July 31, 2007

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American Liberalism, Education And The Legacy Of The Civil Rights Movement: More On The Cesar Chavez-Charter School Controversy

Filed under: Education Labor by Leo Casey @ 7:55 pm

Sherman Dorn almost always has thoughtful insights into educational blogosphere debates, but he has completely missed the import of the controversy over naming anti-union charter schools after Cesar Chavez. Contests over political symbols — and the legacy of the civil rights movement and its leaders who have passed on are political symbols — are never just about the symbols; they are always struggles over very real and substantive political matters. Indeed, political struggles over symbols are a crucial dimension of contemporary politics, given the post-modern age of proliferating mass media. The point of informed blogosphere commentary should be to tease out the political content from the clash over the symbols, to make explicit what is implicit, in order to improve our common understanding.

Seen in this light, the Chavez naming controversy is one small skirmish in a much larger battle over the meaning and place of the legacy of the civil rights movement in the struggle to determine the future of American education. With the advent of the modern civil rights movement in Brown v. Board of Education, the struggle for equal rights under the law was inextricably linked to the quest for quality education for communities of color. A half century later, much of the promise of Brown remains unfulfilled and much of the civil rights agenda has yet to be enacted. But there has been some real victories and progress. Significantly, American political and educational discourse have been fundamentally transformed: political legitimacy now rests with the quest for equality. There is no clearer indication of this fact then the rhetorical approach taken by the ultra-conservative Roberts Supreme Court when it slammed the door shut on fulfilling the promise of Brown in the recent Louisville and Seattle cases: it wrapped itself in the mantle of Brown, claiming that its prohibitions of modest voluntary school integration programs represented the vision of that historic decision. Today, even the forces of reaction feel compelled to acknowledge that public consensus for racial justice, and to seek to appropriate for themselves the symbols of the civil rights movement.
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Home Day Care Workers One Step Closer to a Better Life

Filed under: Labor by Steve Perez @ 3:53 pm

28,000 home day care workers in New York City are one step closer to joining the United Federation of Teachers.

Home day care workers receive government subsidies to watch, care for, and educate children from low-income families in pre-school and after-school settings. They provide meals and snacks, direct safe play, and change diapers. They also play a role in educating the children in their care, helping with reading and helping young kids learn colors and numbers and older kids with homework.

In New York City, home day care workers make an average salary of less than $19,000 a year with no pension, health insurance or paid sick days. That makes them among the lowest-paid workers in the region.

The UFT and the community group ACORN have been working to unionize home day care workers for about two years. Why is this significant? It’s the largest organizing drive in New York in decades. Why the UFT? I’ll let UFT Vice President Michelle Bodden explain, in this guest post from Firedoglake.

“What does this mean for the UFT? Our union undertook the drive to unionize home child care providers for two main reasons - educationally, this is an extraordinary opportunity to work with children’s first teachers. Providers see children before they come into the public school system, and many of them want to prepare those children for success. Early grade teachers have a good sense of the skills and background experiences that make the most difference with young children. It is a natural mesh to combine the providers with the public school teachers and create a seamless transition for youngsters with the best preparation possible.

The UFT Teachers Center offers free classes for providers on infant/toddler development through preschoolers. The classes are extremely popular because providers want to learn more about creating high quality educational environments—they want their youngsters to succeed. Eventually, we can create a real leveling of the playing field—making a pathway for low-income students to gain the kind of rich vocabulary and other prerequisites that bode for success in school and in life.

The other reason is exactly the same as the reason why this is a great event for the union movement in general: It is our mission to improve the lives of working people, not just the members we have now, but all working people. Many of the gains of labor, from the minimum wage to a defined workweek, extend to millions of workers who are not in unions.”

After counting union cards from more than 12,000 home day care workers, the New York State Employment Relations Board has certified that the UFT and ACORN have surpassed the margin required for the workers to hold an election to join a union. The next step is for the State Employment Relations Board to schedule an election; we expect that election to take place in late August.

I’ll close this post out with some words from UFT President Randi Weingarten:

“This is a critical milestone in the journey to get New York City’s 28,000 home day care providers the respect and wages they need and give the children in their watch the care they deserve. Now the teachers’ union will move to the next phase of our campaign to become the New York City providers’ elected labor representative and build the organization necessary for effective representation.”

Look for your chance to help get-out-the-vote with rallies, phonebanking and door-to-door campaigning by the end of August.

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Teacher News of the Day

Filed under: Roundup by Steve Perez @ 2:19 pm

Crucial Lawmaker Outlines Changes to Education Law - “The chairman of the House education committee, an original architect of the federal No Child Left Behind law, said Monday that he wanted to change the law so that annual reading and math tests would not be the sole measure of school performance, but that other indicators like high school graduation rates and test scores in other subjects would also be taken into account.” New York Times

Democrats’ Field Creates Pleasant Predicament for Unions - “Union leaders say they are so happy with the Democratic presidential aspirants, though unsure of whom to support, that they are unlikely to endorse any of them before the primaries next year.” New York Times, more at SirotaBlog

Klein Sets a Record - “It’s been five years since Mayor Bloomberg announced the appointment of Joel Klein - a former federal anti-trust prosecutor and corporate CEO - as his new schools chancellor. Five years is a lifetime in that post: Not one of his 10 predecessors held it that long since it was created back in 1970. Congratulations are in order. But what accounts for this chancellor’s longevity? Klein’s management skills are manifest, but some - though by no means all - of his predecessors were equally talented. The vital difference is mayoral control of the schools.” New York Post

July 27, 2007

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Teacher News of the Day

Filed under: Roundup by Steve Perez @ 10:47 am

Cell phone veto on tap (second item down) - “Mayor Bloomberg vowed yesterday to veto a City Council bill that softens his cellphone ban in public schools.” New York Daily News, more in the New York Sun, and be sure to read yesterday’s guest blog post on the cell phone ban by Seth Pearce from the NYC Student Union

By 2009, Mayor’s Control Of Schools Could End - “Lawmakers and interest groups are crafting plans to weaken or end mayoral control of the city’s public schools once Mayor Bloomberg leaves office as voter support for shared power grows.” New York Sun, more in the New York Times City Room and the New York Post

Klein Plays Faves: Foes - “Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is favoring some of the best schools when awarding special grants meant to aid the worst in the system, an advocacy group charged yesterday.” New York Post

HS Math = Good Science - “Students who had more math courses in high school did better in all types of science once they got to college, researchers say in today’s edition of the journal Science.” New York Post, here’s the article summary in Science

July 26, 2007

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Students and the Cell Phone Ban

Filed under: Education Guest Bloggers by Seth Pearce @ 2:18 pm

[Editor's note: With the results of this morning's poll, I asked Seth Pearce from the NYC Student Union to blog about the New York City Council's vote to reverse the cellphone ban. Seth is one of the student leaders opposed to the cell phone ban.]

Today, as a student, I would like to applaud the City Council’s decision to let students have their cell phones during the commute to and from school. I am glad that it has become clear to them that for us students, this is not a matter of convenience but a matter of safety.

Plainly, students should not be scared to go to school. Just as our teachers, administrators and School Safety Agents work every day to keep us safe inside, City policy should protect us outside the walls of the school building. A student should not have to be afraid that in the event of an emergency, they will be isolated and imperiled because they were forced to leave their cell phones at home.

Second, I want to point out that this is an issue that has really riled up the students of New York City. This is an issue that, in Spring 2006, brought together over 100 students at LaGuardia High School to say that they would not enter the building in the event of a random scan in which cell phones were confiscated. This is an issue that brought students together from schools in every borough to the New York City Student Union’s first meeting, in September 2006, to say that it is time for students to have a say in the policies written about them.

Most importantly, this is an issue that keeps us students at a distance from our schools and our education.

There has been a lot of talk about how this ban affects the relationship between students and teachers. Some critics have said that a lift of the cell phone ban would pit students against their teachers, turning teachers into police officers. Although it may present a challenge, it is one that thoughtful teachers and school administrators can manage. As the UFT said when it voted to oppose the policy:

In lieu of banning the possession of cell phones outright, each school should develop and enforce a policy prohibiting cell phone use by students in the school building.

Even at the grassroots level, teachers have supported students in their crusade against the cell phone ban. At the aforementioned LaGuardia meeting, a teacher who was present suggested that students place their cell phones on their desks during a test to ensure the integrity of the test.

When students are asked, “What is wrong with the NYC education system today?” many of them will answer, “the cell phone ban.” When faced with a rule that students feel is such a threat to their safety and security, students are likely to direct their fear and anger toward the Department of Education, their schools and sadly, their teachers. This undermines all of the work that the Department of Education is doing to improve our schools.

Thank you, City Council, for voting against this threat to our safety and our education.

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Teacher News of the Day

Filed under: Roundup by Steve Perez @ 11:38 am

A Showdown Over Cellphones in School - “The City Council passed a bill this afternoon that would allow students to carry their cellphones to and from school, effectively trying to force the Bloomberg administration to soften its ban on cellphones inside schools.” New York Times City Room, more in the Staten Island Advance, New York Post, New York Daily News, New York Sun, and the New York Times

Comptroller report faults city’s monitoring of special-ed services - “The city Department of Education does not properly monitor, track and document the services it supplies to special education elementary school students, according to an audit released yesterday by City Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr.” Staten Island Advance

Bloomberg touts education record at Urban League - “New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, looking every bit a presidential candidate despite his repeated denials, strode onto Democratic turf yesterday when he told attendees at the Urban League’s national convention that America is failing its minority school children.” Newsday, more in the New York Daily News, New York Times, and the New York Sun

N.Y. Kids In Terrible Poverty - “One in 10 kids in the state live in extreme poverty, slightly higher than the national rate of 8 percent, according to a study released yesterday.” New York Post or Survey: City Children’s Well-Being Improving - “If children are acting put-upon, parents can at least tell them New York is a better place to be a child than it was last year, according to a national survey of childhood well-being.” New York Sun

July 25, 2007

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Teacher News of the Day

Filed under: Roundup by Steve Perez @ 10:15 am

Focus on 2 R’s Cuts Time for the Rest, Report Says - “Almost half the nation’s school districts have significantly decreased the daily class time spent on subjects like science, art and history as a result of the federal No Child Left Behind law’s focus on annual tests in reading and math, according to a new report released yesterday.” New York Times

Education Dept. Criticized Over Special Ed. Checks - “The state Education Department is coming under fire from attorneys from both inside and outside the agency who say it illegally denies educational services to hundreds of disabled children. Lawyers representing parents of disabled children are meeting today to discuss plans to file a civil rights lawsuit against the agency at the center of the conflict, the Office of State Review.” New York Sun

Special-Ed Woe - “Special education in public schools is in a ’state of dysfunction,’ says a scathing audit to be released today by city Comptroller Bill Thompson.” New York Post, more in the New York Daily News (fifth item down)

July 24, 2007

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Right Wing Apoplexy

Filed under: Charter School Education by Leo Casey @ 9:28 am

Today’s New York Times has an interesting profile of Steve Barr and the Green Dot charter schools, “Union-Friendly Maverick Leads New Charge for Charter Schools.”

It is beginning to become clear just how apoplectic the right wing forces in education have become over Barr’s Green Dot schools and his support of teacher unionism. In a clear break with a long-established practice of charter schools not criticizing other charter schools, first Checker Finn’s Gadfly and now Clint Bolick, Ken Starr’s old aide-de-camp, have started lobbing grenades in Barr’s direction. “If union bosses start patrolling their hallways,” Bolick opines in the Times piece with reference to the Green Dot schools, “that’ll be the death knell of charters, as it has been for public schools.” So much for Clint’s frequent proclamations of his dedication to high quality schools serving poor kids. Now the real bottom line is on the table — anti-union public schools, even at the cost of attacking pro-union charter schools doing the very things he claims to support.

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No Cesar Chavez [Updated]

Filed under: Charter School Education by Leo Casey @ 4:02 am

As an undergraduate in the early 1970s, I attended Antioch College, a great institution of education in the John Dewey mold of learning by doing. This is a distinction I share with some notable activists in the field of education [Deborah Meier and Bill Bigelow of Rethinking Schools] and teacher unionism [the late, sorely missed Tom Mooney of the Cincinnati and Ohio Federation of Teachers and Mark Simon, currently director of the Institute for Teacher Union Leadership]. There was something about the Antioch experience that set us all off on remarkably similar life journeys.

Antioch is apparently in its last days, barring a miraculous resurrection. Its departure will leave American education all that much more poorer. In an age when some conservatives are engaged in thoughtless assaults on the very idea of an education committed to social change, Antioch continued to proudly wear the motto of Horace Mann, its founder and a pivotal figure in the emergence of American public education — “Be ashamed to die until you have won some visctory for humanity.” Antioch led the way in admitting women and African-American students into its student body and its faculty, well before the Civil War. (more…)

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Open Market Transfers and Staff Stability: Does the Left Hand Know What the Right Hand Is Doing?

Filed under: Education NYC DOE by Peter Goodman @ 2:48 am

Quietly, without fanfare a few thousand teachers are skipping from school to school under the Open Market Transfer System. The previous Seniority Transfer Plan limited transfers to 5% of any school, three consecutive S ratings and restricted “shortage area” transfers. Open Market: anyone can transfer anywhere. No 5% rule, no rating limitation, no senior needed, you just apply.

As teachers decide to cut their travel time, or flee from a particular principal, or for whatever reason; principals are actively recruiting. Open Market does not require any notice to the home school, you just apply, and if the new the school employs you the system eventually informs the original school. (more…)

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