CTA Overwhelmingly Supports Easing Teacher Dismissal Rules

Teachers Unions: Protecting the Bosses at Teachers’ Expense

A common misperception is that unions exist to protect the interests of workers. If this were true, if unions really fought vigorously for the interests of workers, they would not be tolerated at all. The fact that they are legal, and that a large body of laws has been written to regulate their activities, is evidence of their acceptance by the employing class. Indeed, they serve the interests of the employing class by acting as intermediaries that help maintain the peace between employers and workers, keeping them on the job and working efficiently.

When looked at from this perspective, it should come as no surprise that the California Teachers Association (CTA is the state’s largest teachers union) is giving its unconditional support to new legislation that would make it easier to fire teachers. Assembly Bill 375, written by Democrat Joan Buchanan, has already received unanimous approval by the Assembly’s Education Committee and overwhelming support by both parties. It has also been praised by the CTA:

“We support AB 375 and AB 1338 because the bills reflect CTA’s goals to keep students safe, safeguard the integrity of the profession, and protect the rights of educators. CTA supports these bills because they provide immediate protections for students and streamline and shorten the dismissal process to ensure charges are handled fairly and in a timely manner. We commend Assembly Education Committee Chair Joan Buchanan for her hard work in developing the legislation and Senator Alex Padilla for signing on as co-author. We look forward to working with lawmakers as these bills make their way through the legislative process.”

—California Teachers Association website

The bills stem from the mass hysteria that there are rampant perverts in the classroom and the unions are somehow complicit in protecting them—a panic fed by the arrest of Mark Berndt (LAUSD) last year from for engaging in lewd acts with students, and accusations by University of California, Berkeley swim coach, Kristen Cunnane (among many others), that former Moraga science teacher Dan Witters and physical education instructor Julie Corea had molested them. (Witters committed suicide and Corea is serving an 8-year prison sentence for rape and sexual battery of students).

As tragic (and frightening for parents) as these cases are, there is no evidence that molestation in the schools is any worse now than in the past or that the unions bear any culpability. However, there is ample evidence in both these cases (and in many other school molestation cases) that the perpetrators were either protected by their school districts or that credible accusations and evidence against them were ignored, covered up or lost by their districts. Legislation that streamlines the firing of teachers does nothing to mitigate these problems or make children any safer, nor does it eliminate districts’ incentive to protect their reputations at the expense of children’s safety.

Weakening Due Process for Teachers Contributes to Declining Union Membership

In addition to doing nothing to protect children, these bills significantly weaken teachers’ due process rights, thus increasing the chances that innocent and excellent teachers will be dismissed. The bills allow the use of evidence older than four years if a judge deems it “relevant”—a nebulous term that leaves open the possibility that a teacher will be punished a second time for small infractions or oversights (e.g., using district websites to check personal email) that have no effect on their skill as teachers. The new rules would also weaken the discovery process and pretrial evidence-gathering proceedings, further eroding teachers’ due process protections and chances of beating a spurious accusation.

Furthermore, the legislation is not limited to violations of the law or accusations of abuse and molestation. The new rules also streamline and speed up the dismissal process for teachers deemed “unsatisfactory.” As districts increasingly adopt evaluation systems that assess teachers based on their students’ test scores (using methods that are notoriously unreliable), districts could soon have skyrocketing numbers of “unsatisfactory” teachers to dismiss, thus making a quicker dismissal process all the more urgent.

The wording of AB 375 explicitly states that the number of teacher dismissal proceedings will increase under the new rules: “these revisions would increase the number of employees subject to immediate placement on compulsory leave of absence. . .”  This could lead to declining union membership if an equal number of unionized teachers are not rehired to replace them. With the Parent Trigger law and No Child Left Behind rules requiring failing schools to adopt “reforms” that include charter school conversion, it is entirely feasible that schools with large numbers of dismissed teachers could be converted into nonunionized charter schools.

Making Public Education More Profitable to Capital

Buchanan supported her bill by saying that districts don’t issue more dismissal notices because they don’t want to spend the money. Thus, one goal of the new legislation is to reduce education expenditures, something that allows the state to reduce overall education spending and maintain record low tax rates for businesses and the wealthy.

However, implicit in Buchanan’s statement is the assumption that there are hordes of rotten apples hidden in classrooms throughout the state—bad apples who, more often than not, are only guilty of being outspoken advocates for children, critics of idiotic “reforms,” union organizers, or veterans at the higher end of the pay scale. An unspoken (and likely the most urgent) goal of the legislation is to make it easier to get rid of the teachers who cost their districts the most in salaries, time or trouble.

Some other troubling aspects of the legislation include the sweeping, overly broad and moralistic definitions of misconduct that could result in a teacher’s firing. Under the law, teachers can still be dismissed for “immoral” conduct—another nebulous term that could include polyamory, drunkenness, or other behaviors that occur outside of school or that do not affect performance in the classroom.

While the new legislation would eliminate prohibitions on membership in the Communist Party (which apparently is still an offense for which teachers in California can be fired), it will maintain the antiquated and anti-union prohibition against committing or advocating “criminal syndicalism.” Curiously, while California’s 1919 Criminal Syndicalism Act was repealed in 1991, its prohibitions are maintained for teachers under AB 375. Under this rule, teachers would continue to be prohibited from being members of the Industrial Workers of the World.

The New Network for Public Education

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

 A new anti-reform education reform movement is taking shape: The Network for Public Education. 

Led by Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody, Leonie Haimson and other lefty ed reformers, the NPE is calling for an end to privatization schemes; increased funding; assessments that are used to inform instruction, not to penalize schools, students and teachers, among other reforms; community control; teacher autonomy; and a host of other reforms..

As far as reformist movements go, the NPE’s initial platform seems like a reasonable start. However, when examined more closely, it’s hard to tell what the NPE is actually demanding or how it intends to achieve its goals. For example, what do they mean by “democratic control?” One parent, one vote? One teacher, one vote? School Site Councils, (which are essentially advisory and subservient to school boards)? The abolition of school boards (representative democracy) to be replaced by some sort of direct democracy? Workers councils led by employee delegates who are recallable at any time by their colleagues?

Currently, most public schools already have some sort of democratic control (e.g., school site councils, PTAs and elected school boards), but these are heavily influenced by moneyed interests and politics and provide the actual stakeholders (e.g., parents, teachers, students) only nominal influence over decisions that affect students’ learning conditions and teachers’ working conditions.

Similarly, what do they mean by providing resources “that students need” or “equitable funding?” Bringing the poorest schools on par with the wealthiest schools is a pretty mild demand, considering that even the best-funded schools do not have sufficient resources. Creating equity from peanuts just means that all schools receive a paltry share of the peanuts.

Perhaps it would help to set some benchmark goals, like one nurse for every 250 students; class sizes that never exceed 25:1 in the secondary grades and never exceed 15:1 in the elementary grades; free preschool for all, and generous, ample funding, rather than “equity” from the pittances we currently receive. Likewise, how about mandatory wages and benefits that are not only adequate for supporting school employees in the communities where they work, but that are actually generous and allow a degree of luxury and security?

The NPE argues that there should be more emphasis on early childhood education because the achievement gap begins before kindergarten and early childhood education can help mitigate this. However, preschool and Head Start, alone, cannot erase the pre-K achievement gap, because this gap is a direct product of poverty. Will the NPE also fight for programs and initiatives that close the wealth gap and reduce poverty, since this is the number one cause of low student achievement and will continue to hinder children’s academic success, regardless what happens in the classroom?
 
NPE calls for the evaluation of teachers by professionals, not by unreliable test scores, yet they say nothing about who these professional should be. As long as evaluators continue to be site administrators there will be an inherent bias that can lead to good teachers being disciplined or fired and incompetent or corrupt teachers being promoted. These professionals should be highly trained, objective outsiders (ideally teachers, themselves), who evaluate teachers blindly. Furthermore, the evaluations should be used to support professional growth, not to punish teachers for petty infractions or to fire them for being union organizers, student advocates or higher paid veterans.

Lastly, while NPE opposes profiteering off of public education, they have not yet indicated whether they expect this to wither away through voting and protesting, or if they recognize it as an inevitable product of education’s role in capitalism. All the other problems they criticize stem from this relationship. Even without the transfer of tax dollars from public school budgets to private charter schools, tech companies and test and textbook publishers, there will continue to be an incentive by the state to spend as a little as possible on education and keep its employees under tight control (e.g., accountability schemes, limitations on unions and strikes).

Ultimately, even with a more coherent and specific plan, NPE, like all other liberal/reformist initiatives, will at best only be able to reduce the problems they identify with public education, since all of these problems have capitalism, itself, at their root. For example, when teaching is no longer tied to wages, the problem of administrators firing teachers (or giving them bad evaluations) for being union organizers, student advocates or higher paid veterans would cease to exist. There would no longer be a need for high stakes tests, since there would no longer be a motivation for sorting students by ability in order to track them into wage work versus management. Schools could be funded rationally, based on their actual needs, rather than being held hostage to a system designed to make the wealthy even wealthier by reducing social spending to the bare bones. Perhaps most importantly, in addition to practical skills (e.g., critical thinking, reading, writing, math) teachers could start teach what students themselves want to learn, fostering creativity, curiosity and an intrinsic love of learning.

Union Busting by Liberal NY Governor

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

New York Governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, proposed legislation last week that would impose a new teacher evaluation system for New York City if the teachers’ union, UFT, refuses to accept the conditions of Mayor Bloomberg’s evaluation plan.

Last month, Cuomo punished New York school children by withholding $250 million from their city’s school budget because the mayor and the UFT failed to come to an agreement by his arbitrary deadline. When this failed to achieve his desired goal, Cuomo said that he would write into this year’s state budget the authority for the state to take over the evaluation system, according to the New York Times. If Bloomberg and the UFT fail to come to an agreement by May 31, the state’s education commissioner, John B. King Jr. will impose a plan by June 1 and the city would have to implement it by September 1, 2013. The sticking point between UFT and Mayor Bloomberg was the mayor’s refusal to let the deal expire at the end of 2015, even though most other state school districts had only 1-year deals (see Labor Notes).

The UFT leadership has already accepted many of the most onerous conditions of the “reform,” including the use of student test data to evaluate teachers, despite the fact that this data is an unreliable and inconsistent way to assess teacher quality (see here and here). However, this irresponsible and stupid concession was made during negotiations between the union and the teachers’ employer during collective bargaining. By imposing changes to the evaluation system, the state, which is not their employer, effectively preempts and strips away teachers’ collective bargaining rights.

Yet the union itself is also to blame for rolling over as quickly as it did on the use of student test data. Teachers unions throughout the state should have resisted evaluation reform from the get go, not only in words, but through strikes and other job actions. By the time Cuomo started threatening the UFT most of the other NY teachers unions had already accepted similar reforms. Illinois has gone through a similar process and its teachers unions have also all buckled to the authority of the law.

The argument in support of accepting state evaluation reform laws—it is the law, we are law abiding teachers (and our union can’t afford the jail time, injunctions and fines for resisting it)—is completely irrational and absurd. If workers always obeyed unjust laws, we would not have weekends, child labor and worker safety laws, or even the legal right to form unions and go on strike. The idea that teachers must obey laws is rooted in teachers’ inaccurate self-identification as selfless nurturers and do-gooders, rather than as workers, with the same needs as any other worker (e.g., material security, protections from arbitrary and vindictive treatment, workplace safety). Lastly, the legal costs associated with resisting unjust laws may be far less than the vast sums unions spend to buy fickle, untrustworthy politicians.

Blockhead NY Teachers Demand Harsh Treatment

Meanwhile, a group of blockhead (i.e., naïve workers who trust that their bosses have only their best interests in mind) NYC teachers have taken to the airwaves to demand the state impose a teacher-evaluation system, the New York Post reports. This particular group of blockheads are members of Educators 4 Excellence (E4E), which has created a 30-second ad calling on Albany to impose a new system on the recalcitrant union, the New York Post reports.

E4E, which has branches throughout the U.S., is an astroturf (i.e., fake grassroots) organization with corporate ties (they receive funding from the Gates and Carnegie Foundations) and members who are not even teachers. Consider that the New York ads are expected to cost more than $250,000—not something that the average teacher is capable of financing.

E4E wants the new evaluations to include multiple observations, “student growth data” and student surveys. Their first demand is reasonable. Observations of teachers in the classroom are the most accurate and direct way to assess teacher competence. However, few administrators have the time to do this often enough and many lack sufficient training to do it well. Without substantially increasing education funding, this is unlikely to change. Furthermore, administrators have an inherent bias, as they can manipulate the evaluations to punish or rid themselves of teachers who are outspoken critics of their policies, union activists or advocates for students and families. To have truly effective observation-based teacher evaluations, states need to train and fund objective, outside evaluators to do the job.

Student surveys can provide useful data to help teachers improve their practice, but they are terribly biased and fraught as a method for evaluating teachers. At the lower grade levels, children lack the maturity, experience and language skills to articulate whether their teacher was any good. They are certainly capable of describing whether their teacher was nice or mean, but they are not necessarily capable of determining whether they learned what they were supposed to learn. At the higher grade levels, students can use surveys vindictively to punish teachers who were strict or who refused to give them undeserved grade boosts, or to reward teachers who made it easy for them.

Corruption at CTC Placed Kids at Risk, Denied Teachers Credentials

A recent lawsuit against the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC), filed in November by former government lawyer and CTC whistleblower Kathleen Carroll, alleges that CTC lawyers and administrators engaged in numerous illegal acts that prevented qualified teachers from obtaining or maintaining their credentials. The charges against the attorneys include tampering with case outcomes, acting outside their legal jurisdictions, nepotism, cronyism, and conflict of interest.

According to Steve Zeltzer, writing for Daily Censored, the suit’s allegations imply that the CTC may have been used as a tool for preventing qualified teachers from receiving their credentials so they would be unable to get hired at traditional district schools and be forced to seek jobs at alternative schools with less stringent credentialing requirements, like charter schools, which are often nonunionized.  Consequently, Zeltzer argues, thousands of teachers may have been illegally or inappropriately denied their credentials, thus creating a small army of well-trained teachers willing to accept low-paying jobs with poor working conditions at private charter schools.

The CTC is responsible for licensing California teachers, administrators and other education personnel; investigating charges of misconduct against credentialed teachers and applicants; and approving teacher training programs. The agency has been involved in the development of curriculum, tests for teachers, and teacher evaluation policies, often by outsourcing to private testing and publishing companies like NCS Pearson (which is currently being sued by the state of New York (among others) for illegal kickbacks to officials involved in deciding whether or not to use their tests. Pearson is also a big player in the design of Common Core Standards (CCS) which will require a whole new series of high stakes exams from which Pearson hopes to profit.

Zeltzer reports that several CTC Commissioners have had personal or financial ties with private charter schools and would thus benefit from having a large pool of teachers desperate for jobs, but unable to acquire them at traditional public schools. Ting Sun, for example, was chair of the CTC at the same time she worked at the Natomas charter school—which she founded with her husband—and was being paid by the California Charter Association. She is also on the board of the corrupt Gulen charter school chain Magnolia Public Schools (for more on Gulen, see here, here and here). According to Zeltzer, Sun failed to report these conflicts of interests, as required by CTC commissioners, since they vote on contracts paid for with public funds.

Carroll had been an attorney at the CTC for four years until she was fired for whistleblowing in the middle of the audit of the commission that she helped initiate. One of her allegations was that the CTC had a long backlog of misconduct reports, many of which were specious. The CTC admitted there was a backlog of more than 12,000 reports. The actual number was never verified. Regardless, this is a serious safety concern for parents and students (as some potential abusers may have remained in the classroom) and a serious due process violation for accused teachers (many of whom may be innocent, especially since many of the reports were trumped up).

Carroll told Ting Sun that the Director of Professional Practices at the CTC, Mary Armstrong, had lied about the backlog. She told CTC Director Dale Janssen that the misconduct reports were not being processed quickly enough, including those involving sexual misconduct, thus placing students at risk. According to the suit, Janssen responded by hiring a private investigator to discredit Carroll, including the release of her private medical records.

There may also be evidence of tampering by the office of California Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, which initiated the audit at Carroll’s request. Steinberg’s office made changes in the audit request and failed to investigate some of Carroll’s allegations. Steinberg’s office, like many in the CTC, had its own conflicts of interest. His education advisor, Susanna Cooper, is married to Eric Douglas, who owns Leading Resources Inc., which represents the Bureau of State Audits, which was doing the CTC audit. Cooper is also on the board of West Ed, which receives funding from Pearson and numerous other public and private education profiteers, and has a vested interest in many of the CTC’s projects, including testing and credentialing, thus further drawing into question the objectivity of the audit.

State Auditor Elaine Howle said the commission was “one of the worst run” organizations she had ever investigated. Janssen and Armstrong resigned not long after the auditor’s report came back (June 2011), but the backlog of unprocessed complaints continues and questions remain about the agency’s integrity. Sun remained as chair until her term ended in November. Janssen and Armstrong were replaced by Gov. Brown appointees, Nancy Ramirez, from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Michael Cooney.