Oregon Education Assn. leaders discuss future of schools
Around the nation, teachers unions
are under attack, facing proposals to di-
minish their collective bargaining
rights, lower teacher licensing require-
ments, eliminate seniority rights, and
replace step pay scales with “merit
pay” set-ups based on student test
scores. The Labor Press spoke with
Richard Sanders and Gail Rasmussen
of the Oregon Education Association
about the fight. Sanders became OEA’s
executive director in January — after
decades in Massachusetts as a union
organizer and trainer. Gail Rasmussen,
a longtime support worker in Oregon’s
Eagle Point School District, is in her
second and final two-year term as OEA
president.
Will anything be different this
school year for teachers or students as
a result of battles that were fought this
year in the Oregon Legislature?
Yet standardized testing is central
to the idea that teacher pay should be
linked to test score improvements —
instead of experience on the job.
Sanders: People who work in edu-
cation show up at school every day de-
termined to do wonderful things for
students. But when this school year
opens, it will be another in a succession
of years where the state has continued
its disinvestment in education. There
will be at least 10 percent fewer people
working in the schools than there were
just a couple of years ago. The state
will be spending nearly $3 billion less
than the funding goal for education that
was set a decade ago. Class sizes will
be much greater in most school dis-
tricts, and supplies will be more dated
or lacking altogether. Yet people will go
into the classroom and do their best.
Sanders: There’s a corporate
agenda here. It’s part of the assault on
the public sector in general, and part of
an assault on public employees. It’s
easy to blame teachers when you want
to get away from the focus on the dis-
investment in education and the public
sector and in our communities. They
also argue that experience doesn’t mat-
ter. That’s completely contrary to evi-
dence. If you just look at test results,
teachers in their first three to five years
have far less success. And 50 percent
of educators leave within in the first
five years.
What would K-12 education look
like if OEA really were the most pow-
erful political force in Oregon, as
some people assert?
O PERATING E NGINEERS
L OCAL 701
P AYS T RIBUTE
TO A MERICA ’ S W ORKERS
T HIS L ABOR D AY 2011
Executive Board Members
MARK HOLLIDAY - Business Manager & Financial Secretary
JIM ANDERSON - President
KEVIN MILLER - Vice President
STEVE BRADLEY - Recording Corresponding Secretary
NELDA WILSON - Treasurer
DAVE CARTER - Conductor
MELVIN “BUTCH” SARINA - Guard
MIKE THUN - Dist. I Rep.
HAROLD CHEVRIER – Dist. II Rep.
DARREN GLEBE - Dist. III Rep.
RAY AKERS - Dist. IV Rep.
MIKE WATTERS - Dist. V Rep.
RICHARD LAUDERBACK - Dist. V (at-large) Rep.
Dispatch
Deanna Robles
Jon Stoltenberg
Office Staff
Jonathan Donehower
Loraine Draper
Boe Ellis
Tamara Fuller
Cherry Harris
Gene Kidd
Larry Lovelady
Jack Miller
Jeff McRobbie
Rod Osgood
Traci Pardee
Melissa Savage
Barbara Watts
Sanders: It’s really interesting that
education is virtually the only profes-
sion where experience is now being de-
valued and actively attacked. There
may be geniuses, like a rookie of the
year, but exceptions aside, in every
other profession, there’s great value at-
tached to experience. The senior part-
ner in a law firm gets more money than
the junior — there’s a recognition that
years of experience contributes to wis-
dom and technical expertise that’s of
higher value. In the medical profession,
do you want the intern to be doing the
heart surgery, or the experienced doc-
tor?
Rasmussen: Do you take a brand
new MBA and expect them to run a
bank?
Sanders: This kind of education re-
(Turn to Page 10)
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PAGE 4
Rasmussen: For one, we would
have a sustainable revenue source.
Sanders: The people who do the
work in schools would sit at the deci-
sion making tables as equal partners.
Students would be known by educators
because they’re not overwhelmed by
the number of students. There’d be in-
vestment in people. Buildings would be
clean and modern and safe, technology
appropriately used, textbooks up-to-
date. There’d be art, music, sports in
the schools. It’s not that complicated to
reform education if you’re willing to
invest money in frameworks that work.
What we know doesn’t work is an
increased reliance on a test regime to
determine whether children are making
progress. This test-driven model, built
on punitive structures for teachers, is
not what the rest of the world is doing,
and it’s not what the affluent in this
country support for their own children.
In teachers union contracts, a step
pay schedule rewards employees for
sticking around, and seniority is a fac-
tor in transfer and layoff. Seniority is
a historic union principle, but teach-
ers unions in particular are being crit-
icized for it. Why is it worth defend-
ing?
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SEPTEMBER 2, 2011