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Jonathan Becker

Chris Lehmann: In Defense of Teachers Unions - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...-teachers-unions_b_839099.html

unions special interest groups SIG

shared by Jonathan Becker on 24 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Jonathan Becker on 24 Mar 11
     
    Because unions fundamentally fight for teachers' rights to have a say in what a democratic education in America looks like, I stand with teachers' unions.
  • stephlennon on 03 Apr 11
     
    I could not agree more with the sentiment of this piece. As someone who has chosen NOT to join the VEA, though- Lehmann is correct- I do not join because of HOW it is run, not because of what they are supposed to do. Parenting 101 would tell you that if parents are unable to provide for themselves, they cannot provide for a child- in airplanes you are supposed to put your own oxygen mask on first so you are able to take care of others around you- yet in education, we allow the "good of the children" to burn out or compromise teachers daily. I believe collective action is important, it is just not run the way I believe it could most effectively be run.
REL N

Education Week: KIPP, Teachers' Union Go Toe to Toe in Baltimore - 1 views

www.edweek.org/...24kipp_ep.h30.html

ADMS707 Niemeyer kipp Union Teacher-pay

shared by REL N on 15 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Virginia have the same kind of requirement that Maryland does.
    • REL N
      REL N on 15 Mar 11
       
      I thought that Virginia teachers were not represented by a union. Was I mistaken? Or are teachers in charter schools represented by a union while those in traditional public schools are not?
  • REL N on 15 Mar 11
     
    KIPP is threatening to close schools in Baltimore unless they are able to resolve a dispute with the teachers' union regarding teacher pay for extended school days.
REL N

Education Week: States Aim to Curb Collective Bargaining - 0 views

www.edweek.org/...20bargaining_ep.h30.html

ADMS707 Teachers Union

shared by REL N on 07 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • REL N on 07 Feb 11
     
    GOP leaders are proposing bills to limit collective bargaining to wages and benefits. They want to exclude teachers/unions from the table when they develop education policy.
  • REL N on 07 Feb 11
     
    GOP leaders are proposing bills to limit collective bargaining to wages and benefits. They want to exclude teachers/unions from the table when they develop education policy.
Roger Mancastroppa

Wisconsin Progressive/Labor Alliance Gears Up for Major Electoral Test Tomorrow | FDL N... - 0 views

news.firedoglake.com/...-major-electoral-test-tomorrow

adms707 Republicans education collective bargaining collective rights policy privatization

shared by Roger Mancastroppa on 04 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Roger Mancastroppa on 04 Apr 11
     
    "Judge Maryann Sumi delayed the implementation of the anti-union law in Wisconsin that would strip most collective bargaining rights from public employees. Sumi is ruling on whether the conference committee for the bill violated state open meetings requirements. In addition, Madison-area unions have filed suit over whether or not the bill passed had fiscal elements, meaning it would require a quorum of state Senators to consider it, which it did not receive. And a third lawsuit, filed late last week, alleges that the legislation is unconstitutional, "infringing on employees' equal protection rights and their rights to freedom of speech and association."
stephlennon

Pressure Mounts To Ax Teacher Seniority Rules - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-to-ax-teacher-seniority-rules

ADMS707 Lennon unions

shared by stephlennon on 13 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • stephlennon on 13 Mar 11
     
    An aspect I had not considered much this week is the role of unions in micropolitics. The seniority issues and power of union forces are addressed in this sound clip/article.
Roger Mancastroppa

John Kasich: Ohio Union Bill Likely To Become Law - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...ch-ohio-union-bi_n_831590.html

adms707 union ballot repeal legislation education

shared by Roger Mancastroppa on 01 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Roger Mancastroppa on 01 Apr 11
     
    The Ohio legislation drew pro-labor protesters and tea party activists. The crowd on Tuesday topped more than 8,500. The measure has prompted a visit by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland has pledged to lead a ballot repeal if the bill passes.
REL N

House GOP Looks to Slash Education Spending - 2 views

blogs.edweek.org/..._gop_slashes_education_sp.html

ADMS707 Federal Funding Cuts

shared by REL N on 13 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • REL N on 13 Feb 11
     
    GOP proposes numerous cuts in federal education spending. Significantly reduces or eliminates programs that the President proposed in his recent State of the Union speech.
Victoria Schnettler

Besieged: School Boards and the Future of Education Politics - 0 views

books.google.com/books

ADMS707 education School boards unions

shared by Victoria Schnettler on 18 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Victoria Schnettler on 18 Feb 11
     
    Chapter: Teacher Unions and School Board Elections is very interesting when looking at self-interest in the political realm
REL N

Accountability Lost : Education Next - 0 views

educationnext.org/accountability-lost

ADMS707 Niemeyer Boards accountability

shared by REL N on 17 Feb 11 - Cached
    • REL N
      REL N on 17 Feb 11
       
      Tried to identify confounding variables to increase the likelihood that any changes in voting behavior were due to school performance
  • incumbent school board members won a larger share of the total vote in a precinct when test scores in that precinct improved. We estimate that improvement from the 25th to the 75th percentile of test-score change—that is, moving from a loss of 4 percentile points to a gain of 3.8 percentile points between 1999 and 2000—produced on average an increase of 3 percentage points in an incumbent’s vote share. If precinct test scores dropped from the 75th to the 25th percentile of test-score change, the associated 3-percentage-point decrease in an incumbent’s vote share could substantially erode an incumbent’s margin of victory.
  • percentile scores had increased in the year preceding the election, incumbents won 81 percent of the time in competitive elections; in districts where scores had declined, incumbents won only 69 percent of the time.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • significant relationship with precinct test scores and the absence of a relationship with district scores suggests that voters were more concerned with school performance within their immediate neighborhood than across the district.
  • all indications of a relationship between school performance and an incumbent school board member’s vote share vanished after the passage of NCLB in 2002.
  • None of these approaches yielded clear evidence of a link between school performance and voter behavior in school board elections.
  • the overwhelming weight of the evidence indicated that school board members were not being judged on improvement or weakening in school test scores.
  • School performance as measured by test scores may have helped determine which candidates sought reelection and which faced a challenger.
  • assess the relationship between test-score trends and incumbents’ decisions to run for reelection, and then to estimate the effect of test-score trends on the probability that an incumbent who runs faces an opponent.
  • incumbents may bow out in anticipation of being held accountable for poor test-score performance by schools in their district.
  • drop from the 75th to the 25th percentile of test-score change, our results lead us to expect that incumbents will be 13 percentage points less likely to run for reelection. In fact, 76 percent of incumbents sought reelection in districts with improving test scores; in districts with falling scores, only 66 percent did.
  • we failed to find any indication that incumbents in 2002 and 2004 based their decisions about running for reelection on student learning trends.
  • In these years, only 30 and 34 percent of articles, respectively, touched on test scores. The decline in media attention leads us to suspect that concerns about student learning trends probably did not stand at the forefront of voters’ or candidates’ thinking in the 2002 and 2004 elections.
  • “The PACT needs to be seen for what it is: a vehicle for politicians to say that they are tough on education (and educators). This may make for good politics, but it makes for bad educational policy.”
  • Reacting to the rising criticisms directed toward PACT, voters may have grown disenchanted with the state’s accountability system and removed test-score performance from among the criteria on which they evaluated school board candidates.
  • if most schools appeared to be average or better, parents may not have been prompted to hold incumbents accountable for poor school performance. Incumbents and potential challengers may also have become less responsive to scores when the testing regimen began to give nearly every school a passing mark.
  • School board elections give the public the leverage to improve their schools. If voters do not cast out incumbents when local school performance is poor, they forfeit that opportunity. As debate continues over components of NCLB, policymakers should consider whether it is realistic to assume voters will in fact use the polls to drive school improvement.
  • analyzed test-score data and election results from 499 races over three election cycles in South Carolina to study whether voters punish and reward incumbent school board members on the basis of changes in student learning, as measured by standardized tests, in district schools
  • According to a 2002 national survey, student achievement ranks second only to financial concerns as school board members’ highest priority.
  • the basic purpose of all school board activities is to facilitate the day-to-day functioning of schools.
  • Neither the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) nor the states impose direct sanctions on members of school boards that oversee large numbers of underperforming schools.
  • impact of school performance on incumbents’ decisions to seek reelection and potential challengers’ decisions to join the race.
  • All but 4 of the state’s 46 counties hold nonpartisan school board elections. Approximately 80 percent of school board members receive some compensation, either a salary, per diem payments, or reimbursement for their expenses. Over 90 percent of South Carolina’s 85 school boards have between 5 and 9 members, while the largest board has 11. And, as is common practice in other states, nearly 9 out of 10 South Carolina school districts hold board elections during the general election in November.
  • the most important difference between South Carolina and most other states when it comes to local school politics is the role played by the state’s teachers unions, which are among the weakest in the country.
  • South Carolina school boards are unlikely to be beholden to the unions, which should make the boards more responsive to the broader public.
  • examine whether voters are more concerned with student performance districtwide or in their local neighborhood, we computed two measures of average school performance to include in our analysis.
  • separate the effect of school performance from the effects of other factors that could reasonably influence an incumbent school board member’s vote share
  • REL N on 17 Feb 11
     
    Details about research on the impact school performance has on how people vote for school board members. The authors conclude "If voters do not cast out incumbents when local school performance is poor, they forfeit that opportunity. As debate continues over components of NCLB, policymakers should consider whether it is realistic to assume voters will in fact use the polls to drive school improvement."
REL N

Why America's teachers are enraged - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

ADMS707 Niemeyer Teacher-evaluation reform states politics

shared by REL N on 24 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Right-to-work states do not have higher scores than states with strong unions. Actually, the states with the highest performance on national tests are Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Vermont, and New Hampshire, where teachers belong to unions that bargain collectively for their members.
  • One must wonder how it is possible to talk of improving schools while cutting funding, demoralizing teachers, cutting scholarships to college, and increasing class sizes.
  • REL N on 24 Feb 11
     
    If everyone agrees that teachers are important... why do they think that demoralizing them will improve students' experience and performance in school?
Jonathan Becker

Michelle Rhee's Bipartisan School-Reform Movement and the Assault on Teachers -- New Yo... - 0 views

nymag.com/...michelle-rhee-2011-3

school teachers rhee politics adms707

shared by Jonathan Becker on 24 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Jonathan Becker on 24 Mar 11
     
    Once deified, now demonized, teachers are under assault from union-busting Republicans on the right and wealthy liberals on the left. And leading the charge from all directions is a woman most famous for losing her job: the former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee.
Roger Mancastroppa

A Primer on Class Struggle | Common Dreams - 0 views

www.commondreams.org/...31-4

adms707 education policy government

shared by Roger Mancastroppa on 01 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Roger Mancastroppa on 01 Apr 11
     
    "Class struggle goes on in other realms. In goes on in K-12 education, for example, when business tries to influence what students are taught about everything from nutrition to the virtues of free enterprise; when U.S. labor history is excluded from the required curriculum; and when teachers' unions are blamed for problems of student achievement that are in fact consequences of the maldistribution of income and wealth in U.S. society. It goes on in higher education when corporations lavish funds on commercially viable research; when capitalist-backed pundits attack professors for teaching students to think critically about capitalism; and when they give money in exchange for putting their names on buildings and schools. Class struggle also goes on in higher education when pro-capitalist business schools are exempted from criticism for being ideological and free-market economists are lauded as objective scientists."
Roger Mancastroppa

Republican Ohio Gov. Bars 360,000 Ohio Workers from Bargaining and Striking -- How Will... - 0 views

www.alternet.org/..._how_will_democrats_fight_back

adms707 education class war Republicans fascism

shared by Roger Mancastroppa on 04 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Roger Mancastroppa on 04 Apr 11
     
    How to create a corporate plutocracy: eliminate the power of the unions, destroy their Democratic rivals creating a one-party system, sell off all services (including education) to the private sector, and watch the rise of fascism.
Roger Mancastroppa

A New "Washington Consensus" is Born - 1 views

educationnext.org/w-washington-consensus-is-born

adms707 politics Reform education democracy states

shared by Roger Mancastroppa on 31 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Roger Mancastroppa on 31 Jan 11
     
    "This week has witnessed the emergence of a new Washington Consensus, apparent in President Obama's education-obsessed State of the Union address, a bipartisan conference call with key Senate leaders, and a supportive column by the country's most widely read conservative."
Roger Mancastroppa

A Union by any other name - 0 views

educationnext.org/...ednext20013_38moe.pdf

ADMS707 education school Federal states Accountability

shared by Roger Mancastroppa on 07 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Roger Mancastroppa on 07 Feb 11
     
    An article providing an overview of how the AFT & the NEA are flawed due to self-interest. His only path to reform seems to be school choice.
Georggetta Howie

Fixing Teacher Tenure Without a Pass/Fail Grade - 1 views

www.time.com/...0,8599,2044529,00.html

Tenure Teachers Reform Performance Union

shared by Georggetta Howie on 27 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Georggetta Howie on 27 Jan 11
     
    Proposal of doing away with tenure and introducing contracts that will reward based on performance not time served.
stephlennon

Ending the education wars - 1 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2011020305473.html

ADMS707 education states teacher evaluation

shared by stephlennon on 11 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • stephlennon on 11 Feb 11
     
    Comparing educators to murderers begins this article- but actually brings up compelling issues. Why is it so hard to dismiss incompetent teachers? Even in non-union states, the process is lengthy and the threat of litigation is thick in the process.
Jonathan Becker

Why America's teachers are enraged - CNN.com - 1 views

www.cnn.com/...ravitch.teachers.blamed

teachers ADMS707 ravitch wisconsin unions

shared by Jonathan Becker on 22 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Jonathan Becker on 22 Feb 11
     
    The uprising in Madison is symptomatic of a simmering rage among the nation's teachers. They have grown angry and demoralized over the past two years as attacks on their profession escalated.
REL N

A Board's Eye View : Education Next - 0 views

educationnext.org/aboardseyeview

ADMS707 Niemeyer Boards reform

shared by REL N on 17 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • “Code of Conduct for School Board Members.” This was intended, wrote the superintendent, in recommending the code, “to set standards for how the Board interacts with itself.” Sounded like sex to me. But the preoccupation with board member behavior was the result of the long-standing tension between the democracy represented by elected officials who oversaw the schools and the professionalism of those hired to run them. The superintendent was definitely attempting to tip the balance in favor of the pros. “We will not attempt to exercise individual authority over the district’s operations, staff, or personnel decisions,” read one of the rules he was proposing for us. Another: “We will not express individual judgments about the performance of the superintendent or staff. . . . We recognize the value of the chain of command. When approached by staff, constituents or the public, we will channel all inquiries to the administrator.” I e-mailed the superintendent, “Is this a joke?” He called and laughed lamely.
    • REL N
      REL N on 17 Feb 11
       
      "... the preoccupation with board member behavior was the result of the long-standing tension between the democracy represented by elected officials who oversaw the schools and the professionalism of those hired to run them."
  • “We should let people know we are looking for quality, of course, but not to the point of advertising outside official channels.”
  • the board never reviewed other major expenditures, such as the installation of a new computer system.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • I asked the superintendent how a new asphalt parking lot was installed at the Greenport School without board approval–or even a bid or a notice or a need. He informed me that a bid wasn’t necessary for a job worth less than $10,000.
  • no clarification of what any of this meant–or cost. Don’t ask. “Mandated” was the knowing word from veteran board members.
  • almost 16 percent of the children in the school district were disabled, almost double the national average.
  • more than 350, were either “emotionally disturbed,” “learning disabled,” or “speech impaired.” These were the kind of catchall categories that allowed a district to dispose of many problem children–in Hudson those children were mostly black–with expensive baby-sitting.
  • over the next several months as I learned that the district had been running a deficit for several years. In fact, the state comptroller’s office, which oversees the fiscal integrity of all state and local government agencies, had conducted its own audit and found the same thing: “overexpenditure of budgetary appropriations and the overestimation of revenues.” Money was being moved around, from one fund to another, which was also against the rules, the comptroller noted. And when auditors had asked for records, they couldn’t be found.
  • the school board was not where the biggest battles would be won or lost.
  • The teacher union president, normally a regular presence at school board meetings, stopped coming so that he wouldn’t have to answer my questions about what was being done to improve things that his teachers controlled. (He had already stopped responding to my phone calls and letters.)
  • the debate was as much cultural–and racial–as educational,
    • REL N
      REL N on 17 Feb 11
       
      The author was frustrated that the board refused to discuss the academic mediocrity in the schools and then he realized that "the debate was as much cultural-and racial-as educational,...."
  • “Mandates” and laws sprouted acres of explanatory weeds–most of them unnecessary. No one ever read the original “mandate.”
  • no one seemed to know why the “Parent/Family/Community Involvement Policy” was necessary, but it was assumed that it was required by some Oz-like authority, passed through the policy-writing machinery at some school board association office, and sent to us for our “approval.”
  • No one else on the board expressed any hint of having read it. And I was beginning to discern a pattern: the more written, the less understood.
  • REL N on 17 Feb 11
     
    A concerned parent joined the local school board in hopes of improving the academics. After 6 frustrating months he resigned from the board believing that "the school board was not where the biggest battles would be won or lost."
Phil Riddle

For superior teachers, reward excellence - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

William Bennett Teacher Compensation

shared by Phil Riddle on 03 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Phil Riddle on 03 Mar 11
     
    An interesting article if only because Bennett glosses over the fact that many of the ideas he supports are highly controversial.
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