No More School Closures and Charter Takeovers…Time for Community Schools | WeArePCAPS

No More School Closures and Charter Takeovers…Time for Community Schools | WeArePCAPS:

No More School Closures and Charter Takeovers…Time for Community Schools

The School District, once again, is embarking on a new round of school closures and privatization. This, in spite of clear evidence that these policies have not produced the desired educational results and in the face of broad opposition from the public.

The decision to hand over three elementary schools to charter companies continues its Renaissance charter initiative in spite of evidence that this program has failed to deliver the promised gains. An internal study by the District found that the majority of charter operators had not met their performance goals. At two schools, Bluford and Douglas, the District chose not to renew Universal and Young Scholars, respectively as operators.

The continuation of the Renaissance initiative ignores the verdict parents delivered last Spring when they overwhelmingly voted against charter conversion of Munoz-Marin and Steel Elementary. This time parents will not have a choice. The privatization agenda of the District was also a factor in the recent referendum on the SRC which endorsed a call for abolishing that body in favor of local control.

The Renaissance program also contributes to the District’s financial woes, costing about 4,000 dollars per student in the form of stranded costs.

What about community schools?

While the District’s latest initiative includes what it characterizes as innovative projects, it ignores an alternative that has a strong track record of success. Community schools, schools that seek to address the deficits created by poverty and systemic racism, have boosted graduation rates and dramatically narrowed the racial achievement gap in Cincinnati. New York and Baltimore are both investing heavily in community schools and in our state Lancaster, Allentown and Bethlehem have important initiatives along these lines.

Community schools can be the schools our children deserve…schools with wrap around social services, engaging curriculum, positive school discipline and deep and authentic partnerships with parents, staff, students and the surrounding neighborhood. There is growing support for this idea from parents and educators. Mayoral candidate Jim Kenny has endorsed our call for 25 new community schools over his term. Council President Darryl Clarke is also developing a community schools initiative.

PCAPS first raised the idea of community schools during the fight over school closures No More School Closures and Charter Takeovers…Time for Community Schools | WeArePCAPS:

CURMUDGUCATION: The Future for Duncan and King

CURMUDGUCATION: The Future for Duncan and King:

The Future for Duncan and King

Let me join the sixty gazillion people who will have something to say about the news from the US Education Department. I'll make my comments in the form of predictions.

Duncan will spend his last couple of months doing what he's been doing for years-- making statements that sound pretty good, connecting them to terrible policies, and generally being ignored by Congress.

Some people will be really excited that he is leaving. These will be the same people who felt certain that Duncan was some sort of rogue agent, sneaking off to implement terrible policies behind the President's back, instead of the President's Guy, a cabinet bro who did just what Obama wanted him to. There have been fewer and fewer of these people over the years, but they still exist, and they still think that when Duncan leaves USED, things will get better. These folks should try investing in Floridian swampland.

Everyone east of the Mississippi who has been paying attention will express horror that former New York state ed chief John King had been names Duncan's replacement. In terms of policy, these two are cut from the same cloth. King loves him some Big Standardized Tests, test-based teacher evaluations, Common Core, and a whole world of privatization via barely-regulated charters. King has a hell of a personal story, from which he has failed to learn some critical lessons (a teacher changed his life, and he would like to install a system that would strap such a teacher to a giant CURMUDGUCATION: The Future for Duncan and King:

Home visiting linked to lower school truancy and better reading outcomes - The Washington Post

Home visiting linked to lower school truancy and better reading outcomes - The Washington Post:

Home visiting linked to lower school truancy and better reading outcomes

Jerome Watkins and his wife, Nicole Jones-Watkins, discuss the upcoming school year expectations for their son, Xavier Ferrell, 9, with Stanton Elementary teachers, Melissa Bryant and Samantha Antunez during a parent-teacher home-visit in 2013. (Amanda Voisard/For The Washington Post)

Students whose teachers visited them at home to build relationships with their families were less likely to miss school, according to a new study from Johns Hopkins University.

Researchers also found that students who took part in a home visiting program were more likely to read on grade level and that their teachers received higher marks on some parts of their teacher evaluations.

The study included 4,700 students at 12 elementary schools or education campuses that took part in a family engagement program run by the District-based Flamboyan Foundation during the 2013-2014 school year.

“We’ve always known anecdotally and emotionally that home visiting helps families connect to teachers, but now we know home visits are increasing attendance,” said Kristin Ehrgood, president and board chair for the foundation.

[District officials turn to home visits to boost schools]

Over time, research has shown that children whose parents are involved in their educations tend to have better attendance, grades, graduation rates, and other outcomes. But there is far less research about whether schools can make a difference in supporting greater engagement among families, said Steven B. Sheldon, a research scientist with the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnership who led the study.

“The question is, can we encourage and support those who are less engaged to be more engaged?” he said.

The Flamboyan Foundation, which funded the study, trains and pays teachers to conduct home visits designed to build trust between school and home. The goal is to make parents partners in their children’s academic growth and performance.

The report shows the effects of an effort that is gaining traction in the District. The foundation first piloted the program in 2011-2012 with five schools and expanded last year to partner with 27 traditional and charter schools.

Now about a quarter of teachers at D.C. Public Schools have been trained in the approach, and the school system has plans to significantly increase the Home visiting linked to lower school truancy and better reading outcomes - The Washington Post:

The Education Secretary's Greatest Hits : NPR Ed : NPR

Education Secretary Arne Duncan To Step Down : NPR Ed : NPR:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan To Step Down

After nearly seven years in office, Education Secretary Arne Duncan will step down in December. The former head of Chicago Public Schools came to Washington back in 2009 with his friend — a newly-elected President Obama.

Duncan's tenure was remarkable for two reasons:

First, he got a lot done. A lot. The list is long, so, for the purposes of this short post, let's focus on perhaps the biggest thing he did, which was also one of the first things he did. In the summer of 2009, Duncan made this grand pronouncement:

"For states, for district leaders, for unions, for businesses and for nonprofits, the Race to the Top is the equivalent of education reform's moonshot."

RTTT was a giant pot of stimulus money — more than four billion dollars' worth — offered to beleaguered states soon after the Great Recession. Duncan used it to entice them to make sometimes-controversial changes in the classroom. At the top of that list: adopting new, common standards and evaluating teachers.

Rick Hess is director of education policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and he says it was clear from the start that Duncan wanted to use his bully pulpit to push some big ideas.

"Duncan's biggest legacy is that he dramatically increased the role of the U.S. Department of Education in the nation's schools," Hess says.

When states clamored for relief from the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind law, Duncan was there, offering waivers — again, in return for implementing his big ideas.

Arne Duncan was also a champion of charter schools and a believer in the power of testing to reveal inequality in America's classrooms. At the higher ed level, he oversaw an expansion of Pell Grants, cut banks out of the federal student loan business, and cracked down on for-profit colleges.

The other remarkable thing about Duncan's tenure isn't one of those ideas but how he fought for them all. Hess says Duncan wasn't afraid to butt heads, even if it meant making enemies out of Republicans and traditional allies alike.

"He tackled issues that are difficult for a Democrat — especially a Chicago Democrat to tackle," Hess says.

Duncan's support for testing and teacher evaluation systems infuriated the nation's teachers' unions, which repeatedly called for him to step down.

Why is he leaving now? In a word: family. Duncan told staffers in an e-mail that he wants to return to Chicago to be with his wife and two kids.

This afternoon, the President tapped Duncan's deputy, John King Junior, to succeed him as Secretary. King is former education commissioner for New York state. There, on a smaller stage, he fought many of the same, bruising battles that Duncan did.

The Education Secretary's Greatest Hits

It's been decades since an education secretary had as high a national political profile as the long-serving Arne Duncan, who famously accompanied President Obama from Chicago and even more famously likes to shoot hoops with the president.

Supporters note that Duncan has advocated passionately for narrowing the opportunity and achievement gaps in American's public schools, ending the "school to prison pipeline" and boosting pay for teachers who serve in high-poverty schools.

He has spoken eloquently about the inequities in the system of funding of the nation's schools based on property taxes. As Duncan put it this week at the National Press Club:

"In far too many places the children of the wealthy get dramatically more spent on them than the children of the poor."

But the former pro ball player (in Australia) has also presided over one of the most contentious, partisan periods in education policy of the last several decades, and critics say his own personality has never placed him far above the fray.

"Some of Duncan's battles he can wear proudly because he was fighting hard fights," says Rick Hess of the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, "But some I think were the product of his own tendency to dismiss those who had good faith disagreements."

Here's a look at some of Duncan's wins, scores and losses over the past seven years.

K-12

Digging In On High-Stakes Testing

The push for standardized tests predated Duncan. President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind back in 2002, creating a system of federal consequences for states, districts and schools whose students failed to make "adequate yearly progress" on annual tests. The law stated that all students everywhere must score "proficient" by 2014.

Duncan's Race To The Top initiative in 2009 provided incentives to states for tying test scores to teacher evaluations, further raising the stakes on high-stakes tests in a way that was destined to offend teachers' unions.

At the same time, beginning in 2011, with the No Child law well overdue for reauthorization, the administration began granting individual waivers to states to provide flexibility on testing targets that were proving impossible to reach.

High-stakes testing coincided with modest gains on math scores, and relative gains by some minority groups. In combination with the Common Core, testing has also become a focal point of teacher and parent protests nationwide, with some students, notably in New York State, "opting out."

Duncan called the law "tired" and "prescriptive" and stated in 2014 that testing issues were "sucking the oxygen out of the room" in schools.

But he defended annual testing, even as some critics were blaming tests for a wide range of unintended consequences, ranging from narrowing of the curriculum to the en masse closure of urban neighborhood schools to cheating scandals as seen in Atlanta.

The law is now (finally) up for reauthorization and both the House and Senate versions of the bill keep the annual testing requirements in place.

"White Suburban Moms" And The Common Core

Race To The Top, signed into law as part of the federal stimulus package after the 2008 financial crash, was structured cleverly as a competitive grant.

States got points for, among other things, adopting new, higher academic standards. In this way, Duncan and Obama were able to push 45 states initially to adopt what became the Common Core State Standards — before they were even written and without making them an explicit federal policy.

But despite initial bipartisanship, Duncan's advocacy of the Common Core crashed into Washington's current atmosphere of bitter partisanship and the long-standing distrust of a strong federal role in local education.

One of several anti-Duncan Facebook groups popped up: MAD, Mothers Against Duncan. And Duncan was sometimes his own worst enemy, PR-wise.

He famously said that opposition to Common Core and mastering standards in core areas of reading and math had become "a rallying cry for fringe groups."

At an otherwise sleepy state school superintendents meeting in 2013, Duncan suggested that opposition to the new reading and math guidelines was mostly from white mothers whose kids are facing tougher standards and tougher tests.

"And it's fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from sort of white suburban moms," Duncan said, "who, all of a sudden, their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were, their schools aren't quite as good as they thought they were. And that's pretty scary." The sound bite now appears on Duncan's Wikipedia page.

Duncan apologized for his "clumsy" remarks, but for some it underscored what they saw as Washington's dismissive, arrogant approach to critics of the state standards.

Opponents, including Republican presidential hopefuls, began referring to the Common Core as "Obamacore" in a fledgling effort to link the standards debate with the fight over the president's controversial health-care legislation.

That was the moment, "when I knew that the debate was shifting into the larger context in Washington that was all about seeking partisan advantage," says Stanford University professor Thomas Dee, who heads the school's Center for Education Policy Analysis.

The charged rhetoric often drowned out teachers' legitimate concerns about how to put Common Core into action inside the classroom, Dee says. "It is such a heavy lift to ask the nation's teachers to reinvent their teaching practices around these standards."

The ongoing debate over the standards, in many ways, shows the limitations of the federal role reform in America's highly decentralized education system.

Teacher Evaluations

The nation's largest teachers union, the National Education Association, called on Duncan to resign in 2014, charging that he had undermined educators by linking teacher evaluations and school ratings to student test scores.

States that received federal waivers for No Child Left Behind provisions had to include teacher evaluations as part of the deal. Duncan had access to some federal stimulus money that he shifted to school district consortia to expand performance-based evaluations. Did it help improve learning and teaching? The results, so far, are a mixed bag.

Research by Stanford's Thomas Dee suggests that one place it is working is in the Washington, D.C., public schools. "Their teacher-evaluation system has helped drive an entire district turnaround," he argues.

But some districts cashed the federal check and made largely cosmetic changes. Many districts had to return millions in federal funds for not meeting the requirement that they get union buy-in for teacher evaluations.

"I'm not sure Duncan could have done much more on this than he did from his perch," he says. Bottom line for Dee: "Arne has been one of the most influential secretarys in Education Secretary Arne Duncan To Step Down : NPR Ed : NPR:

What did Arne Duncan do for California schools? - LA Times

What did Arne Duncan do for California schools? - LA Times:

What did Arne Duncan do for California schools?

Arne Duncan, who on Friday was reported to be stepping down as U.S. Secretary of Education in December, had a sometimes stormy relationship with California, despite its status as a stronghold of support for Democrats and the Obama administration.

An early conflict was the state’s effort to secure grants through Duncan’s signature Race to the Top effort. States competed for the funds based on their willingness to pursue reforms favored by the U.S. Department of Education. The sticking point for California was that states had to agree to a teacher evaluation system based, in part, on measures such as student standardized test scores. In addition, state teachers unions had to sign on to a state’s application.

Then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a moderate Republican, supported the requirements, but could not secure agreement from teachers unions. The state’s application was downgraded as a result and other states got the money.

Other elements of Duncan’s push for major policy change included increasing the number of charter schools. Charters are independently managed and exempt from some rules that govern traditional public campuses. Duncan also promoted aggressive school “turnarounds,” which meant, in many places, replacing the entire staff at a school or closing a traditional school, with its union-represented workforce, and replacing it with a charter school.

Duncan’s department had a huge influence in shaping education policy because it used department grants to fill a vacuum left by Congress, whose members could not agree on education policies.

Both support and criticism for Duncan’s actions crossed party lines. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney opined that he’d be willing to keep Duncan on the job in a Republican White House. Meanwhile, Duncan's staunchest critics included teachers unions, a critical Democratic constituency.

California Gov. Jerry Brown came into office as an ally of teachers unions and a skeptic of many reforms he regarded as faddish and unproven. His administration resisted federal conditions for certain grants and refused to bend when Duncan wanted the state to continue using old state standardized tests until new ones were ready. In that resistance, Brown was joined by majorities in the state Legislature and by Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, who also had political support from teachers unions.What did Arne Duncan do for California schools? - LA Times:

School threats on social media a serious concern

School threats on social media a serious concern:

School threats on social media a serious concern

Just a day after Salinas police investigated a social media post referencing a school shooting, tragedy unfolded during a deadly mass shooting at a college campus in Oregon.

Fortunately, Salinas police determined that there was no danger posed by the threat, specifically a Twitter post of graffiti referencing a school shooting, put up by a 14-year-old Salinas High School student.

When officers arrived to the campus early Wednesday, school administrators had already identified the student and held him in the office. A search of the student’s property and home turned up no additional evidence, and the student claimed to not have been responsible for the graffiti, according to Salinas police.

After an extensive investigation that included interviews of staff and students, it was determined that there was no further threat to the school. The 14-year-old student was taken to juvenile hall on suspicion of terrorist threats.

While social media posts threatening schools are not very common in the area, authorities take any and all of them very seriously, said Salinas Police Deputy Chief Terry Gerhardstein.

“With social media, people become so impulsive in putting out information. No matter how bad it is, they don’t think about how bad it is. They don’t think about terror it puts in people’s minds, they don’t think about law enforcement’s response later on,” Gerhardstein said.

When a threat is reported to authorities, they immediately work on locating the person who posted the threat and investigate to see if the person who made the threat had the means and ability to carry it out.

While many believe that social media postings can be posted anonymously, authorities can track down the origin of threatening posts, even through social media sites like Yik Yak, which advertise themselves as a place to post anonymously.

Depending on the situation and whether the source of the social media threat has been located, a school campus may be locked down as authorities apply significant School threats on social media a serious concern:

Effects of trauma could constitute disability, judge rules in Compton Unified case - LA Times

Effects of trauma could constitute disability, judge rules in Compton Unified case - LA Times:

Effects of trauma could constitute disability, judge rules in Compton Unified case

Compton Unified student Kimberly Cervantes, center, photographed in May 2015, is part of a lawsuit seeking disability protections for students suffering from the effects of trauma. Behind her are attorney Annie Hudson-Price, left, and attorney Kathryn Eidmann. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Students who have experienced trauma could be eligible for some of the same protections as students with disabilities based on the effects of that trauma, according to a ruling by a federal judge Tuesday.

But the degrees, types and effects of trauma that would trigger such protections have yet to be determined.

The procedural rulings from Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald came in response to alawsuit filed on behalf of five students and three teachers in the Compton Unified School District that aimed to establish “complex trauma” as a type of disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.

Representing the plaintiffs, Los Angeles-based pro bono firm Public Counsel presented the judge with research showing that exposure to trauma can hurt a student’s ability to learn, much in the same way as other impairments.

Public Counsel wanted the suit to be a class-action case on behalf of students whose learning opportunities suffered in response to trauma, the ruling said. The suit described the case of a boy who was separated from his siblings as he was shuffled through a series of foster homes and ultimately “spent two months of homelessness sleeping on the roof of his Effects of trauma could constitute disability, judge rules in Compton Unified case - LA Times:

Cashing In On Special-Needs Kids | The Progressive

Cashing In On Special-Needs Kids | The Progressive:

Cashing In On Special-Needs Kids

Raising a child with autism requires extra vigilance. Just ask Minneapolis parent Marcia Haugstad. Her son, Noah, has an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis and is beginning high school this fall after many difficult years as a Minneapolis public school student. Once, as a kindergartener, Noah panicked in his regular education classroom and bolted out the door. He was about to set foot in a busy nearby street when a teacher happened to see him, just in time.

Then, in fourth grade, Noah told his mom about the classroom “superbullies” who were teasing him. With inadequate support from teachers and specialists, Noah began lashing out, scratching other kids, and refusing to leave the house in the morning. For the first time in his life, he had to be physically restrained by a teacher.

He even became suicidal. Haugstad vividly recalls Noah telling her, in great detail, how he planned to kill himself by tying a belt around his neck.

Mental health problems are a companion to autism, Haugstad says, because kids like Noah are often very aware that they are different, and don’t fit in. Unpredictable and sometimes violent meltdowns are characteristic of “high-functioning” autistic kids; after the episode fades, the child is often awash in a sea of remorse.

It takes a careful hand to guide a child like Noah, and that’s what Haugstad eventually found for him, through the Minneapolis public schools’ highly regarded citywide autism program. The district has offered this intensive program for the last twenty years, as Minnesota’s autism population has steadily grown, particularly among the state’s white and Somali residents.

In this program, which parents say has provided crucial access to like-minded peers, kids with autism can spend time in both mainstream and special education classrooms.

After Noah’s violent and suicidal episodes as a fourth grader, Haugstad contacted the school

- See more at: http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/10/188342/cashing-special-needs-kids#sthash.YCZAPly8.dpuf

What Arne Duncan’s Replacement did to N.Y. schools - The Washington Post

What Arne Duncan’s new senior adviser did to N.Y. schools - The Washington Post:

What Arne Duncan’s new senior adviser did to N.Y. schools

John King is leaving his job as commissioner of New York State schools commissioner to become a senior adviser to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, with the “roles and responsibilities of the deputy secretary,” according to the Education Department, which issued a statement giving King high praise for his work in New York. Some in New York think otherwise. Here’s a piece by award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York, who was named New York’s 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and in 2010, tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. Burris has been exposing on this blog King’s troubling record in implementing school reform program in New York. You can read some of her other word here and here and here.

By Carol Burris

“Just like 60,000 children in NY, John King has opted-out.” So tweeted Kevin Glynn, the quick witted, co-founder of Lace to the Top. Glynn, like many New York parents and teachers, was pleased by the news of Commissioner King’s resignation. Leonie Haimson, the director of Class Size Matters, referred to John King as “the most unpopular commissioner in the history of NY State.”

One of the strongest critiques of King, however, came from the editorial boardof The Journal News of the Lower Hudson Valley. Their op-ed entitled, “Commissioner King’s Tone Deaf Legacy” describes the commissioner’s pattern of disregard for the opinions of those with whom he disagreed.

Others praised John King. Fans included Chancellor Merryl Tisch, Regent Bennett and representatives of so-called reform groups, such as the Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). In an email to The New York Times, DFER Executive Director Joe Williams complimented King by saying that “even white suburbanites would thank him [King] someday”[1], thus continuing the stereotyping of Common Core critics, which began with Arne Duncan’s “white suburban mom” remark in 2013.

There have been rumors for months that King was selectively applying to positions, as well as rumors that he was being pressured by Andrew Cuomo to leave. He is, as Andy Smarick notes, one of an ever growing number of “reform” chief state officers who are exiting the stage. What matters for New York students, however, is not why John King is leaving, but rather the legacy he leaves behind.

John King was the third commissioner to work for Merryl Tisch since she became chancellor in 2009. He replaced David Steiner, who made a hasty, surprise exit after less than two years in office. Deputy Commissioner King was quickly appointed to the position without a search.

John King was optimistic that great things would happen under his watch. Inan Education Next article, which gives a fairy tale account of Steiner’s tenure, What Arne Duncan’s new senior adviser did to N.Y. schools - The Washington Post:

U.S. education secretary who clashed often with California to resign | EdSource

U.S. education secretary who clashed often with California to resign | EdSource:

U.S. education secretary who clashed often with California to resign

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who clashed frequently with California education officials on a range of K-12 education policy issues, announced that he will resign his position in December.

He will be succeeded by former New York Education Commissioner John King Jr., who was appointed deputy secretary of education under Duncan in January. President Barack Obama is expected to make an announcement to that effect at 12:30 p.m. California Time. 

Duncan is the longest-serving member of Obama’s cabinet. In an email sent to his staff this morning, Duncan said “as a comparatively small team, often under challenging conditions and timelines, our staff has continued to offer example after example of dedication beyond the call of duty.”

The administration and California education leaders found common ground on some major reforms, most notably on implementation of the Common Core State Standards.

However, one of the major points of disagreement was the administration’s insistence on linking teacher evaluations to test scores. The requirement was one of the conditions that the department imposed on states seeking a waiver from penalties of the No Child Left Behind law. California is only one of seven states not to have received a waiver. Gov. Jerry Brown said that Duncan had no authority to impose requirements for teacher evaluations under the NCLB law, and submitted California’s waiver application without the teacher evaluation component.

“History will show that compared to some secretaries of education, Duncan had a significant impact on national and state public policy,” State Board of Education President Michael Kirst said Friday. “But a number of his policies did not fit well with the specific context in California.”

When the Obama administration rejected California’s first application for a waiver in 2012, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said, “It is disappointing that our state’s request – which enjoyed such strong support from parents, teachers, administrators, and education advocates across California – has been rejected.”

Duncan started giving state waivers from NCLB in 2011, after a deeply divided Congress could not agree on changes to reauthorize the law. That remains the case, and so the law, formally known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, limps along as written in 2002 with flaws that both Republicans and Democrats agree should be fixed, although they disagree over how to do so.

With the resignation of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, it seems even less likely that a bipartisan majority will be able to agree on a rewrite of the law before Obama leaves office.

However, while rejecting California’s application for a statewide waiver, eight California school districts, which formed the California Office to U.S. education secretary who clashed often with California to resign | EdSource:

Education Secretary Duncan Steps Down!: Raise a toast with me this evening, and let’s drink to downfall of the whole testocracy | I AM AN EDUCATOR

Education Secretary Duncan Steps Down!: Raise a toast with me this evening, and let’s drink to downfall of the whole testocracy | I AM AN EDUCATOR:

Education Secretary Duncan Steps Down!: Raise a toast with me this evening, and let’s drink to downfall of the whole testocracy

Arne Duncan has been one of the most destructive forces to public education in the history of our country.

Duncan was appointed by President Obama as the Secretary of Education, but his real role has been “testocracy tsar”–as his signature policies of Race to the Top and Common Core have been singularly focused on promoting high-stakes, standardized test and punish policies in service of the privatization and charterization of the public schools.  Duncan’s initiatives have been designed to reduce the intellectual and emotional process of teaching and learning to a single score that can be used to close schools, fire teachers, stop students from graduating, and siphon more and more money out of the public schools towards privatized charter operators.

For that reason, I hope you will raise a toast with me this evening–let’s say at 6pm Pacific time, and make it a collective action–at Duncan’s announcement today that he will step down from his post.

To be sure, the proposed replacement for Duncan, John King, will only serve as a new testocracy tsar with a proven track record of supporting corporate education reform.  Still, it’s worth marking the departure of Duncan, someone who’s policies have hurt so many children, as we continue planning to do away with the testocracy all together.

During the summer of 2010, several other educators and I obtained an in person meeting with Education Secretary Duncan Steps Down!: Raise a toast with me this evening, and let’s drink to downfall of the whole testocracy | I AM AN EDUCATOR:

A Top Ten of @ArneDuncan Inanity: Obama’s Basketball Buddy Drops Ball on Ed | Cloaking Inequity

A Top Ten of @ArneDuncan Inanity: Obama’s Basketball Buddy Drops Ball on Ed | Cloaking Inequity:

A Top Ten of @ArneDuncan Inanity: Obama’s Basketball Buddy Drops Ball on Ed

So what happens when a President chooses a basketball buddy as Secretary of Education? Really, Obama… what did you expect when you chose a non-educator, non-expert to lead American education? A leader who left Chicago in shambles, whose school “turnarounds” didn’t work. Disappointed by his latest inanity at the Mom Congress, I have selected ten quotes from Arne Duncan’s reign as Secretary for a top ten.



It’s fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were, and that’s pretty scary,” Duncan said. “You’ve bet your house and where you live and everything on, ‘My child’s going to be prepared.’ That can be a punch in the gut. Source

Really Arne? You are going to attack the independent/swing female voters the Democratic party needs in coming elections? Over Common Core? You realize that TAMSA kicked policymakers’ a___ in Texas for similar antiquated and disingenuous thinking about high-stakes testing?



The vast majority who drop out of high school drop out not because it’s too hard but because it’s too easy. Source

Talk to students Arne. They will tell you that high-stakes testing is discouraging. They will tell you that class after class of test-prep is dull. See all of Cloaking Inequity’s posts on dropout here.



I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. Source

Reformers ideas in New Orleans have been a failure. It’s just that simpleA Top Ten of @ArneDuncan Inanity: Obama’s Basketball Buddy Drops Ball on Ed | Cloaking Inequity:

Members-only Unions: Can They Help Revitalize Workplace Democracy? : Blog of the Century

Members-only Unions: Can They Help Revitalize Workplace Democracy? : Blog of the Century:

Members-only Unions: Can They Help Revitalize Workplace Democracy?

On July 10, 2014, when the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 42 was officially announced, many Americans were introduced for the first time to an old labor practice: members-only unions.¹

Local 42 was formed at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, after the UAW was defeated in “one of the most closely watched unionization votes in decades,”² which many on both sides staked out as a symbol of labor’s prospects in the South. Typically, after facing such an election loss, most union organizers either regroup for another election, or simply walk away. In the case of Local 42, the UAW chose a largely forgotten third option: forming a nonexclusive, members-only union.

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Members-only unions, like the name implies, are unions that comprise only a portion of the employees in a workplace, rather than including all workers in the bargaining unit. Workers who do not wish to be members do not have to join, and in turn, the union does not have to provide non-member employees with any services. In fact, by law, a members-only union can only represent those who have joined, as opposed to representing all employees as in a traditional bargaining unit. They are not as powerful as a bargaining unit that results from an election, but in some circumstances they are the easier—and sometimes the only—option.

While the concept is new to many, the practice of members-only unionism preceded passage of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935.³ In his seminal book on the history of members-only unionism, Charles Morris shows that, before the NLRA and its judicial interpretations institutionalized a preference for union elections, a significant percentage of workers bargained through members-only unions.⁴ For instance, in a November 1933 statistical study of 3,314 companies employing 2,585,740 wage earners, approximately 31.1 percent of companies engaged in bargaining with either a company union or independent union. Morris shows that over 18 percent of this group bargained with unions on a nonexclusive, members-only basis.⁵ However, following the passage of the NLRA—and the attendant right of union elections and exclusive representation based on majority support—the practice of members-only unionism quickly diminished.

While under the law workers can still form members-only unions, there has been an ongoing debate as to whether the NLRA provides them the right to bargain with their employers on a members-only basis. Morris argues persuasively that the text and history of the NLRA, as well as congressional intent, point strongly to such a bargaining right. However, in 2006, the United Steelworkers tested Morris’s theory in the Dick’s Sporting Goods case, and the General Counsel's Division of Advice issued a memorandum concluding that the Board should not issue a complaint because nonexclusive unions did not have a right to bargain. Therefore, the National Labor Relations Board never had an opportunity to consider the case, and has still not yet fully considered this question.⁶

The legal issue of employees’ bargaining rights in a members-only setting has stood in limbo since then, with a variety of scholarly articles addressing what legal rights workers in members-only unions may or may not have, and the possible future successes of such unions.⁷ This question is certain to become more important in the upcoming years. In 2014, Wisconsin became the nation’s twenty-fifth right-to-work state—which means that, in any of these states, if a union is the exclusive representative of all workers in the bargaining unit, any worker can choose not to pay any union dues. And in the upcoming term, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which considers whether union security clauses in public sector contracts violate the First Amendment. If the Supreme Court rules the way that many expect, all public-sector workers will be under right-to-work, which could serve to defund public-sector unions. Such developments make organizing and maintaining a union more difficult, and so if voluntary payment of dues becomes the norm, then some unions may choose the voluntary nature of members-only unions.

What is often lost in many of the discussions on workers’ rights is that members-only unions are not a theoretical construct or historical remnant. In fact, beyond UAW Local 42, a variety of public and private-sector locals have operated on a members-only basis for many years, with varying degrees of success. For example, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has approximately 120,000 members in members-only unions spread across Texas, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Virginia.

Most of the existing members-only unions are located in southern states, because legal conditions in those states such as right-to-work laws make it difficult to organize a majority union. Similarly, most members-only unions are public-sector unions, because many states that are inhospitable to labor can easily pass laws that limit collective bargaining rights in the public sector. However, there are members-only unions in the private sector and in other geographic locations as well.

Based on numerous interviews with those involved with members-only unions, this report presents several case studies—one southern private-sector union, one northern private-sector union, and one southern public-sector union—in order to demonstrate the various benefits and hurdles of members-only unionism. It reveals that the problems exclusive-representative unions face are felt far more acutely in the members-only context. Because almost all members-only unions work outside of the confines of a contract, successful unions must be in constant communication with the membership to find out about issues at work and must address them in creative fashions. And because employers will not usually meet with a members-only union, let alone bargain a contract, success in this context is defined differently—comprised mainly of retaining a significant membership and winning discrete battles in the workplace.

Case Studies

Texas Workers Alliance

The Texas Workers Alliance (TWA) is a members-only union in the San Antonio, Texas area, whose membership consists of non-teaching staff, such as custodians, bus drivers, secretaries, and clerks at area public schools.

There are a number of factors in Texas that are conducive to the formation of members-Members-only Unions: Can They Help Revitalize Workplace Democracy? : Blog of the Century: