LABOR NOTES FEBRUARY 2011 PAGE 7

A handful of conservative billionaires withenormous political and media savvy are leadingan all-out war on public education and its union-ized teachers. Their initiative is part of a broad-er attack on all public services and publicemployee unions. This special section on the fol-lowing pages outlines the attacks and exploresalternatives.

What do the billionaires want from their ver-sion of school reform? See pages 8 and 10.

Can teacher unions refute the teacher-bashing and fight for a different model of edu-cation that’s good for students, parents, teach-ers, and community? Teachers in Los Angelesare pushing hard. See page 11.

Or will they yield and form partnerships withtheir adversaries that sacrifice conditions forteachers and students alike? The experience ofthe influential New York teachers local is onpage 9.

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PAGE 8 FEBRUARY 2011 LABOR NOTES

by Julie CavanaghThe public conversa-

tion around education“reform” is dominatedby a privileged few whoseek to change school-ing from a public ser-vice to a lucrative busi-ness.

Millionaires and bil-lionaires, such as BillGates, Eli Broad, andthe Walton family, own-ers of Wal-Mart, havespent years pouringhundreds of millions ofdollars into think tanksand political campaigns.

They have capturedthe media through pro-jects like the movie“Waiting for Super-man” and NBC’s “Edu-cation Nation.” Theirintent is clear: to gaincontrol of public opin-ion and public policyand open up access towhat they refer to as theK-12 “market,” namely,our schools.

Sadly, the Obamaadministration, led byEducation SecretaryArne Duncan, has thesame plan.

Two years ago Ifaced the billionaires’agenda head on whenmy Triple A-rated public school wasforced to give up part of our building toa privately run education corporation,commonly called a charter school. Thecharter was founded by the son of bil-lionaire hedge-funder Julian Robertson.

As I watched our needy students,many of them with special needs,forced into shared classrooms, hallways,and closets, the intent became clear.Undermining public schools is part of a30-year ideological offensive that saysgovernment services are inherently infe-rior, private industry will produce betterresults, and public sector unions presentan obstacle to good services and robtaxpayers with over-generous salariesand pensions.

The education “reform” agendacloaks itself in the language of the civilrights movement, but in truth the

reforms would make conditions worse,particularly for children of color.

PUBLIC RESOURCE,PRIVATE HANDS

Until now, public officials have beenresponsible for providing a free and fairpublic education for all children. If ourmost important public resource is left inthe hands of private interests, childrenare left without the protections govern-ment and unions provide.

One of the dangers is rampant dis-crimination. Charter schools across thecountry use selective enrollment to rou-tinely turn away children with specialneeds and those learning English as asecond language. They avoid servingthe homeless and those in foster care orreceiving reduced-cost or free lunches.

In addition, charter schools largely

have prevented theirworkers from organiz-ing. Their ability to fireemployees for any rea-son prevents educatorsand staff from advocat-ing for the children.

Of course, real chal-lenges do face our pub-lic schools: underfund-ing, overcrowding, andthe social problems thatweigh on student learn-ing, especially in low-income communities.How do the “reformers”propose to address theseproblems?

First, get rid of “badteachers,” because, afterall, “good teachers” canovercome any problem.

To do this, ensure“accountability” withstandardized tests as themeasure of student andeducator performance.Control what educatorsteach by standardizingcurricula in alignmentwith the tests.

Parents and educa-tors across the countrycomplain that this focushas routinized students’work and limited mean-ingful experiences.Often children are sub-jected to hours of stan-

dardized testing.Next, link teacher job security and

pay to test scores, which are used toidentify teachers and their schools asfailures.

Once a school is considered failing,close it and replace it with a charter thatpicks and chooses the best students andleaves the rest behind.

The charter school will rely on inex-perienced, under-trained teachersthrough programs such as Teach forAmerica. These overworked and under-supported teachers seldom have unionprotection. Less than half stay in theprofession beyond two years.

The result of high turnover is lowwages—saving the charter companymoney on salaries and pensions.Teaching morphs from a secure, stable

Billionaires’ School Reform:What It Means for Teachers and Students

School Wars

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continued on page 12

Wonder what’s at stake in the charter school debate? How about a pot ofmoney as big as the Pentagon budget? That’s about $562 billion in the 2006-07school year, according to the latest numbers on local, state, and federal educa-tion spending, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

A little over half that spending—about $291 billion—is for classroom instruc-tion, mainly teacher salaries and benefits, so it’s no wonder teachers have beenin the crosshairs during recent budget battles.

It’s also why for-profit charter school operators are salivating at the possibili-ty of taking over a bigger chunk of education. Making a profit is easy if you cangive charter school teachers cheap salaries and skimpy pension and health ben-efits.

But even if they can’t get the whole enchilada, the privatizers want to capturebigger and bigger pieces of our public schools. The chart above illustrates howmuch money corporations stand to make by privatizing various parts of thenation’s education system. All numbers are from the 2009 Digest of EducationStatistics.

Topping the list is $86 billion spent annually on operations, including $20 bil-lion for transportation and $18 billion for food service.

Corporate honchos are also eyeing the $63 billion spent on student supportservices, from librarians and multimedia specialists to school nurses and speechpathologists, as well as the $44 billion outlay for administration and back-officefunctions.

Construction companies are already lined up for the $63 billion school districtsare spending on construction projects nationwide. And Wall Streeters are lookingfor their cut, first and foremost the chance to “manage” $15 billion in debt schooldistricts are shouldering—for hefty fees, of course.

—Mark Brenner

Operations Support Services Construction Administration Debt Service$86 billion $64 billion $63 billion $44 billion $15 billion

LABOR NOTES FEBRUARY 2011 PAGE 9

by Howard RyanWith a few local exceptions,

America’s teachers unions—the Ameri-can Federation of Teachers and theNational Education Association—havemet billionaire school reform with sur-render, accommodation, and ill-advisedpartnership. The AFT’s largest local is acase study in the turn-the-cheekapproach.

New York City’s United Federationof Teachers is a mammoth union in amammoth school district, with 87,000teachers serving 1.1 million students.While union responses vary from city tocity, the UFT’s posture is representativeof national trends and, by virtue of itssize and sophistication, strongly influ-ential. It is no accident that AFTPresident Randi Weingarten led UFTbefore rising to the helm of the nationalunion, as did two of her predecessors.

UNDER THE MICROSCOPEGiven the philosophy of teacher-

blaming that guides today’s schools, it isinevitable that performance evaluationsof teachers are front and center.

Traditional evaluations relied onprincipals observing teachers in theirclassrooms. Nowadays teacher perfor-mance is increasingly measured by stu-dent performance—a measure manyteachers consider unfair, since so manyfactors beyond teachers’ control affectstudent performance.

UFT, however, fully accepts tyingteacher evaluations to student perfor-mance. It’s developing such an evalua-tion system with New York state’sdepartment of education (DOE). Theunion is actively selling the new systemto teachers, pointing out that it relies onseveral performance measures, not justtests.

“Whether it’s tests or other aspects ofperformance, we shouldn’t be rated bystudent performance,” says MarianSwerdlow, a 21-year high school socialstudies teacher who is active withTeachers for a Just Contract, a reformcaucus in UFT.

Swerdlow teaches at one of 11 highschools where testing of the new evalu-ation system will soon be under way. Aunion vice president came to herschool, she said, and announced thatstudent improvement throughout theyear will be the basis for 40 percent ofeach teacher’s ratings.

Swerdlow takes strong objection:“What if the kid comes into my class

and is struggling to learn English? Ayear may not be enough time for him toacquire enough English, and he won’tmake that much progress.”

In effect, the union and the DOE are

jointly setting up a system that promis-es widespread teacher failure.

GIVING UP JOB SECURITYStep by step, New York schools have

been weakening teachers’ job security—with the union’s acquiescence. Whencombined with the new evaluation sys-tem that threatens any teacher whosestudents struggle academically, thechanges could result in a firing frenzy.

The union has allowed withoutprotest new rules that make it harder fornew teachers to get tenure. Opponentsof teacher unions have made tenure achief point of attack, painting it as giv-ing lousy teachers a job for life. In real-ity, tenure is equivalent to completingprobation, with due process rights overdiscipline or dismissal.

In the past, a teacher with three yearsof satisfactory ratings got tenure,Swerdlow said. But now the principalhas to make a case to the New YorkCity DOE. It’s a complicated process,with data and value-added algorithms.Now, the default is that the teacherdoesn’t get tenure.

Tenured teachers are also losing jobsecurity, as the city’s education depart-ment eagerly looks to cut higher-paidsenior teachers. In the past, teacherswho lost their assignments due to aschool closure or program cut wereautomatically placed in the nearestavailable vacant position.

That ended with UFT’s 2005 con-tract. Now “excessed” teachers mustapply for vacant positions, and schoolshave no obligation to take them. If theyhave high seniority, their higher pay

makes them unattractive to principals.The 2005 contract did provide a safe-

ty net: laid-off teachers are placed on“absent teacher reserve,” with full payand benefits. But now the DOE isdemanding that time in reserves be lim-ited to one year, as is the case inChicago schools.

A limitation on New York’s reservetime is very likely on the horizon,Swerdlow believes, which will lead tomassive job loss, as seen in Washington,D.C. and Chicago after school closuresand purges of “underperforming”teachers there. Shortly after this schoolyear began, there were about 1,800teachers in New York’s reserve pool andabout 1,200 vacancies in schools.

A new time limit on the reserveteachers will likely come out of dead-locked UFT contract negotiations,which are awaiting a fact-findingpanel’s recommendations.

If the reserve teachers lose protec-tions, Swerdlow says it’s because theunion relied on fact-finding instead oforganizing members for a vigorous con-tract campaign.

SCHOOL CLOSINGSAND CHARTERS

The billionaire reform agenda pro-poses to shut down public schoolsdeemed to be failing and replace themwith charter schools. Pushed by MayorMichael Bloomberg, who wields fullcontrol over city schools, dozens havebeen closed and replaced with privatelyrun but publicly funded charters, mostof them non-union.

The UFT is pro-charter. The union’swebsite hails charters’ “innovation andpromise” and boasts about forging a“collaborative relationship” with “pro-gressive charter advocates, such asGreen Dot.” The union says it opposescharters only when they promote “ideo-logical goals: privatizing public educa-tion and breaking the power of teacherunions.” But dismantling public educa-tion and breaking unions is precisely theeffect of the charter school movement.

UFT is caught in a vise, struggling toorganize some charters while recogniz-ing that the charter movement is priva-tizing teacher jobs and draining educa-tion budgets faster than it can keep up.

Meanwhile, UFT’s partner GreenDot has been one of California’s lead-ing predators of public schools.

Green Dot sponsored California leg-continued on page 10

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How’s Partnership Working for Teachers?

Bill Gates took the stage with AFT PresidentRandi Weingarten at the union's last conven-tion, earning an ovation from some delegates.

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PAGE 10 FEBRUARY 2011 LABOR NOTES

by Howard RyanThe billionaires lost this round.A billionaire gang headed by Bill

Gates and Eli Broad wants to capturethe billions spent on America’s publicschools and convert them into a corpo-rate-owned test-score factory. But theirplan faces teacher resistance, andnowhere more than in Chicago, where afeisty new leadership is heading theChicago Teachers Union.

The billionaires went toe to toe withCTU and Illinois’s 200,000 unionizedteachers, pushing a state law that wouldhave maximized the firing of teachers atwill and gutted the very organizationsbest equipped to fight for good publicschools—the teacher unions.

The Illinois bill, called the Per-formance Counts Act, never got beyondcommittee in the legislature, after theCTU and statewide teacher unionsworked together to mobilize membersand community supporters to quash it.

The corporate education forces havedeep pockets, though. They’re sure totry again.

MYSTERIOUS GROUP ARRIVESLast October, journalists noticed that

candidates for Illinois legislative seatswere receiving unusually large checks.“It’s not every day that a group almostnobody has ever heard of gives$175,000 to a single state legislative can-didate,” remarked an Illinois Times con-tributor.

Another reporter observed that “anational education reform group has

quietly dumped more than $600,000into key Illinois legislative races.” Thatgroup is Stand for Children, an enor-mously well-funded organization basedin Portland, Oregon, with affiliates inseven states. SFC’s largest single funderis Bill Gates.

Originally, SFC had a grassroots ori-entation, with a focus on demandingbetter funding for public schools. Itgrew out of a big 1996 rally inWashington, D.C., headed up byMarian Wright Edelman of theChildren’s Defense Fund and addressedby Rosa Parks.

Edelman’s son Jonah afterwardsestablished SFC in Portland and mobi-lized with teachers, the ServiceEmployees union, and communitygroups to demand adequate funding forOregon schools. But after a few years,SFC broadened its horizons from sim-ple funding to “reforming educationpolicies and practices.”

The vision it chose is in sync withthat of the billionaires and politicianswho today are driving school “reform.”

UNION SMASHINGWhile SFC materials generally avoid

the subject of unions, or imply a friend-ly collaboration with them, SFC isfiercely anti-union, especially when theunions do not endorse its notion ofschool reform.

The group promotes Geoffrey Cana-da, Harlem education entrepreneur andhero of the documentary “Waiting forSuperman,” in which teacher unions

are the scourge of education. Canadawas SFC’s first board chair.

SFC’s legislative achievementsinclude an Arizona bill that ties teacherpay partly to student test scores. But itsfailed initiative in Illinois trotted outSFC’s most virulent strain of anti-teacher unionism yet.

House Speaker Mike Madigan creat-ed a Special Committee on EducationReform, two of whose membersreceived contributions from SFC thisfall totaling $150,000. The committeeconsidered the Performance CountsAct, which SFC described as a “historicopportunity to help Illinois students.” Itproposed to:

Closely link teachers’ performanceevaluations to standardized testscores, a poor measure of learning.

Fire a tenured teacher or return herto probationary status after a singleunsatisfactory evaluation. A teacherwith three unsatisfactory evaluationswithin 10 years would be dismissed andcould never teach in Illinois again.

Prohibit unions from bargainingover contracting out, layoffs, school clo-sures, class size and class staffing,length of the school day or work day,pilot and experimental school pro-grams, or use of technology. Unionscould not even bargain over the effectsof these policies on members or stu-dents.

Strip teachers’ right to strike, andpunish unlawful strikes with uniondecertification.

CTU, together with the statewideteachers unions, Illinois EducationAssociation and Illinois Federation ofTeachers, activated teachers and com-munity allies. Their rallies, lobbying,and e-mail campaign convinced legisla-tors to drop the bill by mid-January.

The teacher unions will pursue analternative, a measure called Accounta-bility for All, which cedes some groundon seniority rights but spreads account-ability to principals, school board mem-bers, and school districts. For example,districts would be evaluated annually onestablishing full staffing and qualityteaching and learning conditions.

“We know what works insideschools—smaller class sizes, a rich cur-riculum, an end to excessive testing, andalliances among parents, students,teachers, and administrators,” saidKaren Lewis, CTU president. “But theattacks keep coming because what is atstake is clear: profit.”

School Wars

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islation that grants parents living nearan academically struggling school thepower to force that school to become acharter, through petitioning. At thesame time, Green Dot founder SteveBarr launched an organization calledParent Revolution, which uses paidorganizers to press parents to sign peti-tions to privatize neighborhood schools.

UFT delayed some New York schoolclosures through court challenges. Butclosures have continued apace, with 26planned this year. The union’s quiet,lawsuit-oriented approach can onlyslow the juggernaut.

Progressives within UFT, includingthe Grassroots Education Movementand Teachers for a Just Contract, havepressed the union to aggressivelyoppose closures, to no avail.

UFT’s acquiescence to the billion-aire agenda increased with PresidentObama’s “Race to the Top” schoolfunding program in 2009—a trendacross teacher unions nationally.

The program invites states to com-pete for funds based on how thoroughlythey have adopted the billionaires’ edu-cation policies. UFT’s support for tyingteacher evaluations to student perfor-mance, and its decision not to protestlegislation that almost doubled thenumber of charter schools in the state,helped New York win about $700 mil-lion last August.

Race to the Top accomplished itsgoal. In exchange for short-term injec-tions of badly needed money, UFT andother teacher unions cooperated withpolicies that undermine teachers andunions and threaten public education.

How’s Partnership Working for Teachers?continued from page 9

LABOR NOTES FEBRUARY 2011 PAGE 11

by Alex Caputo-Pearl and Cathy GarciaProgressive Educators for Action has

a vision for public education that’sdirectly counterposed to the billion-aires’ agenda. PEAC is a caucus work-ing to transform the 45,000-memberUnited Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA)into a social justice union so that it canpowerfully represent its members, andgo much further.

We want a union that collaborativelyrepresents the interests of all whodepend on a truly public, high-qualityeducation. Public schooling and teach-ers are weakened when students andcommunities are attacked through bud-get cuts, one-size-fits-all reform, privati-zation, and institutionally racist urbanpolicies that contribute to pushing stu-dents out of school.

Kirti Baranwal is a middle schoolteacher in Watts. She says PEAC wantsa union that understands building coali-tions of parents, students, and commu-nity organizations to create high-qualityschools is not only the right thing butalso the best way to protect union mem-bers’ interests.

PEAC members are organizing withco-workers on the ground and winningmany over to the ideals of this model ofsocial justice unionism.

PEAC, and increasingly UTLA, seethree campaigns as foundations of our

work: fighting for full funding ofschools and social services, creatingschools that teach and represent socialjustice, and supporting the improve-ment of teachers and teaching in a pro-union environment.

The only effective approachfor teachers unions is a socialjustice model—building asocial movement for publiceducation that lifts upstudents, communities, andteachers.

Each campaign develops new lead-ers, educates about political realities,and forms authentic partnerships withparents and community. PEAC pushesfor campaigning to be anchored by boldactions that escalate towards work stop-pages and strikes if necessary.

California hovers between 43rd and50th among states in per-pupil spending(while it is first in prison spending).Ahead of last November’s elections,PEAC helped UTLA join the Califor-nia Alliance, a coalition of 27 commu-nity and labor organizations, to pressfor two ballot propositions. They soughtto open up more money for schools andsocial services by closing corporate taxloopholes (which failed) and allowing

the state legislature to pass a budgetwith a simple majority rather than two-thirds (which passed).

“Those propositions move in theright direction, towards real progressivetaxation,” said Gillian Russom, a highschool social studies teacher in East LosAngeles, adding that prison spendingshould be redirected to social needs.

Linking with California Alliancehelps UTLA approach elections differ-ently. We can systematically developrelationships with voters and organiza-tions in communities of color over sev-eral election cycles, around reorientingbudget priorities, authentic school re-form, and the dangers of privatization.

SOCIAL JUSTICE SCHOOLSThe campaign to stop privatization

and create social justice public schoolsbegins with a vision for authenticschool reform—equity and access forall students; curriculum based on rele-vance, community connection, andsocial justice; democratic control ofschools; union and collective bargain-ing rights for employees; and sustainedefforts at reform that meet the needs ofstudents.

PEAC and UTLA support reformprojects that bring this vision to life—programs like the reading workshops at

continued on page 12

Education Reform the Union WayLos Angeles teachers rallied against class size increases and layoffs at a school board protest last year. Union members are fighting to center schoolsaround social justice, fund them fully, and develop teachers in a pro-union environment.

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PAGE 12 FEBRUARY 2011 LABOR NOTES

Gompers Middle School. They engagestruggling readers by helping themchoose their own set of books they’dlike to read, apprenticing them in read-ing strategies, and aiding them in apply-ing themes from the reading to theirlives and communities. Students areassisted in taking action around chang-

ing something in their lives or commu-nity that they feel strongly about andhave new insights about.

Privatization works against socialjustice schools. Most California charterschools, particularly the chains fundedby the billionaires’ club, cream off themost motivated public school studentsand push out others who struggle acad-emically. Most are not democraticallycontrolled, but run by private boards.Most turn teachers over at dramaticallyhigh rates and do not have unions—making deep, authentic reform effortsnext to impossible to institutionalize.

The union wants to helpteachers stay in theprofession, throughmentoring and feedbackfrom parents and students.

The Los Angeles school district hasbegun soliciting bids from private orga-nizations and charters for upwards of100 schools. Supported by PEAC,UTLA worked with parents and com-munity to write plans for schools, orga-nize, and dominate the first round ofthis attempted privatization. Theunion/parent plans, rather than charterapplications, won the vast majority ofopen bids.

So while PEAC and UTLA pressurethe school board to end the “out forbid” policy, we also work within thepolicy to develop the most progressiveplans possible, not only to defeat thecharter chains but also to institutional-ize social justice at schools.

While the largest corporate charterchains, along with Mayor AntonioVillaraigosa, heavily pressure the schoolboard to give more schools to charters,PEAC hosts community forums to edu-cate about the threat of privatization,organizes at schools affected by this pol-icy, and works with parents to generateour own vision of school reform.

SUPPORTING TEACHERSAND TEACHING

The charter push is urged along bynonstop teacher-bashing. Recently theschool district “reconstituted” a highschool, scapegoating teachers and mak-ing all employees reapply for their jobs,creating enormous instability for stu-dents.

At the same time, the Los AngelesTimes published teacher effectivenessrankings based solely on a standardizedtest-based model called “value added,”

which has been shown to have tremen-dous problems of reliability.

And now the mayor and schooladministrators, under the guise ofincreasing stability at schools and unfor-tunately aided by the ACLU, are tryingto undermine seniority and introduce“value added” teacher evaluation at 45schools, while not addressing at all thechief reasons for teacher turnover andschool instability: difficult conditionsfor teachers to teach and students tolearn.

PEAC has been a leader in demon-strating against these attacks on teach-ers and the union, said RebeccaSolomon, who teaches history neardowntown Los Angeles, “from aggres-sively helping to build the UTLA picketat the Times to helping organizeprotests against reconstitution.”

The caucus has been critical toUTLA’s efforts to help teachers stay inthe profession and to create teacherevaluations that are useful. Thisinvolves more time for peer supportthrough on-site mentoring: time forteachers to observe each others’ class-rooms, examine student work, and pro-vide feedback. It involves formal mech-anisms for parent and student feedbackto teachers.

In bargaining, the district willcounter UTLA’s plan with one based on“value added.”

PEAC has also helped UTLA pre-pare contract demands around reducingteacher turnover and school instability.Teachers need to be more deeplyinvolved in decision-making aboutschool budgets, reform plans, and cur-riculum innovations. Training for teach-ers must be created by teachers, andvacancies should be filled in a way thatbuilds a mix of experience levels withinschools, to facilitate mentoring.

More resources should be brought tothe hardest-to-staff schools and addi-tional pay should be considered forteachers who stay at them.

While the attacks threaten to devas-tate the promise of a high-quality, trulypublic education for all, they also makeclear that the only effective approach forunions is a social justice model—anapproach that intentionally builds asocial movement for public educationand that lifts up students, communities,and teachers.

[Alex Caputo-Pearl teaches high school his-tory and serves on the UTLA board of directors.Cathy Garcia teaches mathematics and is theUTLA chapter chair at Crenshaw High. Both aremembers of the PEAC steering committee.]

School Wars

In L.A., Education Reform the Union Waycontinued from page 11

job to a high-turnover, low-wage one.In New York City, for example, half

the teaching force leaves before reach-ing five years in the classroom. Leavingstudents without experienced educatorsdamages their achievement.

DISTRACT, GAIN CONTROLThe billionaires’ agenda also in-

cludes a three-pronged strategy forgaining control of school governance:mayoral control, which has been devas-tating in both Chicago and New YorkCity; funding school board takeovers,as in San Diego (now reversed); andfunding fake parent groups.

“Parent Revolution” in California,for example, is funded by the BroadFoundation. It supposedly includesactive parents in Compton, but is reallyrun by a Beverly Hills lawyer with paidorganizers.

All the while, teachers and theirunions are attacked as the obstacle toall of the above. Non-union chartersare promoted as the solution.

Focusing all the attention on teach-ers conveniently ignores the lack ofequitable funding for schools, causedby state and local tax structures that tilttoward the wealthy. The crying need formore money for schools is sidesteppedby cutting student services and teach-ers’ pay.

The need for policies to addresspoverty and other social factors thatcontribute to a child’s failure or successin life can be ignored, because themantra is that educators are solelyresponsible for a child’s learning.

It’s no coincidence that those fuelingand funding school reform are million-aires, billionaires, and large corpora-tions. To believe that their interest liesin helping children would require a sus-pension of logic and a denial of our his-tory.

[Julie Cavanagh is a special educationteacher in Brooklyn and is active with theGrassroots Education Movement, a group thateducates and mobilizes teachers, parents, andstudents.]

Billionaires & Reformcontinued from page 8