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Some people have the unfortunate idea that unionism is somehow antithetical to or incompatible with being a professional. This notion is particularly salient within education circles, where phrases like "treat teachers like professionals" are often used as implicit arguments against policies associated with unions, such as salary schedules and tenure (examples here, here, here and here). Let's take a quick look at this "conflict," first by examining union membership rates among professionals versus workers in other types of occupations.

For the past couple of months, Steve Brill's new book has served to step up the eternally-beneath-the-surface hypothesis that teachers' unions are the primary obstacle to improving educational outcomes in the U.S. The general idea is that unions block "needed reforms," such as merit pay and other forms of test-based accountability for teachers, and that they "protect bad teachers" from being fired. Teachers' unions are a convenient target. For one thing, a significant proportion of Americans aren't crazy about unions of any type. Moreover, portraying unions as the villain in the education reform drama facilitates the (mostly false) distinction between teachers and the organizations that represent them - put simply, "love teachers, hate their unions." Under the auspices of this dichotomy, people can advocate for changes , such as teacher-level personnel policies based partially on testing results, without having to address why most teachers oppose them (a badly needed conversation).

As the city's Department of Education moves to bring a charter school to Brooklyn's Cobble Hill neighborhood, a state assemblywoman and a former city schools official are backing a different school proposal that would compete with the charter school for space. The proposal asks the department to open an early learning center that would serve students in prekindergarten and kindergarten who live walking distance from 284 Baltic Street, the same address the city plans to give a new Success Academy Network charter school. Carmen Farina, a former deputy chancellor for the Department of Education who retired in 2006, and Joan L. Millman, a state assemblywoman representing Cobble Hill, are both promoting the idea as the best way to use available space in the Baltic Street building.

Children with autism accounted for almost one third of a comprehensive sample of published court decisions concerning the core concepts of free appropriate public education (FAPE) and least restrictive environment (LRE) under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. The other major, and more significant, finding was that when comparing this litigation percentage with the autism percentage in the special education population for the period 1993 to 2006, the ratio was approximately 10 : 1. The reasons for this disproportionality, or overrepresentation of children with autism in FAPE/LRE litigation, are complex. Special education leaders need to pay particular attention to establishing effective communications and trust building with parents of students with autism and to optimize the use of various approaches of alternative dispute resolution.

Who thought it was a good idea to send ATR teachers from school to school from week to week? How does that help anyone? The stories I'm hearing and seeing would be beyond belief it it weren't for the fact that, under such an agreement, they were virtually inevitable.

The AFT, led by its President Randi Weingarten, advocates vigorously on behalf of what it views as best for students in the public schools of America. In the current environment of test-driven accountability systems, there is a danger of narrowing the education our children receive to improve test scores. This leads to a "one-size-fits-all" approach that is justified on the grounds of the supposedly poor performance of U.S. schools on international comparisons. But too often, those who rely upon such comparison neither understand what the results mean nor do they examine what things high-scoring countries do. The AFT has never opposed the proper use of tests as one means of assessment. One can see AFT's well-thoughtout positions on proper use of testing on its website, including its position statement on Accountability and its publications and reports on Standards and Assessments. Now the AFT is running a petition drive against the idea of One Size Fits All in education, which has been the impact of current policies at the national and state level on assessment and accountability. 

The parent trigger, an idea presented by the voices of corporate education "reform" as parent empowerment, won a round in court this week. Ironically, the court came down firmly in favor of disempowering parents, as the parent trigger's sponsors had requested. The ruling by a California Superior Court judge decreed that parents who have signed a parent trigger petition do not have the right to change their minds and may not rescind their signatures. The ruling cast the future of the targeted school, Desert Trails in Adelanto, in Southern California's high desert, into confusion. Charter operators will now be invited to bid for the school, even though Desert Trails parents on both sides of the controversy say they don't want the school to become a charter - disempowering them even further.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten is calling today for a new brand of unionism that focuses not only on helping members but also the communities in which they work and live. The union's annual convention starts today in Detroit, where more than than 3,000 delegates have gathered at a time when teachers and their unions have come under attack from school reformers. Though teachers have been unhappy with many of President Obama's education initiatives, Weingarten's speech urges members to support him in the November election because he shares many of the same values as union members. As for GOP candidate Mitt Romney, she says, "His idea of education reform is vouchers, which study after study has shown do not improve achievement." The two candidates, she said, "couldn't be more different." The convention will also be addressed by Vice President Biden, education historian Diane Ravitch and others. Here is Weingarten's convention speech as prepared for delivery:

Just when you thought we'd reached a consensus on the need to dramatically improve America's schools, a chorus is emerging to suggest all is well. First, a new book out from Harvard University Press, Is American Science In Decline? notes that "American high school students are … performing better in mathematics and science than in the past," helping explain why the authors' answer to the title question is "no." This comes on the heels of a USA Today op-ed last month urging us to "Quit Fretting: U.S. is Fine in Science Education." And why can the fretting end? Because, the pundits tell us, last year 65% of students had a "basic" grasp of science on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), up from 63% in 2009. Their conclusion: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

"The education debate rests on two faulty premises: that public schools are failures, and choice is the solution" "The "Overton Window" is not a new kind of low-glare, high-insulation windowpane. Nor is it the title of a paperback thriller like "The Eiger Sanction" or "The Bourne Supremacy." Identified by Joseph P. Overton of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the Overton Window refers to the boundaries of the limited range of ideas and policies that are acceptable for consideration in politics at any one time. In other words, the Overton Window is the "box" that we are constantly exhorted to think outside of, only to be ignored or punished if we succeed."

"This week Rhode Island got a bit of attention when education historian Diane Ravitch posted an email on her blog that she'd received from Theresa Laperche, a former participant in the Rhode Island Teaching Fellows program. This program, a partnership between RIDE and Michelle Rhee's New Teacher Project (TNTP), is a Teach For America-like alternative teacher certification program that recruits individuals with no education experience, gives them five weeks of training, and places them in a high-need urban school. This is a model that I've long questioned, but I had no idea just how problematic the program was until I read Theresa's account of her time as a Teaching Fellow. I decided to call her up myself to learn more about her perspective on the program."

"The question of what to do with bad teachers has stymied America's education system of late, sparking chaotic protests in state capitals and vitriolic debate in a recent congressional hearing. It has also stoked the movement known as 'education reform,' which has zeroed in on teacher quality by urging school districts to sort the star teachers from the duds, and reward or punish them accordingly. The idea is that America's schools would be able to increase their students' test scores if only they had better teachers. Since 2007, this wave of education reformers -- in particular Democrats for Education Reform, a group backed by President Barack Obama and hedge fund donors -- has clashed with teachers unions in their pursuit of making the field of education as discerning in its personnel choices as, say, that of finance. Good teachers should be promoted and retained, reformers contend, instead of being treated like identical pieces on an assembly line, who are rewarded with tenure for their staying power or seniority. But what to do with the underperformers?"

One of the problems that does exist is that most of us can't agree about the purpose and goals of education. Our current educational system born of the progressive movement, industrial revolution and other social developments of the late 19th and early 20th century has evolved into a patchwork of reforms and new ideas that emerge every few years, then disappear just as quickly, leaving a path of failed and sometimes conflicting practices and theories in its wake. Paradoxically, many of the reforms put in place 100 years ago are still in practice today. Through it all, it seems education has lost sight of why it exists at all. I know many teachers who believe their job is to teach skills, such as math or science, but that's far too limiting. When I was an English teacher, I never believed my job was to teach grammar and literature. My purpose was to teach students to love learning so they would become life-long learners. I've decided that even that's not thinking big enough.

This morning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Dennis Walcott appeared at an American University forum with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and the mayors and school superintendents from Chicago and Los Angeles. A video of the forum is here. Bloomberg defended giving out invalid and inaccurate Teacher Data Reports as providing "information" to parents, saying it was "arrogance" to suggest that peddling wildly inaccurate information was a bad idea. He made a feeble attempt at backtracking from a prior statement that in his ideal world, he would fire half of the teachers and double class size. "Class size is important," he opined, but not as important as other things such as teacher quality. At the very end of the program, Bloomberg displayed his education acumen and keen political ear by declaring that "teaching to the test is exactly what we should do." And in defense of this position, he invoked a Pete Seeger song, "Waist Deep In The Big Muddy."

About 20 percent of principals new to a school leave that posting within one or two years, leaving behind a school that generally continues on a downward academic slide after their departure, according to a study released last week by the RAND Corp. on behalf of New York City-based New Leaders. "The underlying idea is that churn is not good," said Gina Schuyler Ikemoto, an author of the report and the executive director of research and policy development for New Leaders, formerly known as New Leaders for New Schools. The nonprofit group recruits and trains principals to work in urban districts. However, the answer is not as simple as just allowing or encouraging those principals to remain in place, she said. "In some cases, the solution is to give folks more time," Ms. Ikemoto said, but policymakers should make sure they're selecting the very best candidates for those positions from the start.

Late yesterday, the New Jersey Department of Education Released its long awaited report on the state school finance formula. For a little context, the formula was adopted in 2008 and upheld by the court as meeting the state constitutional standard for providing a thorough and efficient system of public schooling. But, court acceptance of the plan came with a requirement of a review of the formula after three years of implementation. After a change in administration, with additional legal battles over cuts in aid in the interim, we now have that report.  The idea was that the report would suggest any adjustments that may need to be made to the formula to make the distributions of aid across districts more appropriate/more adequate (more constitutional?). I laid out my series of proposed minor adjustments in a previous post. Reduced to its simplest form, the current report argues that New Jersey's biggest problem in public education is its achievement gap - the gap between poor and minority students and between non-poor and non-minority students.  And the obvious proposed fix? To reduce funding to high poverty, predominantly minority school districts and increase funding to less poor districts with fewer minorities. Why? Because money and class size simply don't matter. Instead, teacher quality and strategies like those  used in Harlem Childrens' Zone do! Here's my quick, day-after, critique

Are doctors denigrated for the high rates of diabetes? Are the police officers responsible for crimes? Why are teachers responsible for the lack of parenting? For the impact of poverty? How can teachers be "graded" on student progress when we have no control over students out of school experiences? Why aren't "they" listening to us? The educational community: parents, principals, teachers and advocates all feel the current government education policies are seriously flawed; no matter how much they express their opinions no one seems to be listening to their cries.

John P. Reilly, KIPP Tech Valley Charter School board chairman, in his commentary ("A truce in the city school wars," Feb. 21) suggests that the Albany School District be viewed as a "portfolio" district with district-operated and charter schools being treated more equally. This idea is without merit, as it ignores the substantial differences between public and charter schools. Charter schools are privately run and may exercise discretion regarding the children they educate. This makes them more akin to private schools despite their public funding.

The big "reform" trucks have been rollin' down the education highway for nearly a decade now. Public school educators are used to faux reform's inconvenience and injustice by now--and some even accept endless testing, lockstep standards and curriculum, and systematic destruction of public schools as necessary for positive change. Parents and grandparents may like their children's schools and teachers, but have absorbed the incessant media drumbeat: public education has failed. Out with the old! Something Must Be Done! If--like me--you still believe that public education is a civic good, an idea perfectly resonant with democratic equality, you're probably wondering if there's anything that can stop the big "reform" trucks. Those massive, exceptionally well-funded "reform" trucks with their professional media budgets, paid commentary and slick political arms. I can tell you this: it won't be teachers alone who turn back the tide of "reform." Teachers have been backed into a corner, painted as unionists bent on their own security (whether they pay dues or not), unwilling to be "accountable." They have been replaced, willy-nilly, by untrained temps--without retaliatory strike-back from their national union leaders. They have been publicly humiliated by their own cities and media outlets, not to mention the Secretary of Education.

Newt Gingrich has some unconventional ideas about education reform. He wants every state to open a work-study college where students work 20 hours a week during the school year and full-time in the summer and then graduate debt-free. In poverty stricken K-12 districts, Mr. Gingrich said that schools should enlist students as young as 9 to14 to mop hallways and bathrooms, and pay them a wage. Currently child-labor laws and unions keep poor students from bootstrapping their way into middle class, Mr. Gingrich said.