(Photo: brianjmatis)This is the fourth and last article in Sarah Blaskey's and Steven Horn's series, "The Other ALECs Exposed."
For over 30 years, corporate America and its allies on both sides of
the political aisle have carried out an assault on US workers, pushing
down wages, slashing benefits and busting unions.
But after decades of repeated and near-fatal assaults, the US labor
movement has waged a fight back, with teachers in the forefront of the
battle. Public schools have become the centerpiece of the struggle.
Through an array of recent policy initiatives, influential policy wonks
are attempting to restructure education fundamentally. According to
Jesse Hagopian, a teacher and union activist in Seattle, part of this
restructuring process is happening through model bills being enacted
systematically in statehouses nationwide.
"Most famously ALEC [the American Legislative Exchange Council] has
been ghostwriting bills and passing them out to astroturf organizations
around the country to put forward legislation that undermines teachers'
unions and helps in this effort to restructure education based on test
scores," Hagopian told Truthout.
But ALEC is not the only organization using model bills to push the
corporate-friendly education agenda in the states. Rather, a few
corporate-funded "
Groups," or "
Other ALECs,"
significantly influence education policy in every statehouse
nationally. Aside from ALEC, the most influential Groups are two
bipartisan trade associations, the
Council of State Governments (CSG) and the
National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).
These entities ensure that teacher-blaming and union-busting policies
constitute the "reform" agenda in the vast majority of states. Dozens
of reports of cuts to states' education budgets accompanied by
privatization campaigns demonstrate the effectiveness of this
coordinated attack on public education.
According to the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,
34 states and the District of Columbia cut education funding between
2008-2011. For public schools, the financial situation is indeed dire
and has worsened in the wake of the 2008 economic crash. The Groups have
used the crisis to accelerate the implementation of so-called "reform"
policies.
"Eighty-four percent of school districts describe their funding as
inadequate and the number of teachers laid off since the economic crisis
began is likely to top three hundred thousand without federal
assistance to the states," wrote Gillian Russom in the newly released
book, "
Education and Capitalism."
The economic crisis has created a rationale for ALEC and other
stealth lobbyists to push privatization campaigns while claiming that
they are necessary "reforms" for improving our failing education system,
according to Brian Jones, a teacher and New York-based activist
featured in the education documentary "
The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman."
"For the charter operators, 'reform' means more money, bigger
salaries, etc. For the politicians, it means they get to shout to
working and poor people about how they're reforming education, while
doing a huge favor to wealthy, powerful interests," Jones told Truthout.
A Battle Brewing in the Windy City
In early June, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which represents
more than 26,000 of the city's teachers and other school employees,
called a
strike authorization vote. The vote took place in the immediate aftermath of what many see as
labor's drubbing in the Wisconsin recall elections, which failed to unseat Republican Gov. Scott Walker.
Adding to the challenge for CTU, in 2011, the
Illinois legislature passed SB 7,
which mandates that 75 percent of a teacher union's membership vote
"yes" to authorize a strike, rather than a simple majority of voters. To
put that into perspective, when the CTU organized a
91 percent voter turnout, it needed at least 83 percent of those members who voted to vote "yes" for its potential strike to be legal.
Though they might not have realized it at the time, the Chicago
teachers, who ultimately voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if
they do not reach an agreement with the school district on a raise to
compensate for an increase in their working hours, were directly
challenging the corporate model for education that CSG and ALEC have
both promoted in recent legislative cycles.
National Precedent and IL SB 7
In
October 2011, the
CSG Suggested State Legislation (SSL) Committee - the well-respected
bipartisan committee that selects state-level model bills for CSG to publish -
voted to include IL SB 7 as a nationally distributed model bill in its
2013 SSL Volume.
The Illinois
bill's summary statement
acknowledges the similarities between SB 7 and legislation recently
passed in other states that also aims to limit or altogether abolish
teachers' unions. But the statement also claims that SB 7 is uniquely
effective and explains:
"The legislation in Illinois was enacted by a Democrat-controlled
legislature and signed by a Democratic governor, unlike in Ohio, Idaho
and Wisconsin. Perhaps a more important difference is that the Illinois
bill passed with support from the state's three largest teachers unions,
which helped to counteract opposition from the rank-and-file or other
unions."
SB 7 was drafted by a consortium of corporate-friendly organizations, including
Stand for Children and the
Illinois Business Roundtable. Adding insult to injury, it was also endorsed by unions - including the CTU, though teachers later
voiced strong concerns with the union leaders' position.
Mike Klonsky wrote
that the three unions that originally signed onto the bill "accepted a
spanking in order to avoid a real beat-down." The "beat-down" seems to
reference what happened in Wisconsin after
Walker's Act 10 passed and unions were stripped of the majority of their collective bargaining rights.
Due to the initial success of SB 7's more seemingly "humane" form of union-busting, overseen by a
Democratic Party gubernatorial office,
the bill's policies have now become bipartisan-endorsed model
legislation, now destined for cookie-cutter replication across the
country.
The
bill's summary
explains that the law "establishes new standards for teacher tenure,
empowers school districts to remove poor performing teachers from the
classroom and updates regulations about teacher strikes."
Tenure can only be achieved after four years, except for "top-rated"
teachers who can take the three year fast track. SB 7 also set new
guidelines, including a 120-day waiting period, designed to make going
on strike nearly impossible for teachers' unions.
The implicit purpose of laws like SB 7: weaken the last and
biggest bastion of organized labor
in the country. Furthermore, SB 7 is merely one of a dozen or so CSG
model bills from the past five years geared toward privatizing K-12
education and undermining teachers' unions.
The Corporate Playbook for Public Education
In Part Two of this series we described a "
corporate playbook"
for influencing state-level legislation through nonprofit organizations
like ALEC and CSG. As a reminder, the playbook works approximately like
this (with variants depending on the group):
- Donate to a "Group" (like CSG and/or ALEC), thus gaining access to the Groups' legislative membership.
- Use corporate money to get lobbyists on boards and task forces associated with the Group.
- Use lobbyists' positions on the task forces to set the education
agenda for these Groups. Groups are where state-level legislators
receive most of their job training.
- Use free time at educational events to "schmooze" powerful legislative leaders.
- Write, introduce and influence the passage of business-friendly model legislation through CSG and ALEC.
- Lobby your model bills into enactments in as many states as possible.
This playbook process describes how state-level education policy is shaped by corporate America.
Most major Groups' education platforms reflect some aspect of the big-business model for education.
For instance, CSG seeks to build a "
culture of entrepreneurship" and create a "
skilled workforce" ready for 21st-century labor tasks. The
NCSL Education Task Force promotes "flexibility," charter schools and "common academic standards" based on testing.
ALEC's education task force promotes "efficiency" and "parental choice" in schools.
Sarah Knopp, a high school teacher of economics and an activist in
her union in Los Angeles, told Truthout that these new policies pushed
by the Groups "reflect both a restructuring of education and a
continuation of the past."
Public education has always been a "sorting ground" for the next generation of workers.
"Around the time of WWII, when mass participation in industrial
manufacturing became the norm, high schools began to resemble
factories," she explained. "And now we're going through another shift
that nevertheless maintains the same basic goal - conditioning the
behavior of students and preparing them for today's economic hierarchy."
The Financiers of Education "Reform"
Why is education policy driven by near bipartisan consensus at the state level? Follow the money.
Many of the same foundations sponsor both CSG and ALEC, giving these
billionaire donors disproportionate amounts of influence when it comes
to state-level education policy. One of the most notable sponsors of the
corporate-friendly education agenda is Bill Gates, through the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Gates Foundation alone
gave $400,000 to a CSG program dedicated to "reforming" public education and pushing charter schools. Gates also financially
supports a CSG initiative
to collaborate with Boeing to create "fair and reliable measures of
teacher effectiveness that are tied to gains in student achievement."
None of these contributions even account for
Microsoft's sizable donations to CSG.
What interest does a billionaire like Gates really have in shaping education policy?
"Part of it is promoting free market ideology," explained Russom.
"Charter schools, closing and 'econstituting' schools deemed to be
'failing,' judging schools and teachers based on test scores - all these
measures help to promote an ideology of competition and undermine the
idea of a public sector where people have a guaranteed right to
education and other services. Major parts of the reform agenda of these
business foundations are also intended to undermine unions."
In 2011, CSG launched a Gates-funded education initiative,
Policy Academies for Newly Elected Legislators
(PANEL), specifically targeting recently elected state officials. A
fifth of all state legislators elected in 2010 had never been in office
before. PANEL was designed to educate these legislators on how to
transform education to make students "career ready." Democrats and
Republicans co-mingle and feel right at home at PANEL.
Michelle Rhee, chancellor of the Washington, DC, public schools from 2007- 2010 and notorious for
championing the charter school agenda, also spoke at the
2011 CSG Southern Legislative Conference, cheerleading for the charter school cause
during her presentation to the Education Committee.
"Crafting a system that recognizes and rewards the best teachers and
identifies those who are in need of improvement and either quickly
accelerates their professional skills or moves them out of the
classroom, helps to advance the opportunities for all children," Rhee
said at the conference.
The 2012 CSG National Leadership Conference featured other lecturers including
Ulrich Boser, senior fellow of the Center for American Progress, who spoke on the "return on education investment," and
Adam Miller,
of Astellas Pharma US, who introduced a new plan for teaching science
in schools. Neither have actually been teachers nor worked in a school,
yet they are the education "experts" nonetheless, tasked with educating
the legislators in attendance.
Out of this process, corporations apparently hope to leave with
business-friendly policy resolutions and model bills. Models from the
well-respected and bipartisan CSG rather than partisan and
now-stigmatized ALEC may be preferred.
CSG's "Model" for Public Education
CSG has a slew of recent, or soon-to-be released, models for public education legislation that deserve a brief primer.
Charter Schools
In the 2010 SSL Volume, CSG published model language intended to open states' regulations to allow
virtual charter schools. Then in the 2012 SSL Volume, CSG published the "
Charter School Collaborative"based on a 2010 Colorado enactment.
Despite Gates and Rhee telling legislators otherwise, a
2009 Stanford University Study
showed that only 17 percent of charter schools examined "provide
superior education" to their public school counterparts. This datum
suggests educational improvement isn't the motive behind the charter
school agenda.
Knopp explained that the 83 percent of charter schools that do not
perform better than public schools "are simply there to grab market
share and privatize a public good."
With regard to the 17 percent of charter schools that outperform
public schools, Knopp offers the following explanation: "In order to
remain competitive, the American economy needs a small percentage of
highly skilled and intelligent workers. This is where those few
high-performing charter schools come in. They skim the talent off the
top."
Teacher Tenure/Education Identifier Initiatives
In the 2012 SSL Volume, CSG also promoted a model "
Educator Identifier System,"
based on a Colorado pilot program designed to compile information on
"teacher effectiveness" and use the information to close the "teacher
gap."
The
teacher gap is defined
by the model as a "documented phenomenon that poor or minority students
are more likely to be taught by less-qualified or less-experienced
teachers than those students' more advantaged peers."
This type of legislation promotes a blame-the-teachers mentality that
is at the heart of the education "reform" lobby. Knopp calls these
policies "business accountability models" and says they have growing
relevance in education today.
"Pilot programs to measure teachers based on their students' test
scores, usually known as Value-Added Metrics, such as the ominously
named Educator Identification System legislation in Colorado are almost
everywhere," Knopp told Truthout.
CSG has also endorsed the "Value-Add Metrics" Knopp mentioned above as the solution to the testing question and
wrote,
"Value-added assessment assumes that teachers are the most important
factor in student learning and that the amount of 'value' the teacher
'adds; to each student can be precisely measured."
Russom argues, however, that "Value Added Measures" are "completely
unstable and inaccurate" in measuring any teacher's classroom success.
She points to another motivator behind legislation that promotes
so-called educator effectiveness - union busting, an easy way to get rid
of unruly teachers. But the testing causes problems in the classrooms,
too.
"They [standardized tests] rapidly lead to a narrowing of the
curriculum - more test prep, less arts and authentic curriculum as
teachers' own job security begins to depend on their students' scores,"
Russom said.
Innovation Zones
CSG also influences education policy by promoting models for
Innovation Zones (2012) and
Promise Zones
(2010). Through these market-oriented programs, schools are forced to
compete with each other for customers - aka students - and through this
competition somehow create better learning environments for students.
"The problem is that the business model, based on profits and
competition between 'winners' and 'losers,' and serving basic human
needs are as incompatible in education as they are in the healthcare
market," Knopp said, as she spoke of her experience with "
Zone of Choice" policies in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where she teaches.
Labor at the Chicago Crossroads
All of the CSG models and resolutions combined - SB 7, charter school
initiatives, teacher identifier and effectiveness programs based on
standardized testing, "Innovation Zones," and so many other still
unmentioned CSG policies - create a bipartisan rubber-stamp for
business-friendly education laws.
Contrary to popular wisdom, elements within the Democratic Party are
playing a key role in this state-level privatization campaign. These
state initiatives dovetail with the federal agenda promoted to some
extent by
both Democrats and Republicans in Washington, as recently covered in an in-depth three-part series on
The Real News Network.
Exhibit A:
Democrats for Education Reform is one of the key groups pushing for charter school expansion, standardized testing and school closings.
"The bipartisan Council of State Governments is pushing bills to
promote these policies at the state level," Russom added. "So while the
Democrats will continue to get millions in funding for their election
campaigns from teachers' unions, they are carrying out the education
agenda of the 1 percent that's destroying our schools."
This is why Russom thinks the CTU struggle is so important. This
labor showdown is unfolding in Chicago, a hot bed for Democratic Party
education "reformers" like Barack Obama and his former Chief of Staff,
Rahm Emanuel, now the city's mayor. CTU's strike vote may undermine the
effect of spreading bills like SB 7 to other states.
"If the CTU can win most of their demands through this kind of
powerful organizing, it will set back the neoliberal agenda in Chicago
and will also send a message to unions and communities that we can fight
back and get broad community support for a different kind of agenda,"
said Russom.
Russom is not alone in the inspiration she takes from the CTU strike.
Teachers and indeed many unionists in general are beginning to wake up,
look to CTU's lead and ask, what can we do to fight back?
"I think what they are doing in Chicago has the potential to revive
the labor movement in this era of Occupy when so many people see the
problem in society as the 99 percent of us versus the one percent who
have gotten incredibly wealthy at our expense," Hagopian said.
