Why teachers won Detroit's 'sick-out' case - CSMonitor.com

Why teachers won Detroit's 'sick-out' case - CSMonitor.com:

Why teachers won Detroit's 'sick-out' case

A court has ruled in favor of teachers who protested the poor working conditions in Detroit schools by calling in sick, as the district struggles to function while covering its debt. 

Daniel Mears/The Detroit News/AP/FileView Caption

 An eight-month court battle – between Detroit's struggling school district and teachers accused of inciting illegal strikes – ended Friday with a court decision in the teachers' favor. 

Two teachers won the months-long case against the school district because their protests were essentially political rather than work-related, Ann Zaniewski reported for the Detroit Free Press. The court decided that if teachers see politics as the cause of work-related problems, then complaints about those work conditions – even taking the form of intentional sick-outs – receive First Amendment protection. 

The ruling emphasized teachers' rights to protest, and signaled a victory forparents and administrators, wrote the Christian Science Monitor's Stacy Teicher Khadaroo in January:

Recommended:IN PICTURES Detroit's dilemma

After more than a decade of losing enrollment and amassing debt largely under state-appointed emergency managers, the Detroit public school district could be on the verge of writing a new chapter for itself – one in which educators, students, and parents insist on taking back control of their destiny.

Through a series of “sick-outs” that forced more than half of schools to close in recent weeks, teachers “have effectively made the argument that we’re seeing a lack of accountability,” says Thomas Pedroni, a professor at Wayne State University in Michigan who has studied the impact of education policies in Detroit and the state. 

Teachers closed schools 14 times during the 2016 school year with strikes protesting the state's emergency management of Detroit schools, The Wall Street Journal reported. Leaders at the state and local level criticized them as hurting the already-struggling effort to educate Detroit's children, but the union insisted the strikes brought attention to problems hurting Why teachers won Detroit's 'sick-out' case - CSMonitor.com:

Steven Singer: Do Unions Belong in the Fight Against Corporate School Reform? | Common Dreams

Do Unions Belong in the Fight Against Corporate School Reform? | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community:

Do Unions Belong in the Fight Against Corporate School Reform?

Unions "are essential to the health of public education," writes Steven Singer. (Photo: Gadfly on the Wall Blog)

In the fight for public education, the forces of standardization and privatization are running scared.

They’ve faced more pushback in the last few years – especially in the last few months – than in a decade.

The Opt Out movement increases exponentially every year. Teach for America is having trouble getting recruits. Pearson’s stock is plummeting. The NAACP and Black Lives Matter have both come out strongly against increasing charter schools.

They want you to believe that the corporate vultures preying on our public schools are really just misunderstood philanthropists. 

So what’s a corporate education reformer to do?

Answer: Change the narrative.

They can’t control the facts, so instead they try to control the story being told about the facts.

It’s a classic propaganda technique. As Malcolm X put it:

“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

Their story goes like this – yes, there is a battle going on over public education. But the two sides fighting aren’t who you think they are.

The fight for public schools isn’t between grassroots communities and well-funded AstroTurf organizations, they say. Despite the evidence of your eyes, the fight isn’t between charter school sycophants and standardized test companies, on the one hand, and parents, students and teachers on the other.

No. It’s actually between people who really care about children and those nasty, yucky unions.

It’s nonsense, of course. Pure spin. 

They want you to believe that the corporate vultures preying on our public schools are really just misunderstood philanthropists. And those demanding a fair shake for their own children and communities are really just paid shills from a monolithic and uncaring bureaucracy.

In essence, they want you to believe two things:

1) Despite profiting off the system and zero evidence supporting the efficacy of corporate school policies, they’re motivated purely by empathy.

2) Unions are evil by definition and they pervert everything they touch.

Put simply, unions are not perfect, but they are not evil. In fact, they are essential to the health of public education.

I’m not going to bother with the first claim here. There is an inherent bias from those who wish to change the laws so they can more easily profit off of schools without actually helping students learn and in fact exist at the expense of that learning. If you can’t see through the propaganda wing of the Walmart corporation, the Broad Foundation and Big Daddy Bill Gates, you probably won’t be very receptive to anything else I have to say.

Instead I will focus on the second claim, because it is the more pernicious of the two.

Put simply, unions are not perfect, but they are not evil. In fact, they are essential to the health of public education.

Many progressives are upset with teachers unions because of the current Presidential election. Both the National Education Association (NEA) and theAmerican Federation of Teachers (AFT) endorsed Hillary Clinton in the primary election without what many would consider adequately polling rank and file members. For better or worse, the endorsements were top-down affairs reflecting the preference of union leaders.

That’s not how unions are supposed to work. And it’s having consequences for the way both Do Unions Belong in the Fight Against Corporate School Reform? | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community:

Condemnation of Charter Schools Exposes a Rift Over Black Students - The New York Times

Condemnation of Charter Schools Exposes a Rift Over Black Students - The New York Times:

Condemnation of Charter Schools Exposes a Rift Over Black Students

Students at North Star Academy, a charter school in Newark. Two civil rights organizations have called for a moratorium on charter schools. Credit Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

With charter schools educating as many as half the students in some American cities, they have been championed as a lifeline for poor black children stuck in failing traditional public schools.

But now the nation’s oldest and newest black civil rights organizations are calling for a moratorium on charter schools.

Their demands, and the outcry that has ensued, expose a divide among blacks that goes well beyond the now-familiar complaints about charters’ diverting money and attention from traditional public schools.

In separate conventions over the past month, the N.A.A.C.P. and theMovement for Black Lives, a group of 50 organizations assembled by Black Lives Matter, passed resolutions declaring that charter schools have exacerbated segregation, especially in the way they select and discipline students.

They portray charters as the pet project of foundations financed by white billionaires, and argue that the closing of traditional schools as students migrate to charters has disproportionately disrupted black communities.

Black leaders of groups that support charter schools have denounced the resolutions, saying they contradict both the N.A.A.C.P.’s mission of expanding opportunity and polls showing support for charters among black parents. The desire for integration, the charter school proponents say, cannot outweigh the urgent need to give some of the country’s poorest students a way out of underperforming schools.

“You’ve got thousands and thousands of poor black parents whose children are so much better off because these schools exist,” said Howard Fuller, a longtime civil rights activist and the founding president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, which encourages support among blacks for charters.

The debate about race and charters is long simmering. Black residents of cities like New Orleans, which has converted nearly all of its public schools to charters in the decade since Hurricane Katrina, have complained that the people who come in presenting themselves as education reformers tend to be white outsiders. Charter school leaders themselves have begun to acknowledge that they do not have enough blacks in their ranks or in front of their classrooms.

But to some black parents, those concerns seem academic.

Chris Stewart recalled feeling “like a complete loser” when his son was entering middle school in Minneapolis. A specialty public school had no room; other parents were warning him away from two nearby traditional public schools; and he could not afford a reduced tuition of $12,000 — what he called “the poor people’s discount” — for a private school.Condemnation of Charter Schools Exposes a Rift Over Black Students - The New York Times:

Funding Opportunities in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)

Funding Opportunities in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA):

Funding Opportunities in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)

According to a new guide released by Futures Without Violence, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) can provide states and school districts with improved ways to support a positive school climate and help address the needs of children who have been exposed to trauma.

Last year, Congress passed ESSA, a law that updated federal policy that provides new direction to states about how they can design their school systems, with particular focus on improving academic achievement among at-risk, neglected and delinquent students. In addition to offering states guidance on creating accountability mechanisms, teacher evaluation systems and other system-wide educational policies, ESSA provides flexibility to local educational agencies (LEAs or school districts) in designing student programs and supports.

Implementation of ESSA will not start until the 2017-18 school year, but as school districts begin complying with the new federal policy, Futures Without Violence presents a guide that includes available resources, program requirements and allowable use of funds under ESSA’s nine different titles, paying special attention to opportunities to prevent and respond to child trauma.

Read the guide here.

 Funding Opportunities in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA):

Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION: PA: Charters Spend Less on Teaching

CURMUDGUCATION:

Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION

PA: Charters Spend Less on Teaching

1by Peter Greene / 48min

This week the Pennsylvania School Boards Association released a report looking at what charter schools are doing with all that taxpayer money. Short answer-- spending a whole lot of it on administration, and not quite so much on actual instruction of students. But when have I ever settled for a short answer. Let's stroll through this report and check out the many highlights. Piercing the Charter C

YESTERDAY

Do Rock Star Teachers Really Need A Union???

2by Peter Greene / 1d

Raymond J. Ankrum, Sr., is a teacher-blogger who put in some years in the Baltimore school system and who now is working a charter gig. And in a recent post, he asks the question that lots of union critics think, but don't always have the nerve to articulate. The question often comes from people not working in public education-- why do you need a union or tenure or a lock-step pay grid? Isn't all

AUG 18

No, CAP-- CCSS Is Not the Path to Better Reading

2by Peter Greene / 2d

At this point, there is nobody-- absolutely nobody-- who can match the Center for American Progress in senseless devotion to the Common Core State [sic] Standards. CAP, the left-tilted thinky tank founded by Hillary Clinton's campaign chief John Podesta, has remained absolutely unflinching in their support of the standards, no matter how little sense they are making. For instance, yesterday we get

Post #2000

3by Peter Greene / 2d

This is the 2,000th post on this blog, which coincidentally goes up just two days after the three year birthday of this blog. I'm not a big fan of blogging about blogging, but it's good now and then to reflect on what you're doing. 2,000 posts are a big pile of posts, even if some of them are brief and/or not so special. Sometime today I'll also pass the 3,400,000 hits mark. It's humbling to imagi

AEI: Comparing Public and Charter Schools

2by Peter Greene / 2d

The folks at the American Enterprise Institute have released a study comparing charter schools to public schools. " Difference on Balance: National Comparisons of Charter and Traditional Public Schools " announces in its title that AEI continues to support the modern charter school industry (charter schools are not public schools in any meaningful way except their willingness to accept p

AUG 17

The Ledger: Lab Rat America

33by Peter Greene / 3d

Oh my God. Oh my effing God. If you want to see where Competency Based Education, data mining, the cradle to career pipeline, the gig economy, and the transformation into a master and servant class society all intersect-- boy, have I got a video for you. Spoiler alert: this is also one way that public education dies. I'm going to walk you through the video, embed it for your own viewing, and tell

AUG 16

Zephyr Teachout Is A Badass

66by Peter Greene / 4d

Zephyr Teachout is a badass. You may remember her from the last New York gubernatorial primary, when she humiliated Andrew Cuomo and stomped on his Presidential dreams by making him fight for his life in a primary race that was supposed to be a walk. The Vermont-born law professor is energetic, positive, and a strong voice for public education-- among other things. She's an old-school Democrat, by

AUG 15

Resolve To See

27by Peter Greene / 5d

For the next couple of weeks, as the beginning of my school year approaches. I'm going to write to renew my resolve to keep focus in my practice. This is one of that series of posts. I'm not sure that anybody has it harder in school than the invisible kids. Bullied students are a subset of the invisible students. Bullied students are seen-but-not-really. They are seen for the one characteristic f

AUG 14

Resolve To Listen

34by Peter Greene / 5d

For the next couple of weeks, as the beginning of my school year approaches. I'm going to write to renew my resolve to keep focus in my practice. This is one of that series of posts. It is easy to stop listening. Oh, it's easy to act like you're listening, to look like you're listening. People take management classes on how to fake listening (not that it's described in those terms), to pretend to

Born To Teach

71by Peter Greene / 6d

The romantic notion has always been there, and plenty of teachers feed into it-- some people are just born teachers. But the belief in born teachers has two seriously destructive side effects, one of which is becoming obvious and the other, perhaps less so. Training If teachers are born and not made, then teacher certification programs are a waste of time. A smart person with an ivy league degree

ICYMI for August 14

7by Peter Greene / 6d

Yeah, I don't have a clever way to tie all this together. These are just some worthwhile reads. Student Test Scores: How the Sausage Is Made and Why You Should Care How can I not feature a Brookings article when they finally manage to post something that's not complete baloney? This is a little technical, but 

CURMUDGUCATION:

Key Ohio Officials Doing Business With The ECOT Family Of Businesses

Key Ohio Officials Doing Business With The ECOT Family Of Businesses:

Key Ohio Officials Doing Business With The ECOT Family Of Businesses

Ohio’s largest for-profit charter school, ECOT, is embroiled in a contentious lawsuit with the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) and the rhetoric has been ramping up all summer long, with ECOT now running regular commercials claiming that ODE is trying to shut down the school.  We recently shared that the media company employed by ECOT (via the school’s management company). Third Wave Communications, is run by Jessica Lager Harris, the daughter of Altair and IQ Innovations owner, and ECOT founder, Bill Lager.

For the past decade plus, Bill Lager has been a major donor to campaigns of many of Ohio’s public officials, including key individuals who are in positions to enact stronger accountability rules for charters, including ECOT, but have continued to instead put off such changes, instead taking positions that favor the e-school.

It turns out that the money is flowing both ways…

Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger was the keynote speaker at the ECOT Graduation ceremony this school year, following a long list of Republican officials who graced that stage:

John Kasich spoke at the 2011 ECOT graduation.  Republican Supreme Court Justice Terrence O’Donnell spoke in 2013. In 2014, House Speaker Bill Batchelder spoke at the ECOT graduation ceremony and a year later, after retiring from the Ohio House, joined the lobbying firm representing ECOT. Last year [2015]  Ohio Auditor David Yost spoke at the graduation.

Conveniently, the Ohio House Republican Caucus (OHROC) has turned around and hired Third Wave Communications to produce a variety of commercials for them, starting with a personal introduction for Rosenberger:

RNC Rosenberger Intro from Third Wave Communications on Vimeo.

When the Ohio House Republican Caucus wanted to produce a commercial Key Ohio Officials Doing Business With The ECOT Family Of Businesses: