Education Reform: The Real Deal
- Mark Brenner's blog
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Tired of being scapegoats for all the ills of the public schools, 200 teachers from 15 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Mexico were in Chicago July 6 for the National Conference to Fight Back for Public Education.
The attendees—and there were more of them than organizers had expected—came for a variety of reasons. All were upset about the attacks on teachers and students. Some were already leading fights against the attacks as reform officers in their locals. Many wanted to find out how fights were being carried out in other cities. Others were dissatisfied with their locals or their national unions.
Rob Panning-Miller, a Minneapolis high school teacher, said he wanted to hear from the horse’s mouth how various “reforms” such as charter schools and new forms of teacher evaluation are playing out on the ground for classroom teachers. What he hears from his union’s national leaders about changes in particular cities, he said, is often quite different from what teachers in that city have to say.
Many at the meeting saw a lack of leadership in their national organizations, the NEA and AFT, which have reacted to the demonization of teachers by endorsing too many elements of President Obama’s “Race to the Top” agenda for schools. That agenda relies on standardized testing, substitutes merit pay for seniority, strips teacher tenure,