Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association : SCOTUSblog

Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association : SCOTUSblog:

Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association 

Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association

Docket No.	Op. Below	Argument	Opinion	Vote	Author	Term
14-915	9th Cir.	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	OT 2015

Issue: (1) Whether Abood v. Detroit Board of Education should be overruled and public-sector “agency shop” arrangements invalidated under the First Amendment; and (2) whether it violates the First Amendment to require that public employees affirmatively object to subsidizing nonchargeable speech by public-sector unions, rather than requiring that employees affirmatively consent to subsidizing such speech.

SCOTUSblog Coverage

• Symposium: Another battle in the war over union fees
• Symposium: Correcting the “historical accident” of opt-out requirements
• Symposium: The Friedrichs petition should be dismissed
• Symposium: Will the Court continue to recognize a distinction between bargaining with government and lobbying the government?
• Symposium: Public-sector unions, labor relations, and free speech
• Symposium: Overrule Abood to protect individual rights
• New challenge to public employee unions, made simple
• A new look at race and politics in redistricting
• New threat to public employee unionism
• Petition of the day

Sep 9 2015	Consent to the filing of amicus curiae briefs in support of either party or of neither party received from counsel for Elliott Duchon, Superintendent, Jurupa Unified School District.
Sep 10 2015	Brief amicus curiae of The Cato Institute filed.
Sep 10 2015	Brief amicus curiae of Susana Martinez, Governor of New Mexico filed.
Sep 10 2015	Brief amicus curiae of Mackinac Center for Public Policy filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amicus curiae of Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amicus curiae of Rutherford Institute filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amicus curiae of Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amicus curiae of National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Legal Center filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amicus curiae of National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Inc. filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amici curiae of Center on National Labor Policy, Inc., et al. filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amici curiae of Bruce Rauner, Governor of Illinois, et al. filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amici curiae of Freedom Foundation and Dr. John Balz filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amici curiae of State Public Policy Research Organizations filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amicus curiae of Constitutional Law Professors, et al. filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amici curiae of Pacific Legal Foundation, et al. filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amici curiae of Former California Governor Pete Wilson, et al. filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amici curiae of Illinois State Workers filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amicus curiae of Daniel DiSalvo filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amicus curiae of Public School Teachers Who Favor School Choice filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amici curiae of Michigan and Seventeen Other States filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amicus curiae of Goldwater Institute filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amici curiae of Former California Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, et al. filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amicus curiae of Mountain States Legal Foundation filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amicus curiae of Atlantic Legal Foundation filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amicus curiae of Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, Inc. filed.
Sep 11 2015	Brief amici curiae of Glenn J. Schworak and James E. Mitchell filed.

CURMUDGUCATION: Common Schools vs. Diversity

CURMUDGUCATION: Common Schools vs. Diversity:

Common Schools vs. Diversity

Over at redefinED, a reliable source of reformy pro-school choice arguments, Patrick Gibbons (also a reliable source of pro-school choice arguments) has posted a pretty thoughtful response to the can of worms opened by the Washington state smackdown of charter schools.

In "Common schools and the feat of diversity," Gibbons takes a look back at the actual history of common schools in the US, in particular focusing on how many ways those schools have failed to live up to the promise of public education in this country.

Yet Mann’s common school concept remains a source of conflict today. The ethical and moral lessons of students in a one-size-fits all environment have created a battleground in the American culture wars, from book banning, to the fight against communism in the 1950s, to the fights over textbooksand the Common Core standards.

In this, and in shared criticism that common schools have to often (and still in some places today) reflect the racism and classism of their communities, Gibbons has a point.  

But in his suggestion that charters are the solution, he is indulging in a  fantasy far more reality-deficient that any "romantic vision of free, universal public education."

Gibbons repeatedly slides in the notion that public schools are one-size-fits-all. That's hugely CURMUDGUCATION: Common Schools vs. Diversity:

NYC Public School Parents: Video Interview: Leonie Haimson on why she started Class Size Matters

NYC Public School Parents: Video Interview: Leonie Haimson on why she started Class Size Matters:

Video Interview: Leonie Haimson on why she started Class Size Matters

Check out the short video below, filmed by Bob Greenburg, about how I got involved in the issue of class size, and why class size matters!

NYC Public School Parents: Video Interview: Leonie Haimson on why she started Class Size Matters:

Student Privacy Not Just About Identity Theft » Missouri Education Watchdog

Student Privacy Not Just About Identity Theft » Missouri Education Watchdog:

Student Privacy Not Just About Identity Theft

At the National Student Privacy Symposium two weeks ago in DC, (written about on MEW  here), Bill Fitzgerald of Common Sense Media, who writes the blog FunnyMonkey, was a panelist for the discussion of Potential Risks of Student Data Collection and Use. Up until that point in the symposium, most of the focus had been on student data collected and used by researchers, and the concern addressed was the identification of an individual student as if the only concern parents had was for identity theft. Fitzgerald mentioned other concerns parents had with the use of technology in the classroom and the Terms of Service agreements that students and/or teachers are asked to sign. Far more data can and is collected by the software used in the classroom and its use is much less well understood, but no less troubling.

Fitzgerald took on one of these Terms of Service (TOS) agreements for a product called Classroom Dojo, which offers a system where students’ behavior can be monitored throughout the day. Teachers can use an ipad, Smartphone, or computer and continuously adjust a student’s behavior points within the program.  If someone is off task, the teacher can take points away.  If they begin to focus, they get points and move up.  The points are collected by the software which can then beam an up to the minute status report of all students scores to a white board.

I will step aside from the TOS review for a moment to comment on the concept mentioned above, sharing individual student data with an entire class in real time. We didn’t used to share all the grades with other students in K-6. We didn’t make their student record available for other students to see and make fun of. The public shaming of the dunce cap was eliminated decades ago, but apparently the creator of Dojo, who was a teacher, thought it was a good idea to bring that back and arm students with information about their classmates that can be used to bully and intimidate. This is just one example of the misuse and risks of data collection.

A Brief Review of ClassDojo Privacy Policy and Terms of Service by Fitzgerald does a good job of taking the specific language of the TOS and Student Privacy Not Just About Identity Theft » Missouri Education Watchdog:

When Neighborhoods Gentrify, Why Aren't Their Public Schools Improving? - The Atlantic

When Neighborhoods Gentrify, Why Aren't Their Public Schools Improving? - The Atlantic:

When Neighborhoods Gentrify, Why Aren't Their Public Schools Improving?

“Gentrification, it turns out, usually stops at the schoolhouse door,” the reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones has argued.

The ups and downs of gentrification have been chronicled thoroughly, but one of its consequences hasn’t been widely addressed: the effect on neighborhood schools when a critical mass of well-educated, well-off people move in. Gentrification usually brings some benefits with it to a neighborhood, such as more attention from the city—as Spike Lee noted, suddenly the trash gets picked up! But does an influx of children from wealthier families make a positive difference to local public schools?

Nikole Hannah-Jones, now an investigative reporter for The New York Times Magazine, says no. She makes the case in Grist that “gentrification, it turns out, usually stops at the schoolhouse door.” Because newcomers tend to send their kids outside of the local system, often to private or charter schools, gentrification tends to have a neutral or even negative effect on neighborhood schools, at least in the short term.

A recent article in U.S. News concurs with this assessment, claiming that “gentrification is leaving public schools behind.” Likewise, a report on underperforming San Francisco public schools from earlier this summer in The Atlantic notes that many if not most urban institutions are “left to flounder,” remaining segregated, low-quality “Apartheid schools,” even while gentrification changes other aspects of the neighborhoods around them.

The exceptions—the public schools in gentrifying neighborhoods that happen to be doing well according to official rankings—seem to be those that compete with charter and private schools by becoming magnet schools or starting gifted-and-talented programs. Brooklyn’s PS 8, for instance, was “failing” only 10 years ago, but after remaking itself as a magnet school has become one of the borough’s most sought-after elementary schools. Likewise, PS 9 recently added gifted-and-talented and foreign-language programs. It now has an above-average proportion of white students relative to its district, and there is a waitlist for its Pre-K program.

These beefed-up programs, Hannah-Jones points out, come at a cost: Any money put toward enticing middle-class parents is money that can’t be put toward students who might need those resources more. And most minority students continue to struggle: The New York Daily News reports that “more than 50 percent of the city’s white and Asian school kids in grades 3 through 8 passed this year’s state English tests. Fewer than 20 percent of the city’s black and Latino kids did.”

Economic and racial integration works: It is what has been shown to help higher-need students without hurting others. Middle-class commitment to urban schools is one way to improve public education for all, and middle-class gentrifiers have placed themselves right where they can do the most good—if they choose to. And yet, it might be unreasonable to expect high-achieving, usually college-educated newcomers, even progressive ones, to stop fretting about sending their children to the “best,” which is to say, highest-performing, schools. Test scores are a matter of overwhelming importance to these parents, no matter how much they may also protest “high-stakes testing.” How, then, can middle-class gentrifiers be wooed into participating in a system that might not appear to be in their immediate best interest?

Sarah Garland of The Hechinger Report suggests that the best way to have gentrification help local schools may be to invest in more and larger magnet schools and bring more diverse students into gifted-and-talented programs. One county in Florida has had success doing just that, finding remarkably talented kids in poor neighborhoods that school administrators had, up until now, neglected.

Even the few successfully integrated public elementary schools might not make a When Neighborhoods Gentrify, Why Aren't Their Public Schools Improving? - The Atlantic:

The national Academe Blog asks – Is Dannel Malloy - A Democratic Scott Walker? - Wait What?

The national Academe Blog asks – Is Dannel Malloy - A Democratic Scott Walker? - Wait What?:

The national Academe Blog asks – Is Dannel Malloy – A Democratic Scott Walker?

A special thanks to Hank Reichman, the first vice-president and chair of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, and the nationally respected Academe Blog, the blog of Academe Magazine, for reposting my Wait, What? article entitled, The Malloy Administration’s stunning attack on unions, professors and the future of Connecticut State University.

While people across the nation may not know it, in a few months, Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy will be taking the helm of the Democratic Governors Association.  In that position he will claim to be speaking for the nation’s Democratic governors and be responsible for electing more Democratic governors in the 2016 election cycle.

Having already pushed through the deepest cuts in state history to Connecticut’s public institutions of higher education, the neoliberal, pro-Corporate Education Reform Industry governor is now engaged in an unprecedented attack on faculty at both Connecticut State University (now under the Connecticut Board of Regents) and the University of Connecticut.

For the first time in UConn history, the Board of Trustees, which is made up of the governor’s political appointees and donors, have hired an outside, out-of-state, Chris Christie affiliated, anti-union law firm to lead the attack on the UConn AAUP.  You can read more about the Malloy administration’s approach at UConn at: New Jersey lawyer known for privatization effort leads UConn bargaining effort against faculty. AndUConn hires Gov. Chris Christie connected law firm to negotiate contract with faculty union.

And now, as yesterday’s post explains, the Malloy administration dropped a contract proposal on Connecticut State University – AAUP faculty that eliminates a requirement that the institution declare financial exigency before firing tenured and non-tenured faculty and The national Academe Blog asks – Is Dannel Malloy - A Democratic Scott Walker? - Wait What?:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Black aldermen mutiny. Rahm rushes to McCarthy's defense.

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Black aldermen mutiny. Rahm rushes to McCarthy's defense.:

Black aldermen mutiny. Rahm rushes to McCarthy's defense.

Supt. McCarthy goes all Che Guevara on us.

"I know what needs to happen. It's clear to me as anything on earth. It's a systematic failure and the system has to change." -- ABC 7 

Yesterday's City Council budget hearings were like none I've seen since the 70s run-up to the election of Harold Washington, the city's first black mayor. The crisis is so deep that the mutiny has spread way beyond the few and the brave in the Progressive Caucus. Previously isolated rivulets of anger with Rahm/Rauner austerity, property taxes, education cuts, school closings, charter expansion and the gun violence epidemic appear to be flowing into one big river of anger around the budget hearings.

Roosevelt H.S. students hit the streets.

Students at three high schools attempted walkouts yesterday in protest of the budget cuts and in support of their teachers. Roosevelt students succeeded. Students at Schurz and Foreman were blocked by cops and CPS security. There's no prison-break manuals in Common Core.

A SmallTalk salute goes out to Roosevelt teacher Tim Meegan for supporting and inspiring his students. 40th Dist. Rep. candidate Harishi Patel (running in Deb Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Black aldermen mutiny. Rahm rushes to McCarthy's defense.:

Fine Press Reporting Leads to Long Overdue Regulation of Ohio Charter Schools | janresseger

Fine Press Reporting Leads to Long Overdue Regulation of Ohio Charter Schools | janresseger:

Fine Press Reporting Leads to Long Overdue Regulation of Ohio Charter Schools

Yesterday afternoon, a House-Senate conference committee of Ohio’s legislature met to work out a compromise to regulate Ohio’s notorious charter school sector.  In Ohio, Republicans dominate both houses of the legislature, occupy the governor’s mansion, and even dominate the elected state supreme court.  Despite a year of negotiations and a long delay, the members of the conference committee voted unanimously to support a bill that will be submitted today for approval by both houses of Ohio’s legislature.

Everyone had worried that several months’ of lobbying by Ohio’s charter czars would weaken the bill. The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s  Patrick O’Donnell reported late yesterday, however, that the bill does not appear to have been weakened by the House-Senate conference committee: “Still intact, with only minor adjustments, are changes designed to distance the often-cozy relationships between for profit charter school operating companies and the school boards that govern the schools.”  The big charter management companies that have had “sweeps” contracts that forward over 90 percent of the schools’ operating budgets to the management company without reporting about how the money is used will now be required “to provide more information to the public about how they spend tax dollars they are paid to run the schools.”  And there is a new “White Hat” rule designed to correct the situation that arose last month when “an Ohio Supreme Court ruling… allowed prominent for-profit charter operator White Hat Management to keep desks and computers it bought for schools using tax dollars, even after the schools closed.  The court let White Hat keep the property because its contract with the school allowed it.  The new provision blocks any such agreement and requires that leftover assets from closed schools, after bills are paid, go to the Ohio Department of Education to distribute to school districts.”

The conference committee was under enormous pressure yesterday not to cave in to the Fine Press Reporting Leads to Long Overdue Regulation of Ohio Charter Schools | janresseger:

New Mexico’s Teacher Evaluation Lawsuit: Day Four | VAMboozled!

New Mexico’s Teacher Evaluation Lawsuit: Day Four | VAMboozled!:

New Mexico’s Teacher Evaluation Lawsuit: Day Four

Unfortunately I could not attend “Day Four” of the New Mexico’s Teacher Evaluation Lawsuit yesterday (Tuesday, October 6th) in Santa Fe, but for those of you following, tomorrow (Thursday, October 8th) closing remarks are scheduled. Originally, only two days of testimony were scheduled to secure an injunction stopping the state’s teacher evaluation system, but the judge, stating that “the material under consideration is complex” will end with a five-day hearing on Thursday.

But as for what happened in court yesterday, here is an article with a short video (compliments of local news station KOB4) capturing at least some of the day:

http://www.kob.com/article/stories/s3926421.shtml#.VhUDuaTWpUc

Here is another article capturing another reporter’s views of the hearing, as per The Albuquerque Journal, who notes that “Tuesday’s testimony highlighted the state witnesses’ stance that the new [evaluating system is] a big improvement over the previous approach, which rated 99 percent of teachers effective.”

Perhaps most important to the hearing was the testimony of Matthew Montaño, Educator Quality Division, New Mexico Public Education Department (PED), who “testified at length about the creation of the new teacher evaluation system, which PED instituted administratively in 2012.”

Most interesting to come Thursday will be his cross-examination, for reasons impossible to list in both length and his history as per his role and position within the state.New Mexico’s Teacher Evaluation Lawsuit: Day Four | VAMboozled!: