When Is enough, ENOUGH?

Senate Bill 729 a.k.a. "right to teach" has been introduced into the Michigan Senate.

Senate Bill 729 targets unions with more than 50,000 members. This means the Michigan Education Association and MEA teachers are its intended target.

Truth Be Told

New MEA President Steve Cook

It Is About Time

"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent."
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Stand Up, Fight Back

Tom Hartmann On Point

Mismanagement, Corruption, Greed

The more things change the more they stay the same. Emergency Financial Managers in Detroit, Pontiac and now probably in Benton Harbor cost the state more than the troubled local government they replaced. See here.

It seems the "business" of running towns and schools is a bit more difficult than Snyder and his backers thought. Aside from the odious priorities they are imposing, they are not even doing it well.

The Money and Ideas Behind the Republican Governors

Fitting the Pieces Together

Frisking Fred the Custodian

Snyder has got to go.
If you can help go to the Recall tab.
Read this if you are not sure.

An Inconvenient Truth About Waiting for Superman

A new film is coming out to challenge the school reform movement and how it has been hijacked by the right wing and corporate interests. These are some previews and reactions from people who have seen it.

Sneak Peak
Reactions to the movie
Trailer #1

MEA Action Day Saturday May 21, 2011

Repeal EFM

http://www.facebook.com/rejectemergencymanagers

Cop vs Teacher

Teaching is more stressful than police work according to this article. I have a friend I have known since kindergarten. He has worked for both the state and federal prison systems as a guard and his father was a county sheriff for many years. He is all for teachers and says that he hopes for our success because the alternative is found in the crowd he works with. Those who have never taught have no idea about the stresses involved. If the administration is not supportive the stress increases exponentially.

All In One Breath

We can sustain a trillion dollar loss to the economy after 9-11, find two or three trillion dollars to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and allow a deregulated financial industry to create a housing bubble that plunges the world into recession and cost the United States in the neighborhood of twelve trillion dollars all the while corporate America has never seen profits so high, yet in these hard times for workers we cannot find one hundred billion dollars to keep firefighters, police, teachers and state employees on the job and serving everyone, we cannot find the wherewithal to help people stay in their homes, we cannot get Republicans to agree to the appointment of Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Protection Bureau...

There's more, but I am out of breath.

And Now A Few Words From Another President

"All that harms labor is treason to America. No line can be drawn between these two. If any man tells you he loves America, yet he hates labor, he is a liar. If a man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool."

"I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails under which laborers can strike when they want to...I like the system which lets a man quit when he wants to and wish it might prevail everywhere."

"The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people of all nations, tongues and kindreds."

From the speeches of Abraham Lincoln

Message From The President

Wednesday Governor Snyder said he wants to be a man of vision and turn Michigan’s economy around. In fact he wants to scare us by threatening to take away our certifications if we even mention doing something which he deems subversive and against his plan. In other words, this is my plan, if you don’t like it you can shut up.

His plan is heavy on consequences, short on cash and will be radically ineffective with its emphasis on expanding for-profit charter schools.

Threatening teachers with their careers so they will shut up and not oppose what they believe is wrong is neither collaborative nor in the American tradition. Taking how you feel about all of this into consideration, ask yourself this: How is threatening the careers of 155,000 people doing anything to move our state forward or help our students?

Remember 154,999 other members are with you!

R2

Value Added Equation

This is a formula for calculating the value of your teaching. A top teacher in New York rated a 7%. Read it and weep, or get mad.


UPDATE...

Un-American Activities

Un-American is a pejorative term of US political discourse which is applied to people or institutions in the United States seen as deviating from US norms.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Is there anything more important than trying to help all students succeed? Enough fall through the cracks as it is, why make the cracks bigger? Must be some other agenda.

Protesting Teachers and Students Arrested in Detroit

Robert Bobb, Emergency Financial Manager in Detroit, orders successful school closed and turned into a charter. When teachers and students sit-in they are arrested. See here.

The War on Civility

Students support teachers, but face punishment if they continue.

Paul Krugman has an interesting article, Let's Not Be Civil, about the national political debate. It applies equally here at the state level. We are being told that changes are being made for the good of the state and we should not be fussy. The Emergency Financial Managers will only be used in the rare case. Yet, 400 are being given two days training. They are being trained so they will not be used. 400? Ready just in case, but their use will be the exception? Hmmm. Imagine all 400 being "needed" and what our state will look like. Two days training? Sounds like Teach For America, 5 weeks training and presto chango a newly minted certified teacher.

I'm sure Governor Snyder has our best interests at heart. We all just need to relax, let him tuck us in and get a good night's sleep. All will be well. He will watch over us and we will awake energized and refreshed in the dawn of a new day. We just need to be civil and let him be...uncivil.

VAM or Value Added Mumbo-Jumbo

In particular, these models indicate large “effects” of fifth grade teachers on fourth grade test score gains.

You might have to read that again.

Education Reform From Finland

The United States is alone in the way it is trying to reform education. Finland is often looked to as successful. This is what they did in Finland.

Summary below...
1 The children can't learn if they don't play.
2 Balanced curriculum
3 Professionalization
4 Very limited testing
5 Arts and crafts
6 More learning by doing
7 Rigorous standards for teacher certification
8 Higher teacher pay
9 Attractive working conditions
10 No outsourcing of school management to for-profit or non-profit organizations
11 Do not implement merit pay
12 Do not rank teachers and schools according to test results
13 All principals, superintendents, and policymakers from inside the education world
14 Classes in art, music, cooking, carpentry, metalwork, and textiles
15 Small class sizes

We Have A Union, They Did Not

From the Detroit News...

The National Guard fixed bayonets and halted any delivery of food to the occupiers. But the governor never ordered the troops into action...

President Roosevelt asked GM to meet with the union once more. The tension subsided. General Motors signed an agreement with the UAW, giving the union bargaining rights in 17 GM plants shut by sit-downs.

Employees at the 17 plants involved got 5 percent pay hikes and were allowed to speak in the lunchroom. The company agreed not to discriminate against union members and agreed to begin negotiations on other matters.

A synopsis of the issues included in the union demands:

1. Recognition of UAW as sole bargaining agency.
2. Abolition of piece work in favor of straight hourly rates.
3. A 30 hour week and 6 hour day, with time and a half for overtime.
4. A "minimum rate of pay commensurate with an American standard of living."
5. Seniority rights based on length of service.
6. Reinstatement of all employes "unjustly discharged."
7. Mutual agreement on "speed of production."

The dramatic military style battles depict the times and the desperation of those involved. The outcome much later in time proved that both the union and the company could coexist and indeed prosper beyond anyone's expectations. Those who made the cars could finally afford to buy them, pouring profits back to the stockholders. Spreading the wealth caused more to be created. The pension and wages won by the workers raised the standard of living for the whole country.

A lesson lost on our current governor and legislature. Just like in Wisconsin, this is not about the budget or education reform, this is about union-busting.

There is Power in the Union

Rose Ann DeMoro is the executive director of National Nurses United. Union members across the country are getting her message...

1. Who caused the economic crisis? Banks, Wall Street speculators, mortgage lenders, global corporations shifting jobs from the U.S. overseas.
2. Who is profiting in the recession? Corporate profits, 3rd quarter of 2010, were $1.6 trillion, 28 percent higher than the year before, the biggest one-year jump in history. Meanwhile, average wages and total wages have fallen for all incomes, except the wealthiest Americans whose income grew five-fold.
3. Who is not paying their fair share? In U.S. states facing a budget shortfall, revenues from corporate taxes have declined $2.5 billion in the last year. In Wisconsin, two-thirds of corporations pay no taxes, and the share of state revenue from corporate taxes has fallen by half since 1981. Nationally, according to a General Accountability Study out today, 72 percent of all foreign corporations and about 57 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005.
4. Are public employees overpaid? State workers typically earn 11 percent less, local public workers 12 percent less than private employees with comparable education and experience. Nationally, cutting the federal payroll in half would reduce spending by less than 3 percent.
5. Would pay and benefit concessions by public employees stop the demands?The right has made it clear it wants A- cuts in public pay, pensions, and health benefits, followed by B- restricting collective bargaining for public sector workers, followed by C- prohibiting public sector unions.
6. Will the right be troubled if cuts in working standards make it harder to recruit teachers and other public servants? No. Take public teachers, many of whom have accepted wage freezes and other cuts in recent years. Many in the right have a fairly open goal of privatizing education, and destabilizing public schools serves this purpose. The right also salutes the shredding of government workforce, part of its overall goal to gut all government service and make it harder to crack down on corporate abuses or implement other public protections and services.
7. Will the right stop at curbing public workers rights? Employers across the U.S. are demanding major concessions from private sector workers, and breaking unions. Rightwing governors and state legislators are seeking new laws to restrict union rights for all private and public employees.
8. Does everyone have a stake in this fight? Yes. It’s an old axiom that the rise in living standards for the middle class in the 1950s was the direct result of a record rate of unionization in America. It is of course unions that won the eight-hour day, weekends off, and many other standards all Americans take for granted that are now often threatened with the three-decade-long attack on unions spurred by that rightwing icon Ronald Reagan. The corollary is that increased wages and guaranteed pensions put money into the economy, with a ripple effect that creates jobs and spurs the economy for all.