NYSUT on Common Core
JANUARY 29, 2014 PM31 6:34 PM
The anti-public education reform movement is being driven back, everywhere. It’s high-water mark is in the past.
NYSUT’s opposition was to NYS implementation, not the Common Core as a whole. Progress, but less than we want.
Yet, they are still dangerous. They are still well-funded. They have access to media, to propaganda. They have influence from Arne Duncan through many state and local education departments. They have institutes and organizations and influential private donors. And they have already changed many of “the facts on the ground” – rewritten laws, broken contracts, attacked pensions, closed schools, opened doors for private charter school operators, test makers, etc etc.
We need to check them as they continue to aggressively assault public education. We must turn back new attacks.
We need to pursue the facts that they have changed, and changed them back. We need to undo their damage. (In NYC, the shorthand version is undoing Bloomberg’s failed legacy).
Our unions need help opposing, and strengthening their opposition, to anti-public education
But importantly, we need to make certain our own allies are on board. Our national unions made awful compromises and concessions to the anti-public education reform movement. They can be brought back, but it will take pressure from below. And we need to take care that they don’t do as Nasser did in Moscow: signal left and turn right.
A month ago the AFT President tweeted opposition to Value Added (a way of judging teachers on test scores). Careful. My local, usually closely aligned to her, has opposed Value Added for quite some time . Instead they support a “Growth Model”. Honestly, the difference is miniscule. But a