Tuesday, February 8, 2011

THE EDUCATOR'S PLN:

Unions Should Not Push Reform—They Should Resist It

Retrieved from: http://edupln.ning.com/profiles/blogs/newtla-voice-of-reform-or?xg_source=activity

Stryer’s argument that unions should be at the vanguard of reform suggests that he knows very little about education “reform” or that he is a true believer in the bogus reforms currently being pushed by Duncan, Gates, Broad, et al. It is against the interests of teachers and their unions to collaborate with administrators in the implementation of vouchers, charter schools, merit pay, value-added schemes, high stakes testing, or the destruction of tenure. Each of these “reforms” will cause an exodus of experienced good teachers and harm students, too. Yet many of our unions do collaborate with management to implement these reforms, contrary to Styer’s myopic impression of unions. UTLA’s parent unions, CFT and CTA, certainly collaborate with Sacramento in implementing ....

NCLB is a good example of this. While unions complain about NCLB, they accept it in practice, taking the stance that since NCLB is not a contractual issue they can do nothing about it. Yet we know it is bad for our students and a phenomenal waste of money. We even know that it is designed to cause more schools to fail, rat... Yet year after year we continue to comply, to accept it as inevitable or untouchable. This is nonsense. Teachers can and should refuse to participate. If we all refused, they would not be able to pick off individual teachers to punish. If we all refused, eventually it would wither away. This is exactly the kind of direct action that requires large-scale collective participation that unions should support. But alas, our unions are too concerned with appearing reasonable and maintaining their seat at the table with the political, educational and corporate bosses, with whom we have nothing in common.


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