Oct 1-2010:NWLP
9/28/10
10:01 AM
Page 9
...Bashing teachers unions is a political agenda
(From Page 1)
How’s that working out? Have they
hired a new group of teachers?
Cooler heads have prevailed. We’re
trying to work through it. You’d be
hard-pressed in America to find a
tougher place than Central Falls,
Rhode Island. These children don’t
have the opportunities of other chil-
dren. Opportunities outside a school
affect what happens in the school.
In Central Falls, they fired all the
teachers. Yet the way some conservative
critics of education tell it, it’s not pos-
sible for administrators anywhere in
America to fire bad teachers, because
teachers unions are so powerful. What’s
that about?
There is no place in the country
where K-12 teachers have a guaran-
teed job for life. Tenure doesn’t exist
in K-12 education like it does in col-
lege. In K-12 education, it’s nothing
more than due process. Before you’re
let go, you have an opportunity to im-
prove, and somebody else reviews it
besides your direct supervisor. What
people are saying is that’s too high of a
standard. What the critics are saying is
that they want teachers to be ‘at-will’
employees.
Our readers work in union environ-
ments, so they may be familiar with
“just cause” discipline, or the idea of
having union representation when
you’re disciplined. Employers have to
make a case, and they have to take steps
to discipline you.
That’s right, but for most teachers,
they don’t have that right away. The
average probationary period for a
teacher is three years. For the first
three years, they’re at-will. And
turnover in teaching is high. Nation-
ally, in the first five years of teaching,
50 percent leave. It’s a really tough
job.
What does AFT think of merit pay
for teachers, or pay-for-performance?
There’s this belief that if you just
put carrots in front of lazy teachers,
somehow now they’ll put their better
teaching hat on, and go teach a lot
harder because the money’s there.
That’s such a business philosophy. It’s
total widget thinking. That’s not how
AFL-CIO calls for national day
of action on Saturday, Oct. 2
On Saturday, Oct. 2, “One Nation
Working Together,” a new social move-
ment of individuals and organizations
committed to putting America back to
work and pulling America back to-
gether, will be rallying in Washington,
D.C.
But across Oregon and Washington,
as a part of a national day of action
called by the AFL-CIO, union volun-
teers will be fanning out for a massive
Labor Neighbor push in Portland, Van-
couver, and other cities, with union vol-
unteers talking to other union members
about candidates in the mid-term elec-
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That’s an interesting point. There are
public schools in Portland that parents
try to transfer their kids into from all
over the city, that have three times as
many applicants as can get in.
Why aren’t those being high-
lighted? Because it’s about a political
agenda.
AFT has members who teach in
charter schools. People think some-
how the governance structure is some
kind of miracle worker. Schools are
good when they’re run by good lead-
ers, and have good teachers, and have
community support. When you look at
the schools that are successful regard-
less of whether they’re charter or pub-
lic, those are the things that make a
difference.
Parker to chair
WA Transportation
Commission
Phil Parker, a retired member of the
International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers Local 48, was
elected chair of the seven-member
Washington State Transportation
Commission. A resident of Van-
couver, Parker was appointed to the
commission by Gov. Chris Gregoire
in 2007. The election was held at the
commission’s board meeting Sept. 21.
One of the assumptions of reformers
is that the schools are failing, that we’re
in crisis and need radical action now.
When we do something too urgently,
we tend to make a lot of mistakes. Then
we have to go back and re-fix it again.
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It’s also said that talented individu-
als — from business, military, and other
walks of life — can’t get jobs as teach-
ers because of licensure requirements.
I hear all the time that a PhD in
physics can’t get a job teaching in pub-
lic school. It’s an urban myth. Virtually
every state has an alternative certifica-
tion process. And the reality is that
when Mister PhD gets into the class-
room, he wishes he’d been through ed-
ucation classes and learned classroom
management techniques. Classroom
management is the number one reason
teachers struggle in their first few
years. If you think teaching is only
about content, you don’t understand
teaching. I think making sure that peo-
ple who stand in front of our children
have been reviewed and certified is
important. The problem is that people
don’t think of teaching as a true pro-
fession.
Right now, charter schools are sup-
posed to be the silver bullet.
Charter schools are not new; they
started in the early ‘90s. Every objec-
tive research study of charter schools
says the same thing: They’re no better,
and on average they’re a little worse.
What this movie “Waiting for Super-
man” does is highlight several charter
schools that do well. But I could find
public schools that are doing the same
things.
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tions Nov. 2.
Events will be held in Portland at the
Machinists Hall, 3645 SE 32nd Av-
enue (off Powell Blvd.), at 10 a.m.
In Vancouver at Fire Fighters Local
452, 2807 Fruit Valley Rd., staging at 9
a.m., with leafletting until 1 p.m.
Solidarity rallies also are planned in
Eugene at 3 p.m. at the old Federal
Bldg., 211 E. 7th, (7th and Pearl), with
speakers and music. For more informa-
tion, call 541-485-1755; and at the
Capitol Building steps, 900 Court St.
NE, Salem, at 9 a.m. to coincide with
the noon rally in Washington, D.C.
schools work. AFT’s position is that
compensation reform can be part of a
comprehensive approach to improving
schools. In fact, AFT passed a resolu-
tion back in 2002 that proposed a com-
mon sense way to approach compen-
sation for teachers. But there’s a
difference between “paying for per-
formance” and just rewarding out-
comes. In practice, most pay-for-per-
formance systems just pay for test
scores. And a huge study was just re-
leased by Vanderbilt University show-
ing that these pay-for-performance
systems have no impact on student
achievement. It was a three-year ran-
domized study of schools that did all
the stuff pay-for-performance advo-
cates talk about.
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NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
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