student who fails to perform their job will fall short of expectations and their potential.

1. “ 2011 Statistical Abstract,” U.S. Census Bureau, accessed February 23, 2011, http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/
2. “For public-sector workers, a wage penalty,” Economic Policy Institute, accessed February 23, 2011, http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/for_public_sector_worke...
3. Greenblatt, Alan, “Is Teacher Tenure Still Necessary?” NPR.Com, accessed February 23, 2011, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126349435
4. Compton, Robert, “2 Million Minutes: A Global Examination”, The Finland Phenomon, accessed February 23, 2011, http://www.2mminutes.com/
5. “K-12 testing,” Fair Test, the national Center for Fair and Open Testing, accessed February 23, 2011, http://www.fairtest.org/k-12
6. Schrock, John Richard, “Why Doesn’t China Get Off the Teach-to-the-Test System?” Yong Zhao, accessed February 23, 2001, http://zhaolearning.com/2010/12/29/john-richard-schrock-why-doesnt-...
7. Ibid.
8. “Education Reform in China: What the educators think,” OECD 50, Better policies for Better Lives, accessed February 23, 2011, http://oecdinsights.org/2010/03/19/education-reform-in-china-what-t...
9. Ibid.
10. “Table A-14. Unemployed persons by industry,” United States Department of Labor, accessed February 23, 2011, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/02/20/ravitch.teachers.blamed/index...
http://www.dianeravitch.com/
http://www.worldsalaries.org/usa.shtml
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http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Country=United_States/Salary
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html
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Compton, Robert 2 Million Minutes: A Global Examination (2008), http://www.2mminutes.com/

Tyack, David B. The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (1974)

Tyack, David B., and Elizabeth Hansot. Managers of virtue: Public school leadership in America, 1820–1980. (1982)

Archbald, Doug A.; Newmann, Fred M. Beyond Standardized Testing: Assessing Authentic Academic Achievement in the Secondary School (1988)

Alfie Kohn The case against standardized testing: raising the scores, ruining the schools (2000)

FOR EACH TIME A MAN OR WOMAN STANDS UP...

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and during those ripples builds a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and injustice." 
 given

Robert F. Kennedy"
narative of a speech given in South Africa

From - Narrative of the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty—to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. ... Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read." Frederick Douglass, aged about 10, after hearing his master say teaching him to read "would forever unfit him to be a slave."

What was the administrator's power to enslave the teacher? We think it was using terror to figuratively lobotomize our teachers so they would stop thinking. We propose that the solution that worked for the slaves, will work for teachers - READ. It will unfit you to be an abused slave and bring you back to your calling that made you want to be a teacher in the first place. We suggest you start with BREAKING THE SILENCE, the revolutionary book by Joseph and Jo Blase. It will not only help you see how this system insidiously controls your mind, but it will help you see what we are doing to children by not being the adults and taking a stand against abuse. Together we can sweep down this wall of oppression and injustice.

READ. READ. READ... Read our web site(s). Read the teacher stories. Learn the politics by going through the POLITICS section. Come back as many times as it takes to get through it and read new information each time. Our REFERENCES page will have a continually growing list of books and links that will help give you insight and support to stay in your power and not let fear drive your decision making. A critical mind is the only protection againt propaganda, a speciality of this system. Learn about your situation and about yourself and draw strength from this knowledge. Books and our web site will empower you. Visits other sites that offer support and knowledge to stay strong.

Learn who your enemies are. Yes they are real. As you read about the union and think beyond the hype, you will see that they empower our administrators to abuse us. There is a lot of information on this site explaining their priorities that do not add up to caring about teacher abuse, and instead prove that they have a vested interest in its existence. This information includes teacher testimonial about how they have let them down or even sabotaged their cases. Become wise and you will regain the reins for your own life.

Contact teacher friends who have stories to tell, and encourage them to send them in to us. The more we have, the more we have to be believed. Once believed, the system will be forced to change. This is all too outrageous and it only can exist in the darkness. Shine a light on it any way you can.

The courage you need is in you, buried under the scars of abuse that our school systems have so successfully created in you to keep you under their tyrannical control. If your district objects to the t-shirt, ask them why. If they have rules about all t-shirts, then wear them only to events where t-shirts are acceptable. If they object due to the message, ask them why? If they do not abuse teachers, why would they object to you being part of a group that wants to eradicate teacher abuse? Their objection to your wearing it speaks for itself. Let us know the name of the district that prohibits them. Don't be afraid to speak up about it.

Get your friends to wear t-shirts with the message. Get the message out as well as start breaking the silence. You will find many people who support ending teacher abuse once the topic is public. You can help make it public, and help yourself at the same time.

 Emotional support is very important and we find that family members can only hear so much about this topic before they stop listening. But other abused teachers welcome conversation about teacher abuse as it helps them heal too. Contact us and we will provide you with support buddies as well as give you support from our staff.

Tell everyone about our web site(s), and encourge people interested in donating to a worthy cause, to donate money to us. This might include businesses you frequent as well as family members. Everyone has an interest in the future of our country. This is important to everyone.

Contact your former university or college and make sure at least their teacher education department knows about teacher abuse, NAPTA, and our web site. Spread the word.

Students and Parents will benefit from all of the above. In addition, contact us for consultation regarding specific problems with your children dealing with our schools. From us you will get advice that is based on our professional knowledge, as well as our willingness to speak truthfully about what you need to help your child, or reality. You will not get appropriate advice from anyone oppressed by the terror, or lining their pockets with the failure of our schools. We are the authentic teachers that care about and know how to help children. If you have any doubt about the political climate of your school, contact us and we will help your through the intentional obstacles in place with our candid, practical advice. We will also match you up with a teacher informed in the particular area and grade level of concern for a phone consultation.

Turn to your religion and/or to spirituality to stay in the eye of the hurricane throughout this abuse. Some things that happen in this life cannot be explained. Teacher abuse seems impossible. Why would the people who care so much about others be treated so badly? The main reason it is happening is because it can. People have choices between good and evil and there is more opportunity in education for all the reasons we explain on the site. Wherever there is opportunity, there will be greed. There are just some things that can only be understood through spiritual avenues and if you haven't developed it before, you need to now. We will have many book suggestions for spirituality. Your religious leader can suggest books also.

AS WORKPLACE ABUSE ESCALATES

WHY DON'T WE WORKING PEOPLE CONFRONT IT COLLECTIVELY?

by Judith L. Wyatt.

We are all in psychotic denial when due to speed up on the treadmill of daily life we don't confront the assaults on our freedoms, and we don't admit how bad work abuse is getting. Presently, as things get worse, we hang on tighter to whatever we've been doing -- we do it harder, even though it isn't working, rather than to stop, look at the situation and take action to prevent what's inevitable.

1 in 10 New Yorkers Has PTSD

Trauma of Sept. 11 Lingers in Wide NYC Area

-- More than one in 10 New York-area residents suffer lingering stress and depression in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center, new research shows.

After correcting for background levels, the study suggests that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks resulted in an extra 532,240 cases of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the New York City metropolitan area. The study -- conducted two months after the disaster -- appears in the Aug. 7 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Many psychologists predicted that the trauma of watching the Sept. 11 events on television would cause a wave of PTSD to sweep the nation. The study shows no evidence of this, even though television watching was associated with a high degree of distress.

"That is a piece of good news for the country as a whole, but we find an important public-health problem for New York City," researcher William E. Schlenger, PhD, tells WebMD. "There is a substantial PTSD problem well beyond the downtown area. PTSD is quite high in all five boroughs of the city as well as in the suburbs of New Jersey and Connecticut."

When you are directly in it, it can effect you. Have compassion for others too.

You may be directly in a situation that causes PTSD - teacher abuse. Do not minimize its effects. Stay on top of your mental health by saying no to teacher abuse. You may think you can live in an abusive situation without consequences, but it has a way of seeping into your psyche unless you are proactive. That is why you have to learn about it, address it, and protect yourself by refusing to be a victim. Remember, even if you are not being abused, watching colleagues while doing nothing is an affront to you too. Also, the things you do to play it safe, and the compromises you make to stay on the good side of the abusers, slowly strangle your sense of power, making you a victim too. BE A SURVIVOR. 

Author Rene Dietrich describes Herself as: ART SOLDIER! Artist, Writer, Poet, Teacher, Scholar, Editor, Advocate for Students/Teachers, Education Activist, Emberrorist, Proletariate, Bad Speller with Joan of Arc Complex. Single mom with one very fine young son and usually a few strays in tow. I like books, readings, MAC (mad art APPs No Bill Gates), independent films (Baxter, Vagabond, wings of Desire, Dark City, City of God, Brazil) experimental theater, exceptional music: Cohen, Morrisons, Cave, Cale, Coletrain, Winehouse, VU, QT soundtracks, Miles, and Iggy.

A Pretext for Removing as Many High Priced Teachers as Possible

Written by Leonard Isenberg
(one of my civil rights heroes)

(For a national view of public education reform see the end of this blog post) 

Since the regrettable Miramonte child molestation scandal, the numbers of teachers that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is targeting, harassing, and summarily removing on bogus charges has exploded as Superintendent John Deasy and others in charge at LAUSD try to use this administratively allowed scandal as a pretext for removing as many high priced teachers as possible. This has created a culture of fear at LAUSD where those attacked tend to allow LAUSD to frame the conversation while trying to defend themselves against trumped up charges. This is a big mistake.

 Yesterday, when I appeared at the LAUSD Board meeting to speak against the proposed settlement of the Scot Graham - Ramon Cortines sexual harassment allegation, I bumped into LAUSD Head of Human Resources Vivian Ekchian, who asked me who I was. When I told her that I was a teacher who she had illegally terminated as an LAUSD teacher almost two years ago, she told me to send her any other information I might have to prove my innocence. 

 This is a perfect example of allowing LAUSD to frame the conversation. Under American law, I am presumed innocent until proven guilty, something that has not been the case for close to three years, since I was removed from my classroom. It is not for me to prove my innocence, but rather for LAUSD to prove that I did anything wrong that justifies my removal as a teacher without due process of law, which should take place in a timely manner to avoid the de facto punishment it continues to allow against myself and teachers who should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

 As I was not given a legal Skelly Hearing, where charges, evidence, and witnesses were presented by the District nor subsequently dismissed with a "verified" letter under penalty of perjury by Ms. Ekchian, who actually has no knowledge of the facts in my or any other teachers' cases she signed to dismiss, minimal due process of law had not been met.

 It is LAUSD that must fulfill its legal burden to show that I was guilt of a firing offense by a preponderance of the evidence. As I pointed out to Ms. Ekchian, the vast majority of teachers are not in the financial position to fight back against the coordinated assault that LAUSD levels against them, with the active and/or passive collusion of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) and their attorneys at Trygstad, Schwab & Trygstad. So why am I different, I asked her? Because, as I explained to her, "I have "f..k you" money sufficient to pay my overhead for the years LAUSD gets its expensive outside attorneys to unjustifiably protract the legal process. Most teachers who have been put on unpaid administrative leave pending termination do not have this luxury. All that Ms. Ekchian could say was that she found my use of the "f" word regrettable as did I. So I tried to put it into a context where she might better understand what I believe to be my justifiable use of this regrettable term under the circumstances. "Ms. Ekchian, if you were dealing with a Turkish official today in 2012 that continued to deny the murdering of one and a half million Armenians in the Armenian genocide in 1915, clearly perpetrated by the Turkish government, might you not use the "f" word too? Ms. Ekchian did not answer.

 To my way of thinking, vulgar is firing hundreds of teachers without cause or recourse to law. In my case or yours, if Ms. Ekchian or Mr. Ira Berman of Staff Relations, who was also sitting with her for hours in the LAUSD Board room, waiting for the Board to return from closed session, actually wanted to know more about my case or yours, all they would have to do is ask LAUSD legal counsel or the outside counsel they have hired at great expense to harass me and protract the process to let them see for the first time what evidence LAUSD has - or doesn't have - in any of the hundreds of cases against good teachers they are presently moving to fire. Ms. Ekchian chooses to sit and do nothing, which is probably what got her the job in the first place. Ms. Ekchian, Mr. Berman, and all the other employees of LAUSD are for the most part decent people, they just live and try to survive without making waves in the longstanding purposefully dysfunctional environment of LAUSD, where blindly following orders is the longstanding essence of LAUSD's change nothing philosophy, where no good act goes unpunished. If consequences, both good and bad, as well as external checks and balances against LAUSD's present unbridled power are put in place, Ms. Ekchian, Mr. Berman, and the vast majority of LAUSD administrators might actually do a good job.
 At the very least, they might even enjoy their work for a change.

If you or someone you know has been targeted and are in the process of being dismissed and need legal defense, get in touch: Lenny@perdaily.com

 NATIONAL EDUCATION REFORMERS LA Progressive Dick Price and Sharon Kyle http://www.laprogressive.com/ Dick and Sharon dick_and_sharon@yahoo.com Dick and Sharon are a pair of citizen journalists and information activists who were fed up with mainstream media. Rather than just kvetch about the media, they decided to try to become the media. So, together they founded the LA Progressive. Dick is the editor and Sharon is the publisher and webmaster, handling all technical aspects of the site. This site was launched in March 2008, with Dick and Sharon doing most of the writing. Today, a host of gifted writers contribute to the LA Progressive's daily offering which typically amounts to about 45 articles a week. Dick and Sharon continue to write for as well as edit and publish the LA Progressive and distribute its daily e-news each morning. 

 Jo Scott Coe Riverside, California Jo.Scott-Coe@rcc.edu www.joscottcoe.com Excellent Video Interview about Professor Coe http://vodpod.com/watch/4959969-jo-scott-coe-teacher-at-point-blank Assistant Professor of English at Riverside Community College and former high school English teacher. She is the author of Teacher at Point Blank and has been a teacher of English and literature in California since 1991. Her writing on intersections of gender, violence, and education has appeared in the Los Angeles Times as well as literary venues including Hotel Amerika, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, Ninth Letter, Memoir(and), Bitter Oleander, and Green Mountains Review. Her essay, "Recovering Teacher," won the NCTE 2009 Donald Murray Prize, and other selections of her work have received a Pushcart Special Mention as well as Notable listings in Best American Essays 2009 and 2010. As an independent researcher, Jo authored and published the most extensive study to-date of Adams v. LAUSD, a nearly 10-year legal case of student-on-teacher sexual harassment, in (Re)Interpretations: The Shapes of Justice in Women's Experience (Cambridge Scholars Press). Jo values the aesthetic, political, and socially transformative powers of literary narrative--especially to dispel unhealthy silences and witness cultural blindspots. She works currently as an assistant professor of English at Riverside Community College in SoCal, and her book, Teacher at Point Blank (Aunt Lute 2010), has been selected as a Great Read for Fall 2010 by Ms. Magazine. Punk rock? Yes. Hockey games? Yes. Coffee? Always black. Find Jo on the web at joscottcoe.com and on Twitter @joscottcoe. 

 Betsy Combier New York, New York betsy.combier@gmail.com Betsy Combier's blog - http://www.parentadvocates.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=488; This article is a jewel that chronicles the corruption in NYC's Dept of Education. She has accomplished a wonderful piece of journalism, and created one of the rare places where corrupt educational governance is chronicled and revealed. Professor Samuel Culbert Los Angeles, California is a professor at the UCLA Andersen School of Business who also teaches in the Education Department's Principals' Leadership Institute. Check out the following 3 minutes on ABC News:
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/conversation-performance-review-11126992 

 Stuart Goldurs Los Angeles, Califonia StuartComputers@gmail.com Don't send LAUSD Librarians to the Inquisition, send the downtown bureaucrats Tests, What Are They Good For? Absolutely Nothing! LAUSD students to attend school on contaminated land, again! Some schools teach only to the tests, so how are the students being prepared for the next grade and for life? New LAUSD superintendent adds six-figure positions to management team

 http://www.examiner.com/public-education-in-los-angeles/lausd-test-scores-up-to-failure-levels-what-are-the-students-learning Has been a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District for 30 years. He is greatly aware of the district waste, large bureaucracy, and other major issues of the time. He started his blog with the sole purpose of informing the world about the truths of education in LAUSD. E-mail him at: StuartComputers@gmail.com. 

 LAUSD has selected a new Superintendent of Schools Karen Horwitz Chicago, Illinois wccbook@gmail.com Former award winning teacher who co-founded NAPTA, National Association for the Prevention of Teacher Abuse, and wrote the book White Chalk Crime: The REAL Reason Schools Fail to expose how teacher harassment and terrorization maintains a system of deeply hidden corruption. Disposing of dedicated teachers forms the core of the "White Chalk Criminal's" agenda since dedication and white collar crime do not mix. Given that all agree that good teachers are essential to good teaching, a system that cannot tolerate good teachers is worthless. This is what we have in place. With Bernie Madoff-like leaders - he was as much about investing as our school leaders are about educating - anointed with unlimited power, including the ability to fill the airwaves with propaganda, education is no longer about education. It is about money and power for those who play a very corrupt game and with an agenda of privatizing schools so their power, profit, and personal beliefs will increase and take hold. (Privatization may have merits. NAPTA does not take a position on that. But privatizing a system that is rotten to its core - where quality teaching cannot survive, where a cover up of pretense that they do not know this despite so many of us reporting these truths prevails - documents that those advocating privatization cannot be trusted! It shows they want our schools for their own interests, not the children, nor the community.)

 NAPTA welcomes parents, teachers, students, citizens or anyone who understands that without a real system of education, we no longer have a democracy! Membership is free.  (Truth is we no longer have a democracy, if ever. What we have is a corrupt mutation of capitalism in its stead. Not born of freedom but of corporate and personal greed. A "Cult of Wealthy Personalities" as our chosen leaders. With one national religion, the worship of the dollar above all lesser gods) 


Go to: EndTeacherAbuse.org or WhiteChalkCrime.com. Become educated about what is going on. Jerry Mintz Director Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO) 417 Roslyn Rd., Roslyn Hts., NY 11577 For those of you who cannot wait for corrupt public education to be turned around, AERO offers an excellent source to get connected with viable alternatives right now. www.EducationRevolution.org info@EducationRevolution.org 800-769-4171 (domestic) 516-621-2195 (international) 

 Susan Ohanian Charlotte, Vermont susano@gmavt.net http://www.susanohanian.org She is a longtime public school teacher who, after 20 years, became staff writer for a teacher magazine and then went freelance. I've maintained a website of activism for nearly 9 years--ever since the passage of NCLB. People can subscribe to the website and then they get updates about new content. I answer all the mail I get through the website and with the answer, people have my e-mail. I also try to stir things up on Twitter, though I find this medium frustrating. I have a Facebook page--just so people can find me. I don't initiate anything on it, The website keeps me busy. http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=9593

 Susan Lee Schwartz Suffern,
New York,  Susan studied literacy education, English literature, and fine arts and holds a BA ('63) and MS ('65) from Brooklyn College, and has the equivalent of two master's degrees, earned in graduate studies of literacy, arts and education. She taught literacy skills and art, for four decades in NYC in elementary and secondary school. In 1998 she won the New York State English Council (NYSEC) Educator of Excellence Award for her successful teacher practice, studied by Harvard and the LRDC at the University of Pittsburgh for the New Standards research. At the end of her research, her unique curriculum was selected by the LRDC to be used in their national staff development seminars for school superintendents. She was among six teachers -- from among the thousands across the nation-- observed during the research project, and her teaching practice met all the principles of learning. In the nineties, she rose to prominence in national educational circles, while teaching at a new magnet school, East Side Middle School. The reading scores of her seventh grade students were at the top of the city, and on the first ELA, which two thirds of city students failed, her former students (then in the eight grade) were TENTH IN THE STATE. She writes often about what she learned about the genuine standards for learning, in an attempt to begin a national conversation about the authentic standards, so that there can be genuine reform. Her experience that ended her fine career in the NYC Public Schools has led her to write about the process that removed the top educators, silencing the voices of the classroom practitioners who would not accept anti-learning policies. Her essay here on Perdaily, is one that describes this process.

Read more as she talks about education, literacy and learning on her site, from the perspective of the experienced teacher-practitioner of pedagogy. She is the voice of dedicated and talented classroom teachers who know why the schools are failing. 

Her website is: http://www.speakingasateacher.com/Susan_Lee_Schwartz_(Steiner)_/index.html Joel Shatzky: Brooklyn, New York Joel.Shatzky@cortland.edu Professor of English Emeritus--SUNY, College at Cortland (1968-2005) Adjunct instructor-Kingsborough CC (CUNY) 2006-- ) Regular contributor to the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/searchS/?q=Joel+Shatzky Author of "The Thinking Crisis" with Ellen Hill (Authors Choice Press: New York, 2001) Numerous articles on education in Jewish Currents. Script-writer for three YouTube satires on educational "reform." "The Lessons": www.youtube.com/watch?v=D712J1V2Jsg&feature=player_embedded

"Numbers Lie": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57BRNLviVTQ "The Charter Starters": www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnrrw5CV3Gw Here's Joel's latest post about the low percentage of "college ready" high school graduates. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-shatzky/educating-for-democracy-t_2_b_821410.html

 Lorna Stremcha Havre, Montana http://www.endteacherabuse.org/Stremcha.html http://twitter.com/lornapstremcha lornastremcha.com callmescarlet.blogspot.com facebook HER STORY: "I know first hand the financial, personal, emotional and physical damage that can result when school administrators, the Montana Education Association and the National Education Association put their own interests above the students, teachers and the taxpayers of the State of Montana My files contain mountains of paperwork including depositions, declarations of truth, notarized documents and exhibits resulting from an arduous legal process that finally ended when the Havre (Montana) School District settled two lawsuits - a Federal suit and one filed in State District Court. These documents also include a letter from a union representative stating, " This is nothing more than a witch hunt." Yet the union continued to allow the school administration to harass, bully and bring harm to me. These two lawsuits resulted from a single incident that, had it been handled differently and under the light of public scrutiny, would not have snowballed into awards of more than $200,000 worth of damages. Funds that eventually came from the taxpayers' pockets. Ironically, as a taxpayer in Hill County, my family and I are helping to pay for the damages awarded to me. This covered the attorneys' fees. The settlement did not include my attorney fees, however the district, insurance and taxpayers paid the defendants attorney bills, which exceeded mine. The settlement was made on March 2, 2006.

"http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Jim-Taylor/125893225652 http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Jim-Taylor/125893225652 http://twitter.com/search?q=DrJimTaylor Lois Weiner Jersey City, New Jersey Professor, Elementary and Secondary Education New Jersey City University 2039 Kennedy Blvd. Jersey City, New Jersey 07305 drweinerlo@gmail.com Blog http://newpolitics.mayfirst.org/blog/5 

Democracy Now http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/3/educators_push_back_against_obamas_business RESEARCH INTERESTS Impact of urban school characteristics on teachers' classroom practice How race, class, and gender mediate academic achievement Teachers' work and the school as a workplace. Effects of changes in global political economy on teaching, teachers, and schools.

 (Para una visión nacional de la reforma de la educación pública ver el final de esta entrada del blog) Desde el escándalo de abuso sexual infantil Miramonte lamentable, el número de profesores que el Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) está apuntando, de acoso, y de la remoción de los cargos falsos se ha disparado como Superintendente John Deasy y otros a cargo en el LAUSD intentar usar esta vía administrativa permitido el escándalo como pretexto para eliminar a muchos profesores de alto precio como sea posible. Esto ha creado una cultura del miedo en el LAUSD donde t manguera \ atacado tienden a permitir que el LAUSD para enmarcar la conversación mientras intentaba defenderse de acusaciones falsas. Este es un gran error. Ayer, cuando me presenté en la reunión de la Junta del LAUSD para hablar en contra de la propuesta de acuerdo del escocés Graham - Ramón Cortines alegación de acoso sexual , me encontré con la cabeza de los Derechos Humanos del LAUSD Ekchian Recursos Vivian, quien me preguntó quién era yo. Cuando le dije que yo era un profesor que había terminado ilegalmente como profesor de LAUSD hace casi dos años, ella me dijo que le envíe cualquier otra información que podría tener que demostrar mi inocencia. Este es un ejemplo perfecto de lo que permite el LAUSD para enmarcar la conversación. Bajo la ley estadounidense, estoy presunción de inocencia hasta que algo pruebe lo contrario, que no ha sido el caso durante casi tres años, desde que fue retirado de mi salón de clases. No es para mí para demostrar mi inocencia, sino más bien por el LAUSD para demostrar que yo haya hecho nada malo que justifique mi remoción como un maestro sin el debido proceso de ley, que debe llevarse a cabo de manera oportuna para evitar el castigo de facto que sigue para permitir que contra mí mismo y los profesores que deben ser considerado inocente hasta que se demuestre su culpabilidad. Como no se le dio una audiencia judicial Skelly, donde los cargos, las pruebas y los testigos fueron presentados por el Distrito, ni posteriormente despidió con un "verificado" carta bajo pena de perjurio por la Sra. Ekchian, que en realidad no tiene conocimiento de los hechos en mi o cualquier otro de los casos de otros profesores que firmaron para despedir, el proceso de un mínimo de vencimiento de la ley no se habían cumplido. Es el LAUSD que debe cumplir su obligación legal para demostrar que yo era culpable de un delito de disparo por una preponderancia de la evidencia. Como he señalado a la Sra. Ekchian, la gran mayoría de los maestros no están en la posición financiera para luchar contra el asalto coordinado que los niveles del LAUSD en contra de ellos, con la complicidad activa y / o pasiva de Maestros Unidos de Los Ángeles (UTLA) y sus abogados en Trygstad, Schwab & Trygstad. ¿Por qué soy diferente, yo le pregunté? Porque, como le expliqué, "Tengo" f .. k que "el dinero suficiente para pagar mis gastos para los años del LAUSD recibe sus abogados externos costosos para prolongar injustificadamente el proceso legal. La mayoría de los profesores que se han puesto en licencia administrativa sin pagar hasta que se ponga no tienen ese lujo. Todo lo que la Sra. Ekchian podía decir era que se encontró con mi uso de la palabra "F" lamentable al igual que I. Así que traté de ponerlo en un contexto en el que podríamos entender mejor lo que creo que ser mi uso justificado de este término lamentable que, dadas las circunstancias. "La Sra. Ekchian, si se trataba de un funcionario turco de hoy en 2012, que siguió negando el asesinato de un año y medio de armenios millones en el genocidio armenio en 1915, claramente perpetrado por el gobierno turco, no podría utilizar la palabra "F" también ? La Sra. Ekchian no respondió.A mi modo de pensar, vulgar está despidiendo a cientos de maestros sin causa o el recurso a la ley. En mi caso, o la tuya, si la Sra. o el Sr. Ira Ekchian Berman de Relaciones con el personal, que también estaba sentado con ella durante horas en la sala de Junta del LAUSD, esperando a que la Junta volviera a sesión a puerta cerrada, en realidad quería saber más acerca de mi caso, o la tuya, todo lo que tendría que hacer es pedirle a un abogado del LAUSD legal o el asesor legal externo que han contratado a un gran costo para acosarme y prolongar el proceso para que vean por primera vez, lo que evidencia el LAUSD tiene - o no tiene - en cualquiera de los cientos de casos en contra de los buenos maestros que actualmente están en movimiento para disparar. La Sra. Ekchian elige para sentarse y no hacer nada, que es probablemente lo que le consiguió el trabajo en el primer lugar. La Sra. Ekchian, el Sr. Berman, y todos los demás empleados de LAUSD son para las personas decentes su mayor parte, que acaba de vivir y tratar de sobrevivir sin hacer olas en el ambiente desde hace mucho tiempo a propósito disfuncional, donde las órdenes ciegamente siguientes es la esencia de muchos años de LAUSD cambiar la filosofía de la nada. Si las consecuencias, tanto buenas como malas, así como los controles externos y contrapesos contra el poder desenfrenado de la actualidad del LAUSD se ponen en marcha, la Sra. Ekchian, el Sr. Berman, y la gran mayoría de los administradores del LAUSD en realidad podría hacer un buen trabajo. Por lo menos, que incluso podría disfrutar de su trabajo para un cambio. Si usted o alguien que usted conoce ha sido blanco de ataques y se encuentran en proceso de ser despedidos y la necesidad de defensa legal, póngase en contacto: Lenny@perdaily.com Los reformadores nacionales EDUCACIÓN LA Progresista Dick Price y Kyle Sharon http://www.laprogressive.com/ Dick y Sharon dick_and_sharon@yahoo.com~~V Dick y Sharon son un par de periodistas ciudadanos y activistas de información que fueron alimentados con medios de comunicación. En lugar de simplemente kvetch acerca de los medios de comunicación, decidieron tratar de convertirse en los medios de comunicación. Por lo tanto, juntos fundaron la progresiva Ángeles.Dick es el editor y Sharon es el editor y webmaster, el manejo de todos los aspectos técnicos del sitio. Este sitio fue lanzado en marzo de 2008, con Dick y Sharon haciendo la mayor parte de la escritura. Hoy en día, una gran cantidad de escritores de talento contribuir a la realización progresiva del ofrecimiento diario de Los Angeles que por lo general equivale a cerca de 45 artículos por semana. Dick y Sharon seguir escribiendo para, así como editar y publicar la progresiva Ángeles y distribuir su día por e-noticias todas las mañanas. Jo Scott, Coe Riverside, California Jo.Scott-Coe @ rcc.edu www.joscottcoe.com Video Entrevista con el Profesor Excelente Coe http://vodpod.com/watch/4959969-jo-scott-coe-teacher-at-point-blank Asistente de Profesor de Inglés en el Riverside Community College y ex profesor de escuela de Inglés. Ella es el autor de Profesor en Point Blank y ha sido profesora de Inglés y la literatura en California desde 1991. Su escritura en las intersecciones de género, la violencia y la educación ha aparecido en Los Angeles Times, así como lugares literarios, entre ellos Amerika Hotel, de Género En cuarto lugar, los dientes del Río, la Carta Novena, Memoria (y), Bitter Oleander, y Revisión de Las Montañas Verdes. Su ensayo, "Recuperación de Maestro", ganó el NCTE 2009 Premio Donald Murray, y otras selecciones de su obra ha recibido una Mención Especial la carretilla de mano, así como listados de notables en mejores trabajos de América de 2009 y 2010. Como un investigador independiente, Jo escribió y publicó el estudio más extenso hasta la fecha de Adams v LAUSD, un caso de casi 10 años de acoso judicial por estudiantes y maestros en el sexual, en la (re) interpretaciones: Las formas de la justicia en las mujeres La experiencia (Cambridge Scholars Press). Jo valores de las facultades estéticas, políticas, y la transformación social de la narrativa literaria - especialmente para disipar los silencios no saludables y ser testigo de ciegos culturales. Ella trabaja actualmente como profesor adjunto de Inglés en el Riverside Community College en SoCal, y su libro, Profesor de Point Blank (laúd tía 2010), ha sido seleccionada como una gran lectura para el otoño de 2010 por la revista La Sra.. El punk rock? Sí. Hockey sobre los juegos? Sí. Café? Siempre de color negro. Buscar Jo en la web en joscottcoe.com y en Twitter @ joscottcoe. Betsy Combier Nueva York, Nueva York betsy.combier @ gmail.com Blog de Betsy Combier de http://www.parentadvocates.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=488 es una joya que narra la corrupción en la Ciudad de Nueva York Departamento de Educación nacional (DOE). Ella ha logrado una maravillosa pieza de periodismo, y ha creado uno de los pocos lugares donde se narra la gobernabilidad educativo corrupto y reveló Profesor Samuel Culbert Los Ángeles, California es un profesor de la UCLA School of Business Andersen quien también enseña en el Instituto de Liderazgo de los directores del Departamento de Educación ". Echa un vistazo a los siguientes 3 minutos en ABC News http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/conversation-performance-review-11126992 Stuart Goldurs Los Ángeles, Califonia StuartComputers@gmail.com No envíe a los bibliotecarios del LAUSD a la Inquisición, enviar a los burócratas del centro Las pruebas, lo que son buenos para? Absolutamente Nada! LAUSD estudiantes asistan a la escuela en tierras contaminadas, otra vez! Algunas escuelas sólo enseñan a las pruebas, así que ¿cómo son los estudiantes se están preparando para el siguiente grado y para la vida? Nuevo superintendente de LAUSD se suma de seis cifras posiciones al equipo directivo Ha sido un maestro en el Distrito de Los Angeles Unified School durante 30 años.Él es en gran medida al tanto de los residuos del distrito, gran burocracia, y otros aspectos importantes de la época. Él comenzó su blog con el único propósito de informar al mundo sobre las verdades de la educación en el LAUSD. Su e-mail a: StuartComputers@gmail.com. El LAUSD ha seleccionado un nuevo Superintendente de Escuelas Karen Horwitz Chicago, Illinois wccbook@gmail.com Profesor galardonado ex cofundador NAPTA, Asociación Nacional para la Prevención del Abuso de Maestros, y escribió el libro de la delincuencia White Chalk: Las Escuelas VERDADERA razón por la falla para exponer cómo el acoso y el terror profesor mantiene un sistema de corrupción profundamente escondido.Eliminación de los maestros dedicados constituye el núcleo de la agenda del Penal White Chalk desde que la dedicación y la delincuencia de cuello blanco no se mezclan. Teniendo en cuenta que todos coinciden en que los buenos maestros son esenciales para una buena enseñanza, un sistema que no puede tolerar a los buenos maestros no sirve para nada. Esto es lo que tenemos en su lugar. Con Bernie Madoff como líderes - que era tanto de inversión como los líderes de la escuela tienen que ver con la educación - ungido con poder ilimitado, incluyendo la capacidad para llenar las ondas con la propaganda, la educación ya no es acerca de la educación. Se trata de dinero y el poder para aquellos que juegan un juego muy corrupto y con una agenda de privatización de las escuelas por lo que su poder se incrementará. (La privatización puede tener méritos NAPTA no toma una posición al respecto, pero la privatización de un sistema que está podrido hasta la médula -.. En la enseñanza de calidad no puede sobrevivir, en un encubrimiento de la pretensión de que ellos no saben esto a pesar de que muchos de nosotros la presentación de informes estas verdades prevalece - documentos que las privatizaciones defender no se puede confiar Esto demuestra que queremos que nuestras escuelas para sus propios intereses, no los niños, ni la comunidad) NAPTA da la bienvenida a los padres, maestros, estudiantes, ciudadanos o cualquier persona que entiende que sin un real!. sistema de educación, ya no tenemos una democracia. La membresía es gratuita. Ir a: EndTeacherAbuse.org o WhiteChalkCrime.com. Infórmese acerca de lo que está pasando. Jerry Mintz, director De Educación Alternativa Resource Organization (AERO) 417 Roslyn Road., Roslyn Hts., NY 11577 Para aquellos de ustedes que no pueden esperar a que la educación pública corrupta que se dio la vuelta, Aero ofrece una excelente fuente para conectarse con alternativas viables en estos momentos. www.EducationRevolution.org info@EducationRevolution.org~~V 800-769-4171 (nacional) 516-621-2195 (internacional) Susan Ohanian Charlotte, Vermont susano@gmavt.net http://www.susanohanian.org Ella es una maestra de escuela pública que desde hace mucho tiempo, después de 20 años, se convirtió en redactor de una revista de maestro y luego se fue por cuenta propia. He mantenido un sitio web de activismo desde hace casi 9 años - desde la aprobación de la ley NCLB. La gente puede suscribirse a la página web y luego obtener las actualizaciones de nuevo contenido. Contesto todos los correos que recibe a través de la página web y con la respuesta, la gente tiene mi dirección de e-mail. También trato de agitar las cosas en Twitter, aunque encuentran en este medio frustrante. Tengo una página en Facebook - sólo para que la gente me puede encontrar. Yo no inician nada en ella, el sitio web me mantiene ocupada. http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=9593 Susan Lee Schwartz Suffern, Nueva York Susan estudió la alfabetización, la literatura Inglés, y las bellas artes y tiene una licenciatura (63) y MS (65 ') en el Brooklyn College, y tiene el equivalente de dos grados de maestría, obtuvo en los estudios de posgrado de la alfabetización, las artes y la educación. Ella le enseñó las habilidades de alfabetización y el arte, desde hace cuatro décadas en Nueva York en la escuela primaria y secundaria.En 1998 ganó el estado de Nueva York Inglés Consejo (NYSEC) Educador del Premio a la Excelencia por su exitosa práctica de los docentes, estudiada por la Universidad de Harvard y el LRDC en la Universidad de Pittsburgh para la investigación de nuevas normas. Al final de su investigación, su plan de estudios único fue seleccionado por el LRDC para ser utilizado en sus seminarios nacionales de desarrollo del personal de los superintendentes escolares. Ella estuvo entre los seis profesores-de entre los miles en todo el país - observados durante el proyecto de investigación y la práctica docente, se reunieron todos los principios del aprendizaje. En la década de los noventa, se levantó a la prominencia en los círculos educativos nacionales, mientras enseñaba en una escuela magnet nuevo East Side Middle School. Las puntuaciones de lectura de sus estudiantes de séptimo grado se encontraban en la parte superior de la ciudad, y en el primer ELA, que dos tercios de los estudiantes de la ciudad no, sus antiguos alumnos (en ese entonces en el octavo grado) fueron DÉCIMO EN EL ESTADO. Ella escribe a menudo sobre lo que había aprendido acerca de los estándares reales de aprendizaje, en un intento de iniciar una conversación nacional acerca de los estándares auténticos, por lo que no puede haber una verdadera reforma.Su experiencia que puso fin a su carrera muy bien en las escuelas públicas de Nueva York la ha llevado a escribir sobre el proceso que elimina los mejores educadores, silenciando las voces de los practicantes del aula que no aceptaban las políticas anti-aprendizaje. Su ensayo aquí en Perdaily, es la que describe este proceso. Leer más como ella habla de la educación, la alfabetización y el aprendizaje en su sitio, desde la perspectiva de la experiencia docente-profesional de la pedagogía. Ella es la voz de los maestros dedicados y talentosos que saben por qué las escuelas están fallando. Su sitio web es: http://www.speakingasateacher.com/Susan_Lee_Schwartz_ (Steiner) _ / index.html Joel Shatzky: Brooklyn, Nueva York Joel.Shatzky @ cortland.edu Profesor Emérito de Inglés - SUNY College at Cortland (1968-2005) Adjunto un instructor Kingsborough CC (CUNY) 2006 -) Colaborador habitual de The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/searchS/?q=Joel+Shatzky Autor de "La Crisis del Pensamiento" con Ellen Hill (Prensa Autores Elección: Nueva York, 2001) Numerosos artículos sobre la educación en Corrientes judías. Guionista de tres sátiras de YouTube en la educación "reforma". "Las lecciones": www.youtube.com/watch?v=D712J1V2Jsg&feature=player_embedded~~V "Los números mienten": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57BRNLviVTQ "Los arrancadores de la Carta": www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnrrw5CV3Gw Aquí está el último mensaje de Joel sobre el bajo porcentaje de universitarios "listos" los graduados de secundaria. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-shatzky/educating-for-democracy-t_2_b_821410.html Lorna Stremcha Havre, Montana http://www.endteacherabuse.org/Stremcha.html http://twitter.com/lornapstremcha lornastremcha.com callmescarlet.blogspot.com Facebook Su historia: "Sé de primera mano el daño financiero, personal, emocional y físico que puede resultar cuando los administradores escolares, el Montana Asociación para la Educación y la Asociación Nacional de Educación anteponer sus propios intereses por encima de los estudiantes, profesores y de los contribuyentes del Estado de Montana Mis archivos contienen montañas de papeles, incluyendo declaraciones, declaraciones de la verdad, los documentos notariales y exposiciones resultantes de un arduo proceso legal que finalmente terminó cuando el Havre (Montana) del Distrito Escolar se establecieron dos pleitos-. una demanda federal y una presentada en la Corte de Distrito del Estado Estos documentos también incluyen una carta de un representante del sindicato diciendo: "Esto no es más que una caza de brujas". Sin embargo, el sindicato continuó permitiendo la administración de la escuela para acosar, intimidar y hacer daño a mí. Estas dos demandas el resultado de un incidente aislado que, de haber sido manejado de manera diferente y bajo la luz del escrutinio público, no habría una bola de nieve en los premios de más de $ 200,000 en daños y perjuicios. Los fondos que eventualmente llegaron a los bolsillos de los contribuyentes.Irónicamente, como contribuyente en el Condado de Hill, mi familia y yo estamos ayudando a pagar las indemnizaciones concedidas a mí. Esto cubre los honorarios de los abogados. El acuerdo no incluye honorarios de mi abogado, sin embargo el distrito, los seguros y los contribuyentes pagan las facturas de abogado del acusado, que superaron la mina. El acuerdo se hizo el 2 de marzo de 2006. "Http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Jim-Taylor/125893225652 http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Jim-Taylor/125893225652 http://twitter.com/search?q=DrJimTaylor Lois Weiner Jersey City, Nueva Jersey Profesor de la Educación Primaria y Secundaria New Jersey City University 2039 Kennedy Blvd.. Jersey City, New Jersey 07305 drweinerlo@gmail.com Blog http://newpolitics.mayfirst.org/blog/5 Democracy Now http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/3/educators_push_back_against_obamas_business INTERESES DE INVESTIGACIÓN Impacto de las características de las escuelas urbanas en la práctica docente de los profesores ¿Cómo la raza, clase y género mediar en el rendimiento académico Trabajo de los docentes y la escuela como un lugar de trabajo. Efectos de los cambios en la economía política mundial sobre la enseñanza, los maestros y lasescuelas.