http://globalsociology.com/
Monday, December 17, 2012
On the Guns Thing, I would Just Like to Point Out…
http://globalsociology.com/
Counterpunch: Behind the Connecticut Massacre
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/17/behind-the-connecticut-massacre/
A Culture of Violence
Each time there is an outbreak of homicidal mania, whether
Columbine, Virginia Tech, or Adam Lanza’s slaughter of twenty eight
innocents in Connecticut, the media directs us to stories about gun
control and the need for better policing of individuals with mental
illnesses.
The larger context—that America is a society brimming over with violence—is entirely lost in the discussion.
Let’s take a look at the forest for a change, shall we:
There are 192 million firearms owned by Americans, more than any other society in the world.Our rate of death from firearms is three times that of France and Canada, fourteen times greater than Ireland, and two hundred and fifty times greater than Japan, where firearms are aggressively controlled.
The U.S. has more prisoners, per capita, than any country on earth—three times more than Cuba, seven times more than Germany—and, indeed, we house twenty-five percent of all the prisoners in the world.
As for media violence, by the time the average American child leaves elementary school, they will have witnessed 8,000 murders and over 100,000 other acts of violence, and, to rub more salt into these open wounds, the U.S. also leads the world in the sale and rental of violent video games.
That litany of statistics comes to us compliments of our gratuitous interpretations of the First and Second Amendments.
But the forest we are talking grows ever larger.
Since World War II, the United States engaged in over fifty military operations abroad killing some four million people (Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, the list goes on). If you add in to that total massacres by proxies and surrogates, the number flirts with five million (Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, and elsewhere).
We are the only country in the world seemingly perpetually at war. In 2011-2012 alone, the United States was killing people in nine different countries: Iraq and Afghanistan with troops, Libya with rockets, Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen with drones, Honduras with raids against drug cartels, the Philippines with air support against insurgents, and most recently in Kenya as 150 Special forces started their operations. No other country in the world can boast of so many military involvements.
To remedy the horrors we saw in Connecticut should not be limited to screening mentally ill individuals from purchasing Glocks—which is about as far as our craven mainstream media wishes to venture. Instead we need to recognize the massacres of Jonestown, Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Connecticut are merely symptoms of a much more ubiquitous cancer.
To finally address this problem is to begin a long and arduous process of cultivating a culture of peace. Such collective psychotherapy begins by treating the patient on many fronts and in a multi-dimensional way: To forbid the sale of handguns, nationwide; to ration the sale of ammunition; to prohibit the sale of violent toys to children (Greece already does), to aggressively control the sale and access of violent video games to children (Australia, Venezuela, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and Brazil already do), and to prohibit the broadcast of violent scenes, explicit or implicit, on network television during family viewing hours, a practice already in effect in many European countries
And, who knows, we might even take it one step further and retreat from our aspirations of empire and global hegemony, close down our military operations, and bring our vast armies and armadas home —over 400,000 Americans at last count stationed in almost 1,000 overseas military bases.
Russia has ten overseas military bases. China none.
So much room to grow!
Imagine our progressive President, instead of limiting his compassion to the shedding of a tear at a press conference, actually proposed comprehensive and revolutionary changes and legislation that focussed not on the symptoms but, at long last, finally started to address the disease itself.
Jerry Kroth, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor Emeritus from Santa Clara University and the author of Duped! Delusion, denial, and the end of the American Dream, 2012. He maintains a website at collectivepsych.com
The larger context—that America is a society brimming over with violence—is entirely lost in the discussion.
Let’s take a look at the forest for a change, shall we:
There are 192 million firearms owned by Americans, more than any other society in the world.Our rate of death from firearms is three times that of France and Canada, fourteen times greater than Ireland, and two hundred and fifty times greater than Japan, where firearms are aggressively controlled.
The U.S. has more prisoners, per capita, than any country on earth—three times more than Cuba, seven times more than Germany—and, indeed, we house twenty-five percent of all the prisoners in the world.
As for media violence, by the time the average American child leaves elementary school, they will have witnessed 8,000 murders and over 100,000 other acts of violence, and, to rub more salt into these open wounds, the U.S. also leads the world in the sale and rental of violent video games.
That litany of statistics comes to us compliments of our gratuitous interpretations of the First and Second Amendments.
But the forest we are talking grows ever larger.
Since World War II, the United States engaged in over fifty military operations abroad killing some four million people (Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, the list goes on). If you add in to that total massacres by proxies and surrogates, the number flirts with five million (Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, and elsewhere).
We are the only country in the world seemingly perpetually at war. In 2011-2012 alone, the United States was killing people in nine different countries: Iraq and Afghanistan with troops, Libya with rockets, Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen with drones, Honduras with raids against drug cartels, the Philippines with air support against insurgents, and most recently in Kenya as 150 Special forces started their operations. No other country in the world can boast of so many military involvements.
To remedy the horrors we saw in Connecticut should not be limited to screening mentally ill individuals from purchasing Glocks—which is about as far as our craven mainstream media wishes to venture. Instead we need to recognize the massacres of Jonestown, Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Connecticut are merely symptoms of a much more ubiquitous cancer.
To finally address this problem is to begin a long and arduous process of cultivating a culture of peace. Such collective psychotherapy begins by treating the patient on many fronts and in a multi-dimensional way: To forbid the sale of handguns, nationwide; to ration the sale of ammunition; to prohibit the sale of violent toys to children (Greece already does), to aggressively control the sale and access of violent video games to children (Australia, Venezuela, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and Brazil already do), and to prohibit the broadcast of violent scenes, explicit or implicit, on network television during family viewing hours, a practice already in effect in many European countries
And, who knows, we might even take it one step further and retreat from our aspirations of empire and global hegemony, close down our military operations, and bring our vast armies and armadas home —over 400,000 Americans at last count stationed in almost 1,000 overseas military bases.
Russia has ten overseas military bases. China none.
So much room to grow!
Imagine our progressive President, instead of limiting his compassion to the shedding of a tear at a press conference, actually proposed comprehensive and revolutionary changes and legislation that focussed not on the symptoms but, at long last, finally started to address the disease itself.
Jerry Kroth, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor Emeritus from Santa Clara University and the author of Duped! Delusion, denial, and the end of the American Dream, 2012. He maintains a website at collectivepsych.com
America’s Teachers: Heroes or Greedy Moochers at the Public Trough?
This Can’t Be Happening / Op-Ed
Published: Sunday 16 December 2012
How many of us would have had to the
courage to stand in front of a closet door to keep an armed madman from
finding the kids hidden behind it, as one slain teacher died doing?
http://www.nationofchange.org/america-s-teachers-heroes-or-greedy-moochers-public-trough-1355674260
America’s Teachers: Heroes or Greedy Moochers at the Public Trough?
Let’s just let that sink in for a moment. Those teachers, who are routinely being accused by our politicians of being drones and selfish, incompetent money grubbers worried more about their pensions than about teaching our children (though most, even after 10 years, earn less than $55,000 a year for doing a very difficult job that involves at least 12-14 hours a day of work and prep time counting meetings with parents), stood their ground when confronted with a psychotic assailant armed with semi-automatic pistols and an automatic rifle, and protected their kids. The principal too, a veteran teacher herself, stood her ground, reportedly suicidally charging at the assailant along with the school’s psychologist in a doomed effort to tackle him and stop the carnage.
Just a couple of weeks ago, the Newtown school board, like school boards all over this country, was considering cutting the school’s elementary music program and library program. It should be noted that both the school librarian and the school music teacher, whose jobs were on the line at the school board, stayed with the kids they were teaching when the attack began.
Yet in an attitude all too typical of many Americans’ thinking, one man, in a discussion section of the local paper, discussing the local School Board’s $1-million budget cutting plans last spring, wrote to a teacher last spring:
You, as a public sector employee, don’t generate ANY revenue. Every penny of the budget of your public sector enterprise is TAKEN from producers. It’s other people’s money versus money your organization EARNED. Your salary is not market based. Your salary, nor your benefits, nor your job, is in jeopardy during contracting economic times. If I want a raise I have to prove I have contributed more to the bottom line, and then it doesn’t matter unless the entire firm has grown the bottom line sufficiently to give me that raise. You are insulated from that reality. Your private (sic) sector salary only goes up. How is that fair? Especially in light of the fact that you don’t even generate the revenue that pays for your constantly rising salary?
Some of those “non-revenue-generating” unionized teachers, and the school’s non-revenue-generating principal, just died defending those kids.
I wonder if their tax-obsessed critics would have done the same?
Friday, December 14, 2012
Why Not Teach For America
(Guest Post by Robin Lane)
Well,
it’s about that time of year — when seniors start frantically applying
for fellowships and internships and jobs, the socially conscious among
them aching for a career that will allow them to change the world,
others looking for something they can put on their application for law
school. Then comes along the recruiting powerhouse of Teach for America,
to assure college students that yes, you can in fact change the world
AND have an in to law school (or business school, or political office).Consider that teachers are being laid off left and right with extreme cuts to education funding, teachers who have dedicated their lives and careers to their students. When you take a job as a Teach for America corps member, the school pays much less for you (a starting teacher’s salary) than an experienced teacher with a Master’s Degree. Do you think a cash-strapped district is more likely to hire you, looking for a few gap years before law school, or your brother or sister in the struggle who has been teaching with a graduate degree for ten years? Good thing that anti-union laws have been advocated in state after state, making it easier for school districts to save money by laying off experienced teachers and hiring new recruits every two years.
Consider that Teach for America advocates for a “No Excuses” approach to the classroom – which asserts that the world outside of your classroom should have no effect on student performance. The crux of student achievement is solely the fault and responsibility of the teacher – there is no need to break down the social systems (racism, sexism, capitalism) that keep communities in poverty, there is no need to acknowledge the personal struggles a student might be going through. So – my student who is being harassed for being gay, my student has missed school because his depression is so intense he can’t get out of bed, my student whose mother is dying from cancer, my student who stays at school until 6 PM and commutes an hour and a half each way, my student who has been in three foster homes in the past year, my student who just immigrated with his family from Mexico the week before school started – they should all get zeros on missing assignments, detentions for falling asleep in class, should be told that they should work harder, should not be allowed adjustments or extensions, should be allowed to fail. And the teacher? If your students can’t succeed in that environment? You are the sole reason for that failure. For students who have been studying the impacts of social systems, you should see this line of thought as ridiculous and oppressive.
Consider that Teach for America serves as a pipeline for organizations like Leadership for Educational Equity (the sister organization of TFA that runs its legislative agenda), Students First, Stand for Children, and Students for Education Reform, as well as scores of charter schools across the country. These organizations support the privatization of public schools, the de-unionization of teachers, the emphasis of standardized tests over authentic instruction, and supporting anti-teacher policies like tenure reform and merit pay. These policies make billions of dollars for Education Management Organizations and for test and textbook publishers like Pearson — while public education funding continues to be cut. And It’s not just the policies and organizations that Teach for America supports, but where these policies have originated: from the same organization that has pushed the privatization of prisons and racist immigration bills like SB1070, none other than our favorite folks at ALEC. ALEC’s legislative agenda for education is eerily similar to the bills being supported by TFA’s partners — school vouchers, parent trigger laws, charter school privatization and expansion, teacher tenure reform, and anti-union reforms. It is hypocritical for us to advocate against racist policies like SB1070, to speak out against the privatization of prisons and healthcare, and then to support organizations that want to privatize public education. Do you trust that ALEC’s education policy is truly looking out for at risk students? Do you want to be a part of their agenda?
So. College seniors. I know you care about students, I know you care about your community. If you really want to be a teacher, know what you’re getting into. Commit to being a life-long educator. Commit to staying in the teaching field for more than the required two years – make that a part of your plan. Commit to standing against the legislative agenda of “education reform” and speaking out about their connections to the far-right wing. And if you can’t commit to that, don’t cut corners. If you answer the question of “Why do you want to do Teach for America?” with, “I want to teach for a while before grad school,” or “I want to help low-income youth,” or “I’m interested in education” – really, anything other than “I want to be a teacher,” you are doing more harm than good. There are so many ways you can affect change for students and communities without buying into Teach for America.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
What real school reform looks like
Michael Petrilli’s recent charge
on the Observer’s Opinion page that the elections confirm “[t]eachers
unions remain the Goliath to the school reformers’ David” is neither a
brave claim to make in a paper serving a right-to-work area of the U.S., nor an accurate portrayal of the balance of power in education reform.
First, a question: If teachers unions are the primary causes of public education failures, why do right-to-work states such as my home state of South Carolina also sit historically and currently near the bottom of test data we routinely use to evaluate school quality?
Also: Since the most prominent correlations between unionization and student achievement show that unionized states have high test scores and non-unionized states have low ones, why do reformers such as Petrilli ignore that school quality data are primarily reflections of poverty and affluence?
In part, the answers reveal union bashing, “bad” teacher refrains, and finger pointing at the “status quo” to be straw man arguments, distractions from genuine problems and solutions.
Like his misleading assertion about unions, Petrilli’s suggestion that a battle exists between reformers and their “opponents” is false. The current reform movement includes politicians, think tanks, and advocates constituted of people with little or no experience or expertise in education, such as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and billionaire Bill Gates.
Educators rejecting these so-called reforms are not avoiding reform or accountability, but rejecting policies discredited by evidence.
Accountability-based education reform driven by standards and high-stakes testing has existed since the 1890s. A century of evidence reveals that accountability has failed miserably, often entrenching the problems instead of addressing them.
Yet, reformers persist in calling for new standards, more tests, and misguided assaults on teachers, although public school failures have nothing to do with a lack of accountability or the quality of standards and tests.
I have spent 18 years teaching high school English followed by 11 years in higher education working with teachers and future teachers across the Upstate of South Carolina. Below, I want, like Anthony Cody blogging at Education Week, “to draw some lessons for our side” – the side with experience and expertise calling for genuine change.
Public schools reflect and perpetuate the inequity of opportunity found in society. Thus, the only lessons we should take after the recent election are that we need education reform grounded in equity and opportunity, not accountability, and that must occur at three levels – society, school policy and classroom practices:
• Social reform seeking equity and opportunity for children and their families by ensuring access to health, dental and eye care; food security; and stable jobs with strong wages.
• School policy guaranteeing equity and opportunity by addressing equitable teacher assignments, de-tracking course offerings, fully funding essential educational structures regardless of community characteristics, reforming discipline policies that disproportionately alienate and punish marginalized students and dismantling accountability structures based on a perpetual process of creating new standards and “better” high-stakes tests.
• Classroom practices honoring equity and opportunity by rejecting teaching-to-the-test, offering all students rich learning opportunities based on student interests and needs, replacing fragmented content-based course structures with interdisciplinary courses, and shifting instruction away from teacher-centered practices and toward student-centered invitations, requiring students to be active and thoughtful instead of compliant.
For these shifts in education reform to occur, however, we must face one important lesson: Education reform is not a battle, as Petrilli suggests, between change agents and defenders of the status quo. Education reform must become a continuous collaboration.
Public education is not failing because of unions, “bad” teachers or an inadequate accountability system.
We are failing public education – and our children and democracy – by allowing the wrong reformers and failed policies to mask that schools, like society, remain overburdened by an inequity of opportunity, based not on the merit of anyone’s abilities or effort but on the coincidences of birth that in fact too often become destiny.
First, a question: If teachers unions are the primary causes of public education failures, why do right-to-work states such as my home state of South Carolina also sit historically and currently near the bottom of test data we routinely use to evaluate school quality?
Also: Since the most prominent correlations between unionization and student achievement show that unionized states have high test scores and non-unionized states have low ones, why do reformers such as Petrilli ignore that school quality data are primarily reflections of poverty and affluence?
In part, the answers reveal union bashing, “bad” teacher refrains, and finger pointing at the “status quo” to be straw man arguments, distractions from genuine problems and solutions.
Like his misleading assertion about unions, Petrilli’s suggestion that a battle exists between reformers and their “opponents” is false. The current reform movement includes politicians, think tanks, and advocates constituted of people with little or no experience or expertise in education, such as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and billionaire Bill Gates.
Educators rejecting these so-called reforms are not avoiding reform or accountability, but rejecting policies discredited by evidence.
Accountability-based education reform driven by standards and high-stakes testing has existed since the 1890s. A century of evidence reveals that accountability has failed miserably, often entrenching the problems instead of addressing them.
Yet, reformers persist in calling for new standards, more tests, and misguided assaults on teachers, although public school failures have nothing to do with a lack of accountability or the quality of standards and tests.
I have spent 18 years teaching high school English followed by 11 years in higher education working with teachers and future teachers across the Upstate of South Carolina. Below, I want, like Anthony Cody blogging at Education Week, “to draw some lessons for our side” – the side with experience and expertise calling for genuine change.
Public schools reflect and perpetuate the inequity of opportunity found in society. Thus, the only lessons we should take after the recent election are that we need education reform grounded in equity and opportunity, not accountability, and that must occur at three levels – society, school policy and classroom practices:
• Social reform seeking equity and opportunity for children and their families by ensuring access to health, dental and eye care; food security; and stable jobs with strong wages.
• School policy guaranteeing equity and opportunity by addressing equitable teacher assignments, de-tracking course offerings, fully funding essential educational structures regardless of community characteristics, reforming discipline policies that disproportionately alienate and punish marginalized students and dismantling accountability structures based on a perpetual process of creating new standards and “better” high-stakes tests.
• Classroom practices honoring equity and opportunity by rejecting teaching-to-the-test, offering all students rich learning opportunities based on student interests and needs, replacing fragmented content-based course structures with interdisciplinary courses, and shifting instruction away from teacher-centered practices and toward student-centered invitations, requiring students to be active and thoughtful instead of compliant.
For these shifts in education reform to occur, however, we must face one important lesson: Education reform is not a battle, as Petrilli suggests, between change agents and defenders of the status quo. Education reform must become a continuous collaboration.
Public education is not failing because of unions, “bad” teachers or an inadequate accountability system.
We are failing public education – and our children and democracy – by allowing the wrong reformers and failed policies to mask that schools, like society, remain overburdened by an inequity of opportunity, based not on the merit of anyone’s abilities or effort but on the coincidences of birth that in fact too often become destiny.
P.L. Thomas is a professor at Furman University in Greenville, S.C.
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/12/09/3713152/what-real-school-reform-looks.html#storylink=cpy
Monday, December 10, 2012
Some Better Targets for the People Who Hate Government
Nation of Change
https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/13b85ff0a12464e8
Paul Buckheit
One of the pleasures of a weekend away from the city is visiting
people who express points of view that are different from my own. A lot
of them hate government. Their comments are sprinkled with colorful
references to taxes, waste and socialism.
Countering with facts and statistics doesn't seem to work. Instead, listening to their rants can be educational for a progressive, because the anti-government sentiment highlights the masterful job done by conservatives and the wealthy over the years, as they have basically convinced much of America to argue against themselves on matters of politics and the economy.
It would make more sense to take on the real villains.
1. Medical Providers
They're taking a lot more of our money than Medicare does. According to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, medical administrative costs as a percentage of claims are about three times higher for private insurance than for Medicare. The U.S. Institute of Medicine reports that the for-profit system wastes $750 billion a year on waste, fraud, and inefficiency. As a percent of GDP, we spend $1.2 trillion more than the OECD average.
That's an amount equal to the entire deficit wasted on private medical care companies. One out of every six dollars we earn goes to doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and insurance companies. All good reasons to redirect our hatred.
2. Retirement Brokers
Various reports have concluded that administrative costs for 401(k) plans are much higher than those for Social Security—up to 20 times more.
It would be difficult to find, or even imagine, any short-term-profit-based private insurer that is fully funded for the next 25 years. Social Security is. It works for all retirees while private plans work for a limited number of investors.
Countering with facts and statistics doesn't seem to work. Instead, listening to their rants can be educational for a progressive, because the anti-government sentiment highlights the masterful job done by conservatives and the wealthy over the years, as they have basically convinced much of America to argue against themselves on matters of politics and the economy.
It would make more sense to take on the real villains.
1. Medical Providers
They're taking a lot more of our money than Medicare does. According to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, medical administrative costs as a percentage of claims are about three times higher for private insurance than for Medicare. The U.S. Institute of Medicine reports that the for-profit system wastes $750 billion a year on waste, fraud, and inefficiency. As a percent of GDP, we spend $1.2 trillion more than the OECD average.
That's an amount equal to the entire deficit wasted on private medical care companies. One out of every six dollars we earn goes to doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and insurance companies. All good reasons to redirect our hatred.
2. Retirement Brokers
Various reports have concluded that administrative costs for 401(k) plans are much higher than those for Social Security—up to 20 times more.
3. Banks
Government is often blamed for local budget shortfalls, but cities and towns around the country have been repeatedly victimized by a "bid-rigging" process that diverts billions of dollars—a few thousand at a time—from numerous unsuspecting communities to the accounts of a few big banks.
Individual homeowners, especially minorities, have also been victimized by the banks. Because of the housing crash and the corresponding decrease in home values, black households lost over half of their median wealth and Hispanic households almost two-thirds.
There are scandals and scams galore: the privately run Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) headed up the illegal foreclosure business; the banking association LIBOR was guilty of interest rate manipulation; and plenty of financial institutions have engaged in the subtle art of imposing hidden fees. Credit cards are loaded with "gray charges" like surprise subscriptions and auto-renewals that cost the average consumer $356 a year.
Yet we're forced to keep paying. Shockingly, it has been estimated that 40 percent of every dollar we spend on goods and services goes to banks as interest.
Public banks, on the other hand, focus on the needs of communities and small businesses rather than on investors. The most well-known example is the Bank of North Dakota (BND), which has successfully worked with local banks throughout the state, promoting business growth through loans that a larger bank might be reluctant to make, while managing to turn a profit every year for the past 40 years.
4. Higher Education Operators
Outside of the banking industry, there may not be a more egregious example of public abuse than the expropriation of higher education by profit-seekers who have subjected underemployed young people to years of student loanobligations. The collection of outstanding student debt is managed in good part by big banks like JP Morgan and Citigroup.
In most countries tuition remains free or nominal, but in America, as noted by Noam Chomsky, the belief that education strengthens a country is giving way to a philosophy of paying for your own educational benefits. Meanwhile, the "corporatization of universities" has led to a dramatic increase in administrators while relatively expensive programs like nursing, engineering and computer science are being cut.
But the easy loans keep accruing interest long after college ends. With a hint of foreboding, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Department of Education reported that the student loan debacle has been fueled by the same forces that led to the subprime mortgage collapse.
5. Big Box and Fast Food Companies
Smaller government is promoted by the very companies that make record profits while forcing their employees to accept public assistance.
While McDonald's enjoyed profits of 130 percent over the past four years, and Yum! Brands (Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC) made 45 percent, and while the Walton family made $20 billion in one year, the median hourly wage for food service workers and Walmart employees is about $9 an hour. Many workers are stuck at the $7.25 minimum wage, which according to the National Employment Law Project is worth 30 percent less than in 1968.
Food service and big box store employees, among the fastest-growing job segments in the nation, are making barely enough to stay out of poverty. And it's not just the employees who are subsidizing their bosses. We all are. Low-wage employees are more dependent on the food stamps and Medicaid that are paid for by our tax dollars.
Some Alternative Targets: Panic, Poison, Plowing, Postage, Prison
What is the incentive for private companies to deal with tragedies like Hurricane Sandy? The Pacific Standard aptly stated that "the free market doesn't want to be in the flood business."
What is the incentive for private companies to keep the poisons out of our drinking water? Without sufficient government regulations the Clean Water Act was violated a half-million times in one year.
What is the incentive for private companies to plow the county roads? Or to reduce the number of prisoners in profit-seeking prisons? Or to allow you to send a birthday card for just 45 cents? Or to simply treat its customers with respect rather than as a source of profit?
The "invisible hand" of the free market is unable, or unwilling, to satisfy the needs of society in all these areas. For that, it is worthy of our contempt.
Government is often blamed for local budget shortfalls, but cities and towns around the country have been repeatedly victimized by a "bid-rigging" process that diverts billions of dollars—a few thousand at a time—from numerous unsuspecting communities to the accounts of a few big banks.
Individual homeowners, especially minorities, have also been victimized by the banks. Because of the housing crash and the corresponding decrease in home values, black households lost over half of their median wealth and Hispanic households almost two-thirds.
Public banks, on the other hand, focus on the needs of communities and small businesses rather than on investors. The most well-known example is the Bank of North Dakota (BND), which has successfully worked with local banks throughout the state, promoting business growth through loans that a larger bank might be reluctant to make, while managing to turn a profit every year for the past 40 years.
4. Higher Education Operators
Outside of the banking industry, there may not be a more egregious example of public abuse than the expropriation of higher education by profit-seekers who have subjected underemployed young people to years of student loanobligations. The collection of outstanding student debt is managed in good part by big banks like JP Morgan and Citigroup.
In most countries tuition remains free or nominal, but in America, as noted by Noam Chomsky, the belief that education strengthens a country is giving way to a philosophy of paying for your own educational benefits. Meanwhile, the "corporatization of universities" has led to a dramatic increase in administrators while relatively expensive programs like nursing, engineering and computer science are being cut.
But the easy loans keep accruing interest long after college ends. With a hint of foreboding, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Department of Education reported that the student loan debacle has been fueled by the same forces that led to the subprime mortgage collapse.
5. Big Box and Fast Food Companies
Smaller government is promoted by the very companies that make record profits while forcing their employees to accept public assistance.
While McDonald's enjoyed profits of 130 percent over the past four years, and Yum! Brands (Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC) made 45 percent, and while the Walton family made $20 billion in one year, the median hourly wage for food service workers and Walmart employees is about $9 an hour. Many workers are stuck at the $7.25 minimum wage, which according to the National Employment Law Project is worth 30 percent less than in 1968.
Food service and big box store employees, among the fastest-growing job segments in the nation, are making barely enough to stay out of poverty. And it's not just the employees who are subsidizing their bosses. We all are. Low-wage employees are more dependent on the food stamps and Medicaid that are paid for by our tax dollars.
Some Alternative Targets: Panic, Poison, Plowing, Postage, Prison
What is the incentive for private companies to deal with tragedies like Hurricane Sandy? The Pacific Standard aptly stated that "the free market doesn't want to be in the flood business."
What is the incentive for private companies to keep the poisons out of our drinking water? Without sufficient government regulations the Clean Water Act was violated a half-million times in one year.
What is the incentive for private companies to plow the county roads? Or to reduce the number of prisoners in profit-seeking prisons? Or to allow you to send a birthday card for just 45 cents? Or to simply treat its customers with respect rather than as a source of profit?
The "invisible hand" of the free market is unable, or unwilling, to satisfy the needs of society in all these areas. For that, it is worthy of our contempt.
Thursday, December 06, 2012
NYC Teachers Fired Due to Discriminatory Test
NYC discriminated against black, Latino teachers: court
12/5/2012COMMENTS (0)
By Nate Raymond
NEW
YORK, Dec 5 (Reuters) - New York City's Board of Education
discriminated against black and Latino teachers by requiring them to
pass a standardized test that wasn't properly validated to become
licensed to teach in the city's schools, a U.S. judge ruled on
Wednesday.
The
decision by U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood in Manhattan came in a
long-running class action. The ruling permits the plaintiffs to seek the
appointment of a monitor to evaluate whether the current version of the
test has any of the invalid provisions in place from 1996 to 2000.
At
the same time, Wood decertified the class of plaintiffs insofar as it
was seeking back pay. The decision follows a landmark 2011 ruling by the
U.S. Supreme Court in Wal-Mart Stores Inc v. Dukes, which limited the ability of plaintiffs to group together in class actions.
Lawyers
for the plaintiffs said Wood's ruling left the door open for teachers
who took the test and number in the hundreds if not thousands to seek
damages individually or for the court to certify smaller classes.
Wednesday's
ruling marked the latest instance of a federal judge taking issue with
New York City employment tests. A federal judge in Brooklyn in March
ordered the city to pay up to $128.7 million after finding New York City
Fire Department exams had "discriminatory effects" on minority
applicants from 1999 to 2007.
"These
are two major federal court decisions invalidating public employment
tests," said Baher Azmy, the legal director at the Center for
Constitutional Rights, which represents the plaintiffs in both cases.
Eamonn
Foley, a lawyer with the New York City Law Department, in a statement
said the judge was correct to decertify the class with regard to its
back pay and injunctive relief demands and that the city didn't break
the law with regard to its use of an earlier test.
"The city is reviewing its options with regard to the remaining portions of the decision," he said.
FOUR TEACHERS
The
lawsuit was filed in 1996 by four teachers -- three black and one
Latina -- who claimed that the testing practices of the New York State
Education Department and the New York City Board of Education were
discriminatory.
To
gain permanent licenses, the teachers had to pass the National Teacher
Core Battery exam, which the state began using in 1984, and its
successor, the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test, introduced in 1993. A
newer version of the LAST has been in place since 2000 and wasn't at
issue, the decision said.
The
lawsuit claimed that white teachers passed at a higher rate than blacks
and Latinos and that the exam had a disparate impact. First-time black
and Latino takers of the LAST passed at 57.9 percent and 55.1 percent,
compared to a 90.25 percent pass rate for whites, the plaintiffs said in
a 2003 filing.
Those
who failed the exam lost their conditional licenses. As a result, they
could only work as substitute teachers and had lower salaries, benefits
and seniority, the plaintiffs said.
About
8,000 to 15,000 teachers have suffered demotion, termination, reduced
pay and other losses because they failed the tests, according to the
Center for Constitutional Rights. The center's Web site did not provide a
time frame for that statistic.
The city contended the exam was job-related, but Wood found that the test wasn't properly validated.
In
granting the motion to decertify the class related to monetary damages
for back pay, Wood said the class could remain intact for the purpose of
seeking a court finding that the board violated Title VII of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964.
Damages
could, though, still be in play, said Joshua Sohn, a lawyer at DLA
Piper working pro bono for the plaintiffs. How the damages would be
determined will be the subject of a response from the plaintiffs the
court requested by Dec. 13.
"(The
decision) leaves the possibility to certify subclasses for damages, or
we could propose some other framework to get there," Sohn said.
A status conference is scheduled for Jan. 10.
Since the case was filed, it has wound its way through the courts and passed through four judges.
A
class of plaintiffs was certified in 2001 by former U.S. district judge
Constance Baker Motley in Manhattan, the second judge to oversee the
case after receiving it from Judge Deborah Batts. Following a five-month
bench trial in 2003, the judge found the city and state's use of the
exam did not violate Title VII.
In
2006, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Motley's findings.
The appeals court tossed the teachers' claims against the state,
leaving just the city as a defendant.
Motley
died in 2005 before the 2nd Circuit ruled, so the case was later
reassigned to Judge Sydney Stein. It was then transferred again, this
time to Wood in 2009.
The case is Gulino v. Board of Education, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 96-08414.
For Gulino: Joshua Sohn, DLA Piper.
For the New York City Board of Education: Eamonn Foley, New York City Law Department.
Proud to Be Part of The Wave Team
Newspaper Born of a Fire Is Back in Ink After a Storm
By VIVIAN YEE
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
The
Wave, the weekly newspaper in the Rockaways, has resumed printing after
Hurricane Sandy ruined its offices. On Wednesday, Susan Locke, the
publisher, worked on the computer, while Sandy Bernstein, the general
manager, tried to keep the phone lines working.
“Wave of Fire, Wall of Water,” read the headline atop The Wave on Friday. It was its first print edition since Hurricane Sandy sent over four feet of water crashing through its offices on Rockaway Beach Boulevard five weeks ago, forcing the newspaper to stop publishing for the first time in its 119-year history.
Like everybody else fighting to recover from the storm, many of the employees had lost almost everything. Like everyone else, they needed cars, electricity and a dry place to sleep.
Like other local companies, The Wave has had to cut back on labor. It may be in the news business, but it is also a small business, and the staff members knew it would live or die by how quickly they could start putting out a newspaper again.
“Right now, we’re trying to stay alive and do what we do,” said Howard Schwach, the editor, who has worked at The Wave since 1982. “I knew I couldn’t do every story, but I wanted to keep The Wave alive.”
So, relying on luck and good humor, that is what the newspaper did.
The only full-time reporter, Nicholas Briano, happens to live in an untouched part of Brooklyn. He could drive, and when he ran out of gas, he made calls and updated the newspaper’s Web site and Twitter account, which has doubled its number of followers since the storm.
Mr. Schwach, whose extended family lost three apartments and five cars in the hurricane’s aftermath, fled the cold and dark to his daughter’s house on Long Island. “It was very frustrating to be at arm’s reach when so much was going on,” he said.
As limited as The Wave’s reporting had to be, its readership in the days after the storm was even more so, as residents of the Rockaways could neither charge their electronic devices nor get Internet or cellphone service.
There were fortunate breaks.
The general manager’s son, who works on the business staff, was in New Rochelle, N.Y., the night of the storm, which saved his car from the flooding. His great-aunt, the publisher, Susan Locke, has an intact house, so she offered the general manager, Sanford Bernstein — whose house and cars were ruined — a home.
And the empty second-floor room above The Wave’s offices was big enough for a makeshift newsroom, where the staff worked until midnight last Thursday. (The staff calls it the “Wave Cave.”)
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
The Wave is operating out of a cramped space that once housed a church.
The
devastation downstairs was almost total. The bound archives, spanning
118 years of Rockaways history, were destroyed. So were furniture,
kitchen appliances, a copy machine and a mail labeler, along with the
computers that Mr. Bernstein thought would be fine if they were on the
desks. That was not high enough.Among the few things spared were two wall-mounted clown heads — memorabilia from the old Playland amusement park — that now stare over a room stripped down to wall studs and concrete.
Before Tropical Storm Irene hit, in 2011, the newspaper’s staff members had taken everything to the second floor, but this time, they decided the storm threat did not merit the trouble.
As the downstairs facilities were being cleaned out in the first weeks after Hurricane Sandy, the upstairs space, which once housed a tiny church, began to fill up. A medical center donated computers. New tabletops from IKEA, mildly damaged shelves from downstairs and wooden bases became temporary workstations.
Mr. Bernstein reinstalled software. “A bunch of things went wrong last week,” he said, “and I’m sure a whole bunch of things will go wrong this week.”
He does not have a solution to the biggest question of all: the future. The Wave is likely to become a barometer of the Rockaways’ economic recovery, as its finances rise and fall alongside the small businesses that advertise in it. And Mr. Bernstein is not sure he will be able to reinstate all of the newspaper’s freelance artists and part-time reporters.
Before the newspaper’s distribution resumed, Mr. Schwach went through the new issue and crossed out the advertisements scheduled well in advance for each business wiped out by the storm. Then, bundles of free copies went out to churches, open stores and warming stations. People grabbed them by the handful, delighted to see a neighborhood institution back in business.
The front-page article told readers that The Wave had been born of a disaster (a fire in 1892 that inspired a local printer to start his own paper). And the article ended with the hope that the edition would serve as a commemoration of the storm.
Ms. Locke, the publisher, has not yet made plans to rebuild the newsroom, but she is adamant about one thing. “This time,” she said, “we’ll put everything up high.”
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
New Mind-Boggling Evidence Proves SAT Bias
http://diverseeducation.com/article/49830/
by Dr. Ibram Rogers Recently, I made the case that the “merit plea” opposing affirmative action is an inherently racist argument. In the blog, I briefly mentioned that the SAT is racially biased and not an adequate measurement of merit, as many would lead us to believe. The test is and has long been biased against African-Americans.
For me, grossly and consistently unequal outcomes almost always prove racist intent. The annual outcome of Whites out-scoring Blacks on the SAT demonstrates intent, proves the test is biased. I do not need evidence that shows racist intent. The outcome, for me, is enough.
However, this evidence would be nice to present to the legions of Americans who worship the mythology of neutrality of the SAT. To my satisfaction, after reading the “merit plea” blog, a Diverse reader pointed me toward a study in the recently published book, SAT WARS: The Case for Test Optional College Admissions.
I want to disclose to you the findings in Jay Rosner’s chapter, entitled, “The SAT: Quantifying the Unfairness Behind the Bubbles.” The startling new evidence of racist intent by the SAT test makers is mind-boggling, as my thoughts are still reverberating from its nasty implications.
Each year, when students take the SAT, one of the sections on the test is not scored. Instead, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) “pre-tests” the questions in the unscored section for potential use on a future SAT. During this pre-testing process, test developers also gather the race and gender of the test taker.
If questions perform well, then they are used on a scored section in the future. If they perform poorly, then they are scrapped. How does the ETS judge the performance of a question?
“Each individual SAT question ETS chooses is required to parallel the outcomes of the test overall,” writes Rosner of The Princeton Review Foundation. “So, if high-scoring test-takers — who are more likely to be White (and male, and wealthy) — tend to answer the question correctly in pretesting, it’s a worthy SAT question; if not, it’s thrown out. Race and ethnicity are not considered explicitly, but racially disparate scores drive question selection, which in turn reproduces racially disparate test results in an internally reinforcing cycle.”
This discriminatory process is known as “point bi-serial correlation.” According to Rosner, it is “a key methodology used by psychometricians to construct admission tests such as the SAT, ACT, GRE, LSAT, GMAT, MCAT and many other bubble tests.”
Rosner analyzed a data set of 276 verbal and math questions from the 1998 and 2000 SATs. He found what he calls “Black questions,” in which more Blacks than Whites answered correctly in the pre-testing phase.
“But it appears that none ever make it onto a scored section of the SAT,” Rosner says. “Black students may encounter Black questions, but only on unscored sections of the SAT.”
Instead, SATs only contain what he calls “White questions,” in which more Whites than Blacks answer correctly in the pre-testing phase. That is the principal reason why Whites consistently perform better. They are supposed to. The questions are literally geared toward them, as test developers are mandated to recreate the norm, the norm of White males outperforming their peers.
We no longer need to use unequal outcomes to deductively prove racist intent in the SAT. The use of point bi-serial correlation, the eliminating of the Black questions, the retaining of White questions is the heartbeat of racism in the SAT.
It is subtle, not loud. The rhythm of discriminatory test-making is regular. And it will continue to clandestinely pump out inequality unless we do something about it.
Dr. Ibram H. Rogers is an assistant professor of Africana Studies at the University at Albany — SUNY. He is the author of The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
EIA: Wisconsin AFT/NEA Merger?
WEAC Looking for New Direction
http://www.eiaonline.com/intercepts/2012/11/26/weac-looking-for-new-direction/
Written By: Mike Antonucci
-
Nov•
26•12
A timely piece in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
details the soul-searching going on at the Wisconsin Education
Association Council, where a special representative assembly will be
held next Saturday to discuss the union’s options, including possible merger with AFT Wisconsin.WEAC leaders apparently “are more seriously considering how to shift their emphasis to organizing from the community level up rather than the Capitol level down.” There are quite a few aspects of this plan that seem familiar, considering the National Education Association has similar plans, including moving away from a “service model, where people paid their dues and got a certain number of services from the union in return.” Under the new model, people would pay their dues to become part of an ideological mass movement – more like the NRA than the NEA.
The common denominator in this thinking is Bob Peterson, currently president of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, but long-time advocate for this very approach at Rethinking Schools. Whether all this new thinking will take hold in an organization wedded to old thinking for the past 35 years or so is, of course, academic.
Rockaway: The Kenny Vance Story
Artifacts of a Music Career, Gone With the Storm’s Roar
By COREY KILGANNON
Ángel Franco/The New York Times Kenny
Vance, the singer, songwriter and music producer, at the ruins of his
home in Belle Harbor, Queens. Many of his possession were destroyed or
washed away.“It was my little museum,” said Mr. Vance, 68, an original member of Jay and the Americans, which was an opening act for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and the musical director behind many prominent films and television shows, including “Saturday Night Live.”
Over the years, he improved the modest beach house in the Belle Harbor section of Queens into a comfortable two-story refuge of rejuvenation that enabled him to keep a busy performance schedule.
Kier Clockwise from top: Sandy Yaguda, Jay Black, Marty Sanders and Kenny Vance of Jay and the Americans.Then came Hurricane Sandy, which drove the ocean through the streets of Belle Harbor and pulverized his house while he was away performing on a cruise ship. He returned to find his house reduced to rubble.
“After the hurricane, a friend called and asked if I got water in the basement, and I said, ‘I don’t have a basement anymore,’” Mr. Vance said. “It was beyond recognition. My whole reality didn’t exist anymore.”
His possessions reduced to the luggage he took on the cruise and his car, he was placed by federal officials in a Hampton Inn on Staten Island, and has spent his days visiting the remains of his house to sift through the sand for the rare photograph or recording that might be intact and worth saving.
So far, he has barely filled half of his car trunk.
On Wednesday, he watched a backhoe fill a dump truck with pieces of his home and its ruined contents.
Somewhere in that debris might have been shards or more of early vinyl recordings of the Harbor Lites, a doo-wop group in which Mr. Vance began his professional career in the late 1950s, at age 15, in his native Brooklyn.
Ángel Franco/The New York Times Some remnants from Mr. Vance’s home.“I was saving all this stuff to, one day, put into a book,” he said.
Gone was the shirt he wore in “American Hot Wax,” the film in which he appeared as a bandleader and for which he produced the soundtrack.
And now in the sand was a bulky roll of two-inch audio tape: the master recording of the “Animal House” soundtrack, which Mr. Vance also produced.
“I had a tape of John Belushi singing a dirty version of ‘Louie Louie,’ which no one will ever hear now,” said Mr. Vance, who was musical director for “Saturday Night Live” in the early 1980s. The backhoe scooped up a poster of Kenny Vance and the Planotones, his current group.
One item not in the pile was his upright piano.
“They found it up on the boulevard,” he said, referring to Rockaway Beach Boulevard. He used to keep the piano in the Brill Building in Manhattan, a hive of songwriting activity when Mr. Vance had an office there in the 1960s. Once, he said, an unknown songwriting duo — Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who would later form the band Steely Dan — used the piano to audition songs for him in 1967.
There in the sand were pieces of a drum set, and a half-buried kitchen blender. “Oh man, my juicer,” he said, picking up the blender.
Nearby was half of a 45 disc of “Looking for an Echo,” a Vance hit. And there was a sand-encrusted cassette tape of his own compositions with the handwritten label “7 Songs.” “I have no idea what it is,” he said.
Mr. Vance kept his 12 vintage guitars on the first floor, where he thought they would be safe. They were not.
He had homeowner’s and flood insurance, he said, but “I still have no idea what’s going to happen. There is so much bureaucracy to go through.”
The house was where he gathered with his children and grandchildren, and where he rehearsed his latest album, a Christmas-themed offering called “Mr. Santa.”
But Mr. Vance, who is divorced, has not let what has happened stop him from performing. He has a show scheduled Saturday in Red Bank, N.J.
“Performing is my medicine,” he said, adding that his most poignant find in the wreckage was a photograph of him performing with the singer Johnny Maestro, who died in 2010.
“I cried when I found that,” he said. “I realized that I’m lucky, because I’m still here.”
Monday, October 22, 2012
Newark: What This PROPOSED Contract Means For Education Workers and Students
For copy of contract email Normsco@gmail.com
-
● THIS CONTRACT HURTS STUDENTS!
-
● THIS CONTRACT IS INHUMANE! IT THREATENS THE HEALTH AND FAMILIES OF NEWARK
EDUCATION WORKERS!
-
● THIS CONTRACT SLASHES TEACHERS SALARIES AND BENEFITS!
-
● THIS CONTRACT DESTROYS OUR UNION! At every turn it destroys our ability to defend and protect
our members!
-
● THIS CONTRACT PITS TEACHER AGAINST TEACHER! It destroys union and working class
solidarity!
-
● More Turnaround schools! More charter schools! TEACHERS WILL BE ROBBED OF JOBS! Larger
class sizes!
-
● DICTATORIAL SUPERINTENDENT CONTROL OVER NEW EVALUATION SYSTEM!
-
● LOSS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN RETROACTIVE PAY! No guarantee WHEN we get it!
-
● LOWER SALARIES OVER TIME for those who choose OR are FORCED into Merit Pay!
-
● LOWER SALARIES for ALL employees, EVEN THOSE WHO STAY ON TRADITIONAL SCALE!
-
● Few teachers will be rated Highly Effective! FEW TEACHERS WILL ACTUALLY GET BONUSES!
-
● The philanthropic money for merit pay can disappear, as it did in Washington DC, leaving NPS without
money to pay bonuses!
-
● LONGER PERMANENT HOURS, FOR NO ADDITIONAL PAY!
THIS IS A CUT-THROAT BUSINESS CONTRACT, NOT A SOCIAL JUSTICE CONTRACT.
-
● IT ENSURES THE PRIVATIZATION OF NEWARK SCHOOLS WITHIN 5 YEARS
-
● IT MEANS INDENTURED SERVITUDE FOR EDUCATION WORKERS
-
● IT DOES NOT PROVIDE STUDENTS WITH ANYTHING THEY DESERVE IN SCHOOL
SOLUTION = VOTE NO TO MOVE TO ARBITRATION
-
● DEMAND THE FORMATION OF A RANK-AND-FILE CONTRACT COMMITTEE
-
● ENABLES WILLING AND ABLE NTU MEMBERS TO WORK WITH LEADERSHIP TO
PREPARE A COUNTER, SOCIAL JUSTICE-BASED CONTRACT
-
● NEED EQUAL RESOURCES FOR STUDENTS, SMALL CLASS SIZE GUARANTEE,
INCREASED LEARNING SUPPORTS, BALANCE OF POWER IN EVALUATION PROCESS, REDUCTION IN PAPER WORK FOR TEACHERS, ANTI-BULLYING PROVISION, HIRING POOL, FAIR COMPENSATION, A STRICT TIMETABLE FOR FUTURE NEGOTIATIONS SO WE NEVER GO TWO PLUS YEARS WITHOUT A CONTRACT
CONTRACT ANALYSIS
TEACHERS COACHING AND EVALUATION:
While the descriptions of the Peer Oversight Committee and School Improvement Panel and Peer Validators seem to offer a modicum of protection for teachers from administrative abuse, both the Oversight Committee and School Improvement Panel are “ultimately” under the control of the Superintendent. In Part 1B, number 5, the language is clear: “The Superintendent will retain ultimate authority over the selection criteria, and management of Peer Validators.” In Part 1D, the language is even clearer: “The principal and his/her administrative team – with support from the Superintendent’s team – are ultimately and solely responsible for the decisions, content and quality of teachers evaluations. Nothing described in Section 1A, 1B, or 1C of this MOA shall be interpreted as challenging this premise.” In others words, both the Peer Oversight Committee and the School Improvement Panel are completely and unquestionably under the control of the Superintendent.
Beyond that, even the Peer Validator system is weak. It only includes 1 Peer Validator, rather than a committee. Further, the “Peer” Validator does not even need to be a peer. This leaves even that process open to corruption or manipulation. Part 1, section C2, it is clear that Peer Validators do not even need to be your peers.
COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:
Retroactive Pay is, in general, about 1/3 of what you are actually owed. IN NO CASE IS RETROACTIVE
PAY THE ACTUAL AMOUNT YOU HAVE LOST OVER THE PAST 2 PLUS YEARS!
If you have a Bachelor’s Degree only, YOU HAVE NO CHOICE in what salary scale you must accept. Young teachers with a Bachelor’s Degree and ALL new teachers for years or decades into the future will be on the Merit Pay scale.
This contract discourages teachers from furthering their education by pursuing graduate degrees. There is NO incentive for teachers to become experts in their field, which helps us know our content better and become better teachers.
Further, teachers on the Merit Pay scale are slightly higher than those on the Regular scale. However, within a few short years that changes. For any conceivable position, after a few short years the pay of those who choose to stay on the Regular Scale will be earning MORE per year than those who choose or are forced into the Merit Pay scale.
This effectively creates a two-tiered contract which will split the NTU membership into two distinct interest groups – Merit Pay and Regular groups – WHO WILL IN THE FUTURE HAVE DISTINCTLY DIFFERENT INTERESTS WHEN NEGOTIATING FUTURE CONTRACTS! This will make it impossible for our union membership to stand in solidarity in future negotiations, dividing us so that we can never unify again. This has happened in private industry for the past twenty years. In the book
Now it’s being applied to educators!
To get teachers to buy into their Merit Pay system, they propose a bribe. The tentative agreement labels it a “Transition Stipend,” but in reality, that stipend is a bribe, designed to hook teachers into a system that will pay them less over time, and DOES NOT GUARANTEE THEM MERIT PAY OR BONUSES.
If you get an effective on your evaluation, you get your increment, but you only get Merit Pay if you get Highly Effective. In other words, you do not get Merit Pay simply for being Effective. YOU ONLY GET MERIT PAY IF YOU ARE RATED HIGHLY EFFECTIVE.
While the descriptions of the Peer Oversight Committee and School Improvement Panel and Peer Validators seem to offer a modicum of protection for teachers from administrative abuse, both the Oversight Committee and School Improvement Panel are “ultimately” under the control of the Superintendent. In Part 1B, number 5, the language is clear: “The Superintendent will retain ultimate authority over the selection criteria, and management of Peer Validators.” In Part 1D, the language is even clearer: “The principal and his/her administrative team – with support from the Superintendent’s team – are ultimately and solely responsible for the decisions, content and quality of teachers evaluations. Nothing described in Section 1A, 1B, or 1C of this MOA shall be interpreted as challenging this premise.” In others words, both the Peer Oversight Committee and the School Improvement Panel are completely and unquestionably under the control of the Superintendent.
Beyond that, even the Peer Validator system is weak. It only includes 1 Peer Validator, rather than a committee. Further, the “Peer” Validator does not even need to be a peer. This leaves even that process open to corruption or manipulation. Part 1, section C2, it is clear that Peer Validators do not even need to be your peers.
COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:
Retroactive Pay is, in general, about 1/3 of what you are actually owed. IN NO CASE IS RETROACTIVE
PAY THE ACTUAL AMOUNT YOU HAVE LOST OVER THE PAST 2 PLUS YEARS!
If you have a Bachelor’s Degree only, YOU HAVE NO CHOICE in what salary scale you must accept. Young teachers with a Bachelor’s Degree and ALL new teachers for years or decades into the future will be on the Merit Pay scale.
This contract discourages teachers from furthering their education by pursuing graduate degrees. There is NO incentive for teachers to become experts in their field, which helps us know our content better and become better teachers.
Further, teachers on the Merit Pay scale are slightly higher than those on the Regular scale. However, within a few short years that changes. For any conceivable position, after a few short years the pay of those who choose to stay on the Regular Scale will be earning MORE per year than those who choose or are forced into the Merit Pay scale.
This effectively creates a two-tiered contract which will split the NTU membership into two distinct interest groups – Merit Pay and Regular groups – WHO WILL IN THE FUTURE HAVE DISTINCTLY DIFFERENT INTERESTS WHEN NEGOTIATING FUTURE CONTRACTS! This will make it impossible for our union membership to stand in solidarity in future negotiations, dividing us so that we can never unify again. This has happened in private industry for the past twenty years. In the book
Now it’s being applied to educators!
To get teachers to buy into their Merit Pay system, they propose a bribe. The tentative agreement labels it a “Transition Stipend,” but in reality, that stipend is a bribe, designed to hook teachers into a system that will pay them less over time, and DOES NOT GUARANTEE THEM MERIT PAY OR BONUSES.
If you get an effective on your evaluation, you get your increment, but you only get Merit Pay if you get Highly Effective. In other words, you do not get Merit Pay simply for being Effective. YOU ONLY GET MERIT PAY IF YOU ARE RATED HIGHLY EFFECTIVE.
Harrison, Bennett and Bluestone, The
Great U-Turn: Corporate Restructuring and the Polarizing of America, they demonstrate how this method is used
to PERMANENTLY lower wages for an entire industry.
In Part 2B, number 2C, it specifies that a $2,500 reward will be available only to those teaching in a “hard-
staff-subjects.” In other words, if you do not teach in a hard-to-staff-subject--a vague term that is unspecified--you
WILL NEVER have the opportunity to earn this reward.
Further, we must look at the funding sources for these “rewards,” “bonuses,” and “awards.” All the money comes from a $20 million per year (about $50 million over the course of the contract) fund taken from “philanthropic funds.” Laughably, Part 2B, section 4, begins with the following: “In the unlikely event that philanthropic funds are not available...” [emphasis ours]. Even without a concrete example of such an “unlikely event,” we can all imagine Marc Zuckerberg becoming fickle, or not liking the way his money is being used, and choosing a new charity for his riches in future years. But we need not imagine anything. In Washington, D.C., the teachers union agreed to merit pay funded by “philanthropic funds,” only to find that philanthropic funding fell by 82% (from an average of $21 million between 2010 to 2012 to $3.8 million after Michelle Rhee left the district). Then, D.C. was stuck holding the bag with no money to pay these bonuses. In essence, merit pay is really never pay.
None of these “bonuses” are pensionable, because they are not considered salary. “Awards” and “rewards” and “stipends” are also not salary, and therefore are also not pensionable.
If you do not give sufficient notice for retirement, you will lose your sick days. You will literally be punished for not putting in your retirement notice early enough.
Even the one area of the contract that seems to sound good, the “sick bank,” is not clearly delineated, and could therefore be administered in an unfair fashion. Who or what will run this “bank”? What criteria will be used to determine how sick days get used? None of this is specified at all.
In Part 2B, number 2D, union-sponsored courses are specifically NOT approved for credit equivalency for increment advancement. This delegitimizes the NTU as a professional organization.
In Part 2F, number 3, super-seniority for NTU officials is specifically eliminated. In other words, the NTU is giving up protections for their officials and employees who still work in a school. Again, another step toward the delegitimization of the Newark Teachers Union.
In Part 2F, number 3, the wording that previously guaranteed that we could not be forced to work more than 6 hours and 30 minutes is deleted. With no wording protecting us, we can now be required to work more than the 6 hours and 30 minutes that has been the case in the past.
Even our Spring Break is under attack. Part 2F, number 4, the wording that has previously guaranteed us our Spring Break is deleted. Basically, they can, potentially, eliminate our spring break.
For neither of these 2 provisions is there any indication that there will be fair compensation for either those longer days or loss of spring break. In other words, we are being forced to work longer hours without being fairly compensated for our labor-power.
If it’s not an “extended day,” added on to an already 6 hour and 30 minute teaching day, then it is a regular, full teaching day. NPS will attempt to argue that since it’s not an extended day program, employees should not be given any extra compensation.
There is NO provision in this contract for how to place the “Employees Without Placement” in regular positions again. In Chicago, the Chicago Teachers Union negotiated a clause in their recently signed contract that forces the Chicago Public Schools to place those teachers BEFORE HIRING new teachers. Teachers at Renew schools were similarly unprotected.
Further, we must look at the funding sources for these “rewards,” “bonuses,” and “awards.” All the money comes from a $20 million per year (about $50 million over the course of the contract) fund taken from “philanthropic funds.” Laughably, Part 2B, section 4, begins with the following: “In the unlikely event that philanthropic funds are not available...” [emphasis ours]. Even without a concrete example of such an “unlikely event,” we can all imagine Marc Zuckerberg becoming fickle, or not liking the way his money is being used, and choosing a new charity for his riches in future years. But we need not imagine anything. In Washington, D.C., the teachers union agreed to merit pay funded by “philanthropic funds,” only to find that philanthropic funding fell by 82% (from an average of $21 million between 2010 to 2012 to $3.8 million after Michelle Rhee left the district). Then, D.C. was stuck holding the bag with no money to pay these bonuses. In essence, merit pay is really never pay.
None of these “bonuses” are pensionable, because they are not considered salary. “Awards” and “rewards” and “stipends” are also not salary, and therefore are also not pensionable.
If you do not give sufficient notice for retirement, you will lose your sick days. You will literally be punished for not putting in your retirement notice early enough.
Even the one area of the contract that seems to sound good, the “sick bank,” is not clearly delineated, and could therefore be administered in an unfair fashion. Who or what will run this “bank”? What criteria will be used to determine how sick days get used? None of this is specified at all.
In Part 2B, number 2D, union-sponsored courses are specifically NOT approved for credit equivalency for increment advancement. This delegitimizes the NTU as a professional organization.
In Part 2F, number 3, super-seniority for NTU officials is specifically eliminated. In other words, the NTU is giving up protections for their officials and employees who still work in a school. Again, another step toward the delegitimization of the Newark Teachers Union.
In Part 2F, number 3, the wording that previously guaranteed that we could not be forced to work more than 6 hours and 30 minutes is deleted. With no wording protecting us, we can now be required to work more than the 6 hours and 30 minutes that has been the case in the past.
Even our Spring Break is under attack. Part 2F, number 4, the wording that has previously guaranteed us our Spring Break is deleted. Basically, they can, potentially, eliminate our spring break.
For neither of these 2 provisions is there any indication that there will be fair compensation for either those longer days or loss of spring break. In other words, we are being forced to work longer hours without being fairly compensated for our labor-power.
If it’s not an “extended day,” added on to an already 6 hour and 30 minute teaching day, then it is a regular, full teaching day. NPS will attempt to argue that since it’s not an extended day program, employees should not be given any extra compensation.
There is NO provision in this contract for how to place the “Employees Without Placement” in regular positions again. In Chicago, the Chicago Teachers Union negotiated a clause in their recently signed contract that forces the Chicago Public Schools to place those teachers BEFORE HIRING new teachers. Teachers at Renew schools were similarly unprotected.
Renew Schools are actually encouraged to seek waivers from our contract. This essentially makes renew
school teachers “at-will employees,” a status that non-unionized workers have because they can be removed from
their position more easily if they do not demonstrate uncritical fidelity to their boss.
NPS will designate more Turnaround and “Renew Schools,” which will lead to more loss of placements and charter schools. Part 5, section C1 identifies the three rationales for “renewing” a school: 1) low enrollment, 2) low standardized test scores, and 3) “growth over time”--a vague standard that most likely refers to the yet-to- be-defined methods of connecting student test scores to teacher performance. Most problematically, there is open- ended language in this provision (“...including but not limited to...) that allows for an unending set of reasons for firing the entire staff of a school.
Not to be outdone, section C2 states explicitly that NPS will designate 10 Turnaround Schools per year (30 total over the course of the contract). This contract makes school closings, consolidations, and “turnarounds” easier, rather than trying to fight them.
CONCLUSION
While all teachers want to get back on our steps, we need to be clear that we are getting back on our steps at a price. Not only are we not getting our full retroactive pay, but we are also getting paid less while being forced to do more, EVEN IF WE STAY ON THE TRADITIONAL PAY SCALE!
Further, while the scale and increments for the Universal (read “merit pay”) Salary Scale are better in the earlier years, they are significantly lower over time. In other words, you will fall behind the pay of those on the Traditional Scale after the first few years.
Many of the old methods in the contract worked, or could have worked. But, they were never properly implemented. Department Chairs and Principals have always had the ability to withhold increments or fire teachers. Now, because these prerogatives have rarely been implemented effectively by past administrators, Christie, Cerf and Anderson are AUTOMATICALLY tying our increments and jobs to an unproven, subjective, and yet-to-finalized evaluation system.
Throughout, the state and district are expanding their control and power over decisions affecting working and learning, whereas the amount of control and power of the NTU and education workers over those areas is contracting. There are attempts throughout to delegitimize our union. This is union busting! In numerous places, in the place of concrete regulations or procedures, committees are set up to “monitor” grievances, procedures, and the functioning of the evaluation system. These committees could very easily become bogged down in bureaucratic functioning, as have the current grievance procedures.
NPS has rushed this contract because they wanted NTU ratification in time to make the deadline for Race to the Top, the very federal law that coerces states with billions of dollars in aid in return for closing schools, removing entire staffs from struggling schools, opening more charter schools, and increasing the use of standardized tests.
The rush to complete this is evinced by the many sections which leave open-ended the procedures for implementing or enforcing a statement made in the contract. In other words, many procedures are simply given over to the state to be decided upon later!
This is not a social justice contract. This is a cut-throat BUSINESS contract that will bring the forces of the market to public education. It turns education into a business which does nothing to directly address students needs. In fact, many of these provisions will ultimately hurt students.
NPS will designate more Turnaround and “Renew Schools,” which will lead to more loss of placements and charter schools. Part 5, section C1 identifies the three rationales for “renewing” a school: 1) low enrollment, 2) low standardized test scores, and 3) “growth over time”--a vague standard that most likely refers to the yet-to- be-defined methods of connecting student test scores to teacher performance. Most problematically, there is open- ended language in this provision (“...including but not limited to...) that allows for an unending set of reasons for firing the entire staff of a school.
Not to be outdone, section C2 states explicitly that NPS will designate 10 Turnaround Schools per year (30 total over the course of the contract). This contract makes school closings, consolidations, and “turnarounds” easier, rather than trying to fight them.
CONCLUSION
While all teachers want to get back on our steps, we need to be clear that we are getting back on our steps at a price. Not only are we not getting our full retroactive pay, but we are also getting paid less while being forced to do more, EVEN IF WE STAY ON THE TRADITIONAL PAY SCALE!
Further, while the scale and increments for the Universal (read “merit pay”) Salary Scale are better in the earlier years, they are significantly lower over time. In other words, you will fall behind the pay of those on the Traditional Scale after the first few years.
Many of the old methods in the contract worked, or could have worked. But, they were never properly implemented. Department Chairs and Principals have always had the ability to withhold increments or fire teachers. Now, because these prerogatives have rarely been implemented effectively by past administrators, Christie, Cerf and Anderson are AUTOMATICALLY tying our increments and jobs to an unproven, subjective, and yet-to-finalized evaluation system.
Throughout, the state and district are expanding their control and power over decisions affecting working and learning, whereas the amount of control and power of the NTU and education workers over those areas is contracting. There are attempts throughout to delegitimize our union. This is union busting! In numerous places, in the place of concrete regulations or procedures, committees are set up to “monitor” grievances, procedures, and the functioning of the evaluation system. These committees could very easily become bogged down in bureaucratic functioning, as have the current grievance procedures.
NPS has rushed this contract because they wanted NTU ratification in time to make the deadline for Race to the Top, the very federal law that coerces states with billions of dollars in aid in return for closing schools, removing entire staffs from struggling schools, opening more charter schools, and increasing the use of standardized tests.
The rush to complete this is evinced by the many sections which leave open-ended the procedures for implementing or enforcing a statement made in the contract. In other words, many procedures are simply given over to the state to be decided upon later!
This is not a social justice contract. This is a cut-throat BUSINESS contract that will bring the forces of the market to public education. It turns education into a business which does nothing to directly address students needs. In fact, many of these provisions will ultimately hurt students.
It will hurt students by creating a high turnover rate of teachers in schools. Between the two-tier wage
system (which has proven to cause high turnover), not putting a cap on how many hours a teacher can work, and
an evaluation system that makes sure that teachers are doing what the administration wants them to do, rather than
what is best for these students.
It is also important to note that there is not a single study that shows districts which have merit pay improved student achievement. Merit pay also assumes that teachers will work harder if they get more money. This can’t be further from the truth. An overwhelming amount of teachers, in Newark and elsewhere, work hard everyday to provide a high-quality education for our students. Many even go beyond our work hours to fight for commonsense, research-based solutions that have been shown to positively impact student development. It is not the will of the teachers that are the main obstacles to increasing student achievement, but the conditions within NPS and the city that keep students from reaching their fullest potential. None of these factors are addressed in this contract.
When the Baltimore Teachers Union was initially faced with a merit pay proposal in 2010, they turned it down. But after Randi Weingarten and the AFT went there to convince the Baltimore teachers that this was a good contract, a second vote passed merit pay and the contract provisions. Since then, the number of unsatisfactory evaluations (ineffective) shot up throughout the city, in some schools as high as 60%. Let’s not repeat these same errors. Vote no, organize our union, and demand a truly fair contract that works to serve the interests of all students and education workers in Newark.
It is also important to note that there is not a single study that shows districts which have merit pay improved student achievement. Merit pay also assumes that teachers will work harder if they get more money. This can’t be further from the truth. An overwhelming amount of teachers, in Newark and elsewhere, work hard everyday to provide a high-quality education for our students. Many even go beyond our work hours to fight for commonsense, research-based solutions that have been shown to positively impact student development. It is not the will of the teachers that are the main obstacles to increasing student achievement, but the conditions within NPS and the city that keep students from reaching their fullest potential. None of these factors are addressed in this contract.
When the Baltimore Teachers Union was initially faced with a merit pay proposal in 2010, they turned it down. But after Randi Weingarten and the AFT went there to convince the Baltimore teachers that this was a good contract, a second vote passed merit pay and the contract provisions. Since then, the number of unsatisfactory evaluations (ineffective) shot up throughout the city, in some schools as high as 60%. Let’s not repeat these same errors. Vote no, organize our union, and demand a truly fair contract that works to serve the interests of all students and education workers in Newark.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)