Chicago, British Columbia similarities
November 12, 2005

Substance:

I read with interest your long and insightful report on the long strike of British Columbia teachers, which may have some resonance for Chicago Teachers Union members as we come to face hurried-up negotiations for a new contract. In citing union busting in Canada by the provincial Parliament dictating unfair contracts, you missed an opportunity to relate it to local contracts.

No court ever imposed a back-to-work injunction on the CTU for “illegal strikes” before legalized collective bargaining or against teacher strikes anywhere after legal collective bargaining arrived in the 1980s.

The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act does not declare teaching such an “essential service” that the state will not tolerate strikes. In fact it says that courts may only issue injunctions against teachers strikes if it is proven that the strike threatens “health and or safety” and not mere “welfare” — a much broader term. Even then we know that the West Coast has had recent nurses strikes, as has New York City, with no penalties like jail terms and fines — though New York (later, AFT) president Al Shanker did once spend some days in jail for an illegal strike as the New York State public employees’ law has more anti-strike provisions (rather strange for a loyal Democratic state).

But here in Chicago we cannot point to our own situation as that good. Since so-called school reform began in 1995 with the passage of the Amendatory Act, only the CTU is barred from negotiating class size, curriculum, layoffs of teachers, charter schools, outsourcing of jobs, and student assessment policies (the latter subject dear to the heart of your editor, George Schmidt). And while teaching is not declared an “essential service,” CTU is barred from striking over impasse on these issues. The one alternative to a strike is non-binding mediation. Were we to strike over these “permissive items” the only thing to save us from a possible injunction would be the 35,000-plus teacher votes which both the Mayor and the Governor desire for their re-election s. And both face possible corruption charges which brought down former Governor George Ryan.

I believe that your excellent article on the British Columbia situation gives you a news peg to discuss our own less than favorable legal position as the present CTU leadership seems in a race to draw up premature contract demands. CTU must not rush to the bargaining table until there is a change in the law so we can negotiate on a full scope of issues, such as class size and layoffs, a right of every other teachers’ union in Illinois.

While the Illinois General Assembly has not imposed by law contract on us as did the British Columbia Parliament on its teachers, they have emasculated our bargaining rights which seriously erodes any power we might have over curriculum, layoffs, and discipline of teachers (to take just a few examples, of which others might be added).

Judy Dever and I have argued in numerous House of Delegate flyers that no long term contract is justified as long as the restraints of Sec. 4.3 of the law remain on the books. Having emasculated the bargaining process in the name of “school reform” the General Assembly is engaging in the same kind of union-busting as in Canada, but with slightly more subtle means. The consequences on teachers here and in British Columbia, however, may be the same.

Judy Dever and I would hope that Substance might raise the same issues, which I have addressed in this letter. In this case, you would not be taking sides with either the UPC or PACT because UPC signed two sweetheart contracts of four years respectively under this union busting law. PACT signed one four-year deal, which I believe cost PACT the 2004 election. As many remember, the UPC offered no alternative but to let PACT stumble, which it did, because UPC knew they were equally guilty.

Cannot we transcend recriminations to honestly address these issues as Substance did in its Canada article. While I am by no means an isolationist American without sympathy for Canadian brethren, I think we have some education and some lessons to learn here also while making a comparative analysis with British Columbia.

Gerald Adler, Retired CPS teacher
Evanston, IL

Edison school visit
October 24, 2005

Substance:

Today, I was taken on a tour of an Edison school in St. Louis by one of the Board members. I am sharing this with your readers, as I have shared it with those on Fair Test’s Assessment Reform Network (ARN). As your editor know, this posting there developed into a lengthy discussion of each point I raise below. Here are some of the things I noticed and noted from my Edison visit:

1) the teachers are employees of Edison, not the school district

2) the teachers are not union members; the Board member said that one of the unions could come in and try to organize, “But there would be no reason for anyone to join because all the teachers, at least the ones I talk to, are all really happy here.” Ergo, unions are only for unhappy people. They are not about securing workers’ rights, bargaining for better pay and better working conditions, and creating grievance processes for workers who are threatened with termination. I guess one might reasonably conclude that all unhappy people are fired, given that no one there would want a union.

3) they work longer days (two hours more than the other public school teachers) and longer years (I believe it’s one month more)

4) according to the Board member, they are paid more than other public school teachers (I have not confirmed this)

5) pay is inextricably linked to test score performance: better scores = better pay. Teachers, especially middle school teachers who have 100 to 150 students, already struggled before NCLB with the task of finding the time to reach each child on a personal, caring level. NCLB and the rise of the test prep curriculum makes it less and less possible to care about students. In fact, NCLB and these test prep curricula do just the opposite: instead of seeing students as people in need of care, students are seen as statistics. Each student, especially the students on the edge of making the cut score (aka “the bubble kids”), can potentially make or break the school’s progress towards AYP. And if the student does drop out? Well, that’s one less to worry about affecting your test scores. And if it doesn’t affect your scores, it means it doesn’t affect your wallet. So you lose a couple kids? Ah, well. We can’t save them all, right? Plus, you get paid more money.

6) teaching and learning is driven by benchmark assessment systems; Tungsten, a spin-off of Edison, is used internally by all Edison schools

7) the students were dominated and controlled in ways that were reminiscent of The Stepford Wives; they seemed utterly unchildlike, utterly joyless; they responded in automaton-like fashion to instructions from the teachers, e.g., in the middle of a math lesson, the teacher sensed some rumblings in the background and suddenly blurted out, “Hands folded! Everyone sit at attention.” All the students suddenly snapped into place at their seats, and the lesson continued. Most of the teachers taught at the students. There was no project-based learning or hands-on anything. The students responded in automaton fashion to the teacher. There was a lot of direct instruction. There was also significant amounts of “Guess What I’m Thinking” on the part of teachers. The students’ role was clear: obey orders, do not do anything that the teacher does not tell you to do, sit and be quiet. This was often taken to the extreme: in one case, a teacher had a group of first graders lined up for lunch. The boys’ line could not go forward because one of the boys was still wiggling. He had to become absolutely still before the teacher would let them go to lunch.

8) this degree of total control over the students affected the way that teachers taught; in only one of the six classrooms I visited did I see a teacher who seemed like she was having fun; the others were very short with the students, quick to pounce on any undesirable, uncontrollable behavior; they seemed more like prison guards than teachers.

9) Edison has two schools in St. Louis now; they are expanding these schools to become K-8; they are also planning on opening a third K-8 building and opening a high school. The stated goal — no kidding — is that children can stay in the Edison model for their entire K-12 experience.

Things to keep in mind:

1) none of the three AYP sub-groups at the school were proficient in reading this year. In fact, the reading scores were incredibly low: just 7.1 percent of the school met the proficiency level. That means that 93 percent of the kids tested can’t read or write at grade level according to the state test. Edison, Inc. says that its methods work, yet 9 out of 10 kids at this school can’t read or write at grade level. They say that we should judge them according to the test scores. Well, I’m looking at the test scores. They’re appalling.

2) in defense of the heavy discipline, the Board member said, “Sure, the structure of the Edison schools is a bit tough. Yes, we make the kids walk in lines wherever they go. But it works. You don’t have to waste six minutes at the beginning of class, telling Johnny to sit down and be quiet. And you don’t waste 15 minutes in the middle of every class, trying to get students to be quiet and stay on task. Even the very brightest kids can’t learn in an environment like that. No one can.”

But being quiet and paying attention to the teacher should not be taken as unquestioned and unqualified virtues in themselves. There’s something very troubling about white teachers telling students of color to sit down, shut up, and do as they are told. In a rigid structure such as that imposed by Edison, there is no room for student or teacher creativity or spontaneity. The only room for freedom of expression is either (a) do what the teacher tells you to do or (b) resist what the teacher tells you to do. Given the kind of power and authority structures that already exist in white-dominated society, it’s little wonder that students of color are tempted to act out and lash out. If they don’t act in this manner, then both the implicit and explicit power relationships and inequities are reproduced in the classroom: docile brown bodies controlled by powerful white bodies. This is even more troubling given the fact that no white, wealthy, suburban district would ever consent to a school that controlled its students and its teachers in this way. Indeed, these schools pride themselves in their individuality, their creativity, and the professional autonomy of their teachers, who are viewed as experts in assessing what is best for each student.

3) Is this really the best we can do? If Edison is the best we can hope for, then God help us all. I tutored an eight-year-old black boy at an inner-city public school. As with all black kids in the St. Louis City schools, he’s being taught to read through Open Court. In “Reading the Naked Truth”, Gerald Coles writes, “Putting an excessive emphasis on word skills might result in beginning readers not achieving competence in a variety of additional strategies of reading, strategies especially necessary for high-level material in later grades. An excessive skills emphasis that encourages children to see reading as ‘word work’ rather than as an experience that informs and excites them and fires their imagination could discourage enthusiasm for reading and thereby encourage aliteracy, that is, students who know how to read but have no interest in reading.”

In classrooms such as these at Edison, I see this deadening effect at work. Low-income minority children are being given the lowest of the low when it comes to a rich curriculum. The reading program is designed for one thing: to help kids pass the state standardized test. The rationale is understandable: these kids need help in “the basics” because they don’t get it at home. But this then leads to the creation of a curriculum that is nothing but the basics. No white, wealthy school — not a single one in the country — uses the Open Court curriculum. And no wealthy, white school is run by Edison — not one. It’s little wonder why this is the case: no wealthy, white parent would stand for these dumbed-down curricula. Not for a minute.

Edison and for-profit corporations like it signal two things: a failure of imagination and a lack of will. It’s hard to combat the realities of poverty and racism and how they affect education. And efforts that have been made in the past don’t have a lot to show for them. So we have to dream bigger. And we have to be restless about a solution. We must not — must not — stop at Edison.

Here’s where it breaks my heart: the little boy I worked with is an angel. He deserves to be challenged. He deserves the opportunity to explore books and create projects and pursue his interests. But he is not getting any of this because he is poor, black, and lives in the city of St. Louis. If he lived in my suburban district, he would have a different educational experience, thus a different life, and thus a different future. Why does this little boy have to have the effects of racism and poverty shoved down his throat? He is — quite literally — a powerless pawn. His future is already virtually assured. And he’s eight-years-old.

Peter Campbell
St. Louis, MO
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Time for folks to steam this Rice
November 11, 2005

Substance:

This Rice needs to be cooked in some steaming water, the old fashioned Black way. I hope you can share the Washington Post story below with your readers as we all prepare for the joys of the holidays. I also hope that some of you can begin writing about the Chicago versions of Condi Rice, since we certainly can see enough of them at City Hall and at the Board of Education. Are there others like her around, even here in Chicago as the Hawk arrives again?

Tim Galloway

Retired CPS teacher (Calumet, Kenwood, etc.)
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[What Rice Can’t See. By Eugene Robinson (Washington Post) Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Page A21]

Like a lot of African Americans, I’ve long wondered what the deal was with Condoleezza Rice and the issue of race. How does she work so loyally for George W. Bush, whose approval rating among blacks was measured in a recent poll at a negligible two percent? How did she come to a worldview so radically different from that of most black Americans? Is she blind, is she in denial, is she confused — or what?

After spending three days with the secretary of state and her entourage as she toured Birmingham, where she grew up in a protective bubble as the tumult of the civil rights movement swirled around her, I have a partial answer: It’s as if Rice is still cosseted in her beloved Titusville, the neighborhood of black strivers where she was raised, able to see the very different reality that other African Americans experience but not to reach out of the bubble — not able to touch that other reality, and thus not able to really understand it.

Rice’s parents tried their best to shelter their only daughter from Jim Crow racism, and they succeeded. Forty years later, Rice shows no bitterness when she recalls her childhood in a town whose streets were ruled by the segregationist police chief Bull Connor. “I’ve always said about Birmingham that because race was everything, race was nothing,” she said in an interview on the flight home.

When she reminisces, she talks of piano lessons and her brief attempt at ballet — not of Connor setting his dogs loose on brave men, women and children marching for freedom, which is the Birmingham that other residents I met still remember. A friend of Rice’s, Denise McNair, was one of the four girls killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. That would have left a deep scar on me, but Rice can speak of that atrocity without visible emotion.

She doesn’t deny that race makes a difference. “We all look forward to the day when this country is race-blind, but it isn’t yet,” she told reporters in Birmingham. Later she added, “The fact that our society is not colorblind is a statement of fact.”

But then why are the top echelons of her State Department almost entirely white? “That’s an artifact of foreign policy,” she said in the interview.

“It’s not been a very diverse profession.” In other words, there aren’t enough qualified minority candidates. I wondered how many times those words have been used as a lame excuse.

One of the things she somehow missed was that in Titusville and other black middle-class enclaves, a guiding principle was that as you climbed, you were obliged to reach back and bring others along. Rice has been a foreign policy heavyweight for nearly two decades; she spent four years in the White House as the president’s national security adviser. In the interview, she mentioned just one black professional she has brought with her from the National Security Council to State.

As we were flying to Alabama, Rice said an interesting thing. She was talking about the history of the civil rights movement, and she said, “If you read Frederick Douglass, he was not petitioning from outside of the institutions but rather demanding that the institutions live up to what they said they were. If you read Martin Luther King, he was not petitioning from outside, he was petitioning from inside the principles and the institutions, and challenging America to be what America said that it was.”

The civil rights movement came from the inside? I always thought the Edmund Pettus Bridge was outside.

I know very few black Americans who think of themselves fully as insiders in this society. No matter how high we rise, there’s always that reality that Rice acknowledges: The society isn’t colorblind, not yet. It’s not always in the front of your mind, but it’s there. We talk about it, we overcome it, but it’s there.

When Rice was growing up, her father stood guard at the entrance of her neighborhood with a rifle to keep the Klan’s nightriders away. But that was outside the bubble. Inside the bubble, Rice was sitting at the piano in pretty dresses to play Bach fugues. It sounds like a wonderful childhood, but one that left her able to see the impact that race has in America — able to examine it and analyze it — but not to feel it.

If there’s a “Rosebud” to decode the enigma that is Condoleezza Rice, it’s Titusville.

Why oppose military academies?
November 11, 2005

Substance:

For reasons I’m having more and more trouble understanding, some of your readers and editors seem to think that opposition to military academies in Chicago’s public schools means opposition to all military things everywhere at all times.

What are the reasons to oppose establishment of military academies in the Chicago public schools now? As everyone here should know, the CPS (which is already the most militarized public school system in the USA) is planning at least six military academies under the “Renaissance 2010” program, one for each high school “area”.

The main reason to oppose this expansion — and, in fact, to demand that these schools be eliminated — is that, no matter what Daley and Duncan and Schakowsky and others like them say about the military academies being good in providing an education and providing discipline, the fact is that the military academies are centers for recruiting into the military, at training killers and cannon fodder to be killed and wounded.

The government is having such a hard time with recruiting for the military these days that even a six percent or seven percent recruitment rate from the military academies (or the regular ROTC for that matter) is what they need and aim for.

Let’s be realistic. The government has made it clear, through its National Security Strategy document of 2002 and other documents. The U.S. is planning further illegal and aggressive wars to attack any perceived threat to U.S. domination in the world.

The war on Iraq is one example of the illegal and unjust wars the U.S. has in mind. It is completely in violation of international law for one country to attack another country when the first country has not been attacked first. The government of Afghanistan did not attack the U.S., nor did Iraq — nor has Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, or Venezuela. Nor did Grenada or Panama.

Not only is the U.S. government extending its military arm abroad, but the U.S. government has made it clear that it is preparing to rule by martial law here at home, to have the military run the society, as needed, and to deploy 70,000 extra troops for this purpose under the Northern Command. This plan, hatched under the Clinton Administration in 1996, is now in place. The government has announced plans for this, as well as plans for more wars abroad this year in National Defense Strategy and National Military Strategy documents.

Military academies and any other forms of military recruitment for these wars are what the government needs and is implementing. This is a key reason we must oppose the military academies as part of the Chicago Public Schools. Help stop the plans for military rule at home and more illegal and aggressive wars abroad!

Neal Resnikoff
Andersonville Neighbors for Peace, Chicago
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Arnold attacked teachers, unions... How democracy defeated Arnold’s demogaguery
November 10, 2005

Substance:

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s war against California unions began with a preemptive attack. In his State of the State speech on January 5, 2005, the Governor proposed eliminating the state constitution’s guarantee for school funding, eliminating traditional public pensions, basing teachers’ pay on “merit,” and tying teachers’ job security to student test scores. He condemned teachers who were “just showing up.” He talked about “corrupt people” and “too much union control” in the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency as if those two phrases meant the same thing. He called his opponents “special interests” seven times, as when he said, “This is a battle of the special interests versus the children’s interests.” He called a special legislative session and threatened that if lawmakers did not pass his “reform” package, he would take it directly to the people.

Schwarzenegger never intended a legislative solution. He didn’t even have bills drafted when he demanded that they be passed. He and his team believed he could sell anything in a media campaign. By the time he called a special election, he had dropped the merit pay and pension proposals, as well as another he briefly embraced for “combat pay” for teachers in inner city schools. He substituted an initiative to make it easier to fire teachers, and endorsed Proposition 75, intended to make it harder for unions to spend dues money on politics (and backed by Lew Uhler and the National Right to Work Committee). The centerpiece of his agenda was Proposition 76, which would have eviscerated the state’s school funding guarantee and would have given him sweeping powers to make unilateral midyear budget cuts.

The school funding issue undermined his popularity and destroyed his credibility. Adjusting for cost-of-living differences, California ranks among the lowest states in spending per pupil. In January, RAND Corporation researchers reported that long-term underinvestment has affected the quality of California’s public schools. When he ran for governor, Schwarzenegger had promised that the minimum guarantee for public school funding would be cut only “over my dead body.” This November, his Proposition 76 would have slashed minimum funding for schools by about $4 billion — roughly $25,000 per classroom.

His “special interests” theme backfired as opponents drew attention to Schwarzenegger’s $10,000-, $50,000- and $100,000-a-plate dinners and to corporate contributions seemingly tied to signing or vetoing bills that affected those corporations. California Teachers Association members wore buttons saying, “Students are my special interest.” The union-backed Alliance for a Better California flooded the airwaves with ads portraying real teachers, nurses and firefighters, talking about how the governor was attacking them. They tied Schwarzenegger directly to the propositions, declaring he was not the governor he had said he would be.

Labor worked together as never before, including AFL-CIO, SEIU, and independent unions. Union leaders who had literally never met or spoken developed close working relationships. With large blocs of union voters, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Alameda (Oakland) Counties provided the margin of victory for 74 and 75, but many rural counties also had strong “No” votes. For example in Lassen County, which went overwhelmingly for Bush in 04, all of Schwarzenegger’s measures were defeated. Proposition 76 was defeated in all but five of California’s 58 counties.

A major statewide poll released November 1 showed voters in union households opposing Proposition 75 by a three-to-one margin. “No on 75” campaign manager Larry Grisolano says that the key factor in defeating the union dues proposition was one-on-one conversations between voters and union members. The Sacramento Bee quotes him, “In the beginning, when we did our research, we saw that the voters were really confused, and we asked them how they would decide. We noticed people saying, I’m going to find a teacher I know and ask them what’s really up, or I’m going to ask a firefighter, etc.’ Toward the end of our research, people were saying, ‘I know I’m against this because I talked to a firefighter I know, and this is bad for them and they’re really opposed,’ or ‘I talked to a teacher.’ “

“Somewhere out there, a bunch of people with extraordinary commitment in a very purposeful way went out and told their neighbors how this affected them and why it was bad,” Grisolano added.

In the end, the Governor’s best hope was that low turnout might enable him to scrape a victory on one or two issues. His opponents had won the battle of public opinion, but elections are decided by those who actually vote. One of the Governor’s mouthpieces declared, “If people want to send the Governor a message, they should just stay home.” Alliance volunteers called over 1.5 million voters. Tens of thousands of volunteers (15,000 on Election Day alone) walked precincts. By the end of Election Day, 42.6% of registered voters had cast ballots, well above the 35% that might have been good for Schwarzenegger. His all-out assault on the unions had become a total rout.

George Sheridan, President
Black Oak Mine Teachers Association, CTA/NEA

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