Gates and Villaraigosa: Screw Family Leave! Screw the Feds! Fire 25% of All Teachers!

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

The Gates Foundation has come out with a new report saying that principals in Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) schools should have more authority in hiring teachers—No surprise there. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa strongly backs the report—No surprise there, either. This increased authority would allow principals to permanently nix displaced tenured teachers who have long standing in the district, even if they have been displaced due to budget cuts, declining enrollment, illness or parental leave, thus negating the protections of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the Los Angeles Times reported today.

FMLA provides employees with unpaid, job-protected leave of up to 12 weeks for having children or caring for sick family members. The law guarantees that employees have their same jobs when they return from leave, or at least a comparable job with the same employer AND at the same salary. Furthermore, the law protects employees from retaliation or punishment for taking leave, including the preservation of any perks, benefits or raises they were due.

In LAUSD, the problem of displaced teachers is exacerbated by its mania for giving away its campuses to private charter school companies. Because the charter schools have the right to hire nonunion, low-paid teachers, members of the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) who are displaced by charter conversions are added to the “must hire” list for openings within the district. The high rate of charter conversions in LAUSD adds hundreds more teachers to the “must hire” list than would normally be there simply due to family leave, illness, downsizing and budget cuts.

Curiously, the Gates Foundation report gave LAUSD high marks for firing teachers for “poor performance,” suggesting that it has improved its quality control (apparently they are off the hook for hiring crappy teachers in the first place). The Times said that only 7 tenured teachers were fired in 2008, compared with 94 this year. Of course, if this is based on student test scores, then it is no indication whatsoever that LAUSD is improving its schools or its quality control. On the contrary, it is a sign that LAUSD is punishing teachers who may actually be quite good for having the bad luck of teaching in a low income or low performing school, where test scores are routinely low and improvement on tests routinely slower than at middle class schools.

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Appallingly, the report suggested that districts should “routinely dismiss at least the bottom-performing 25% of teachers eligible for tenure in order to build a high-quality teaching corps.” This is absurd on many levels, not the least of which is that there is already a teacher shortage and, with the terrible pay and increasingly challenging working conditions (like declining job security), who would want to go into the profession? Furthermore, no business can afford to fire ¼ of their employees each year (unless they are entirely old-timers who are at the top of the pay scale, which is probably what Gates and Villaraigosa really want).

It would be a terrible blow to students who develop important relationships with teachers and depend on stability at school. The ACLU lawsuit that protects novice teachers from layoffs at low income schools was intended to reduce the large scale layoffs that often happen at these schools. Across the board cuts of 25% of all teachers in a district would have a similar effect, not just on low income students, but on all students.

Most importantly, there is no accurate way to measure teacher performance. Student test scores are useless, as they only tell us how a student is doing on the test, not why, and they are based far more on the student’s socioeconomic status than anything that happens in the classroom. The current system of administrators evaluating teacher effectiveness based on the California standards for the teaching profession is limited by the fact that administrators rarely have (or put in) the time to sufficiently observe and evaluate their employees. Furthermore, it is based on benchmarks rather than raw scores or percentages. Those who meet the benchmarks should be considered proficient. There is no bottom 25%. Those who don’t meet the benchmarks get the axe (or more professional development). This number could end up being 25% of teachers, but if it did, it would indicate an utter failure of the hiring process and the incompetency of the administrators in charge of hiring. It would also be a grave indictment of the teacher credentialing process, as well as the teacher training programs and professional development system.

Of course, the Gates report is not at all about improving teacher quality or improving educational outcomes for children. If 25% of teachers were truly so bad that they should be replaced, then the most expedient solution would be to replace the administrators (or at least retrain them to better distinguish between good and bad teaching candidates before they hire them in the first place.

The real objective of this report is to give bosses more power and employees less, by taking away job security and federally protected workplace protections, and by creating more uncertainty and fear among workers. It indirectly weakens the union by weakening the job security of veteran teachers who are more likely to be active and vocal participants in their union and by scaring teachers into keeping their mouths shut and accepting whatever crazy or illegal directives their administrators impose just so they don’t become labeled as one of the bottom 25%.

Deasy’s Delusional Agenda

On his first day on the job, Los Angeles Unified School District’s new superintendent, John Deasy, promised to raise graduation rates from 55% to 70%, double the percentage of secondary school students scoring “proficient” in math, and triple the percentage of students who pass the prerequisite courses necessary for attending a state university, the Los Angeles Times reported this weekend. The superintendent made these outlandish claims in the wake of a record budget deficit, a shortened school year due to furloughs, mass teacher layoffs and generalized disruption and malfunction of LAUSD. Police in the audience were ready with a breathalyzer and contemplated arresting the superintendent for public intoxication.

Deasy, however, was not satisfied simply setting absurd goals, going on to say that he should be held accountable if he fails to meet these goals. It unclear, however, who, if anyone, would hold the superintendent accountable. Board member Yolie Flores thought that Deasy’s goals were reasonable, while Mayor Villaraigosa also seemed to believe the superintendent.

L.A. Unions Cave In to Mayor's Threats

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has struck a deal with a coalition representing about 19,000 workers that will force them to pay 4% of their income toward their health and retirement benefits in exchange for a three-year moratorium on furloughs, as well as an end to existing furloughs, according to the L.A. Times. The mayor expects all city employees to pay more for their benefits, including police and firefighters. He hopes that his threats, will force other city unions to follow. Those who do not cooperate will have additional furloughs and layoffs imposed on them.

Union leaders told members they had no choice and acted as if they were making concessions to armed terrorists. Others asserted that their members were willing to “share in the sacrifice” without actually surveying them. In reality, the unions have several choices, the most obvious being to say “no” and to back it up with job actions. Workers might very well support a job action, too. In reality, they are not being asked to “share in the sacrifice,” but to take it on entirely. A 4% pay cut to someone making $50,000 per year means a lot more than it does to someone making $1 million or more per year, yet the wealthy are not being asked to make any sacrifices at all. Considering that there are close to 25 billionaires in Los Angeles, it ought to be quite easy to turn its deficit into a whopping surplus if the mayor had the balls to levy a greed tax, or simply increase the city’s business taxes.

LAUSD Offers Up 13 Campuses to Charter School Vultures

The Los Angeles Board of Education plans to open up bidding for seven new high schools, plus six other campuses, (i.e., give them away to private charter companies) even though this would reduce revenues to LAUSD and exacerbate its already staggering budget crisis.

According to Howard Blume, of the LA Times, the board is under considerable pressure from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and others to award more contracts to independently run charter school companies.

Who are these mysterious “others?”

In all likelihood, they include billionaire Ed Deformers like Eli Broad, whose foundation gave away $10 million, in 2007, to Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools, and $23.3 million, in 2008, to KIPP, Aspire and Pacific Charter School Development. Or perhaps they include Phillip Anschutz, who Robert Skeels says “makes the Koch brothers look moderate.” Anschutz has donated $100,000 to the mayor’s slush fund to get pro-charter school candidates elected to the school board. Oh, did I mention, that Anschutz was a major funder of Waiting for Superman?

“Others” probably also includes many of the backers of the 2009 “Public School Choice” initiative, which would have privatized one-third of LAUSD (approximately 250 schools), such as Yolie Flores-Aguilar. It would not surprise me if Ben Austin, of Parent Revolution and Green Dot Charters, was not also a backer of this new giveaway, as he would stand to make a few bucks. Likewise, we should not leave out new Superintendent, John Deasy, former high ranking member of the Gates Foundation, another huge funder and proponent of school privatization.

Ultimately though, the question is, will anyone do anything to stop it and, so far, it looks like the answer is no. If UTLA and the teachers and parents don’t step up and protest vigorously, there will soon be 13 new private charters in LAUSD, schools that are unlikely to have unionized teachers and that may very well lock the parents out of all oversight and decision-making.  And LAUSD will be one step closer to the Public School Choice dystopia of “charter schools for all.”

Stand Up for Seniority Rights

For many school districts, March is pink slip season. The first to go are generally the temporary and probationary teachers. For many school districts, they will also need to go after tenured teachers in order to balance their budgets. The following is a repost of an article by Ron Whitehorne, from Social Justice Unionism. It’s a good summary of why we need to fight to protect seniority rights and the real agenda of those who attack seniority.

With layoffs coming, it's time to stand up for seniority

by Ron Whitehorne on Feb 14 2011 Posted in Social justice unionism

With many school districts facing budget shortfalls, teachers, including those in Philadelphia, will likely face layoffs.

The budget crunch coincides with a growing attack on teacher tenure and seniority as the governing principle for teacher assignment and layoffs. Even Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles, and long time teacher union organizer and staffer, has joined the chorus calling for “peformance” as the “driver” in decisions around these issues. And former Washington, D.C. Superintendent Michelle Rhee has made ending tenure and eliminating seniority central agenda points of her “Students First” campaign.

Much of the current debate over tenure ignores the many changes that unions have embraced to address some of the criticism of tenure and seniority based practices.   Many unions, including the PFT, have agreed to changes in teacher assignment and transfers that give schools more flexibility and control over staffing. Unions, again including PFT, have also agreed to changes in teacher evaluation and made it easier to remove ineffective teachers. Thus, at its worst, the critics of tenure are attacking a straw man that bares little resemblance to current practice.

But when it comes to layoffs, we can expect the unions to fight for the principle of last hired, first fired, and rightfully so. Without this principle, teachers have no job security. Older teachers at the top of the pay scale in a climate of budget austerity will be targeted for layoffs. New teachers at the bottom of the scale will be more likely to be retained. Teachers who are outspoken can expect to go, while those who are cronies of the principal will get to stay. Women, who have a nasty habit of getting pregnant, will be more likely to go than men. These are some of the historic reasons the trade union movement has always championed the seniority principle. It is no different in education. 

Of course the District and the opponents of seniority will tell us that they are “for children” and want to keep the best teachers in the classroom. What they really want to do is render the unions impotent, pit teachers against each other, and save money at the expense of their workers.

Children will not benefit from a teaching staff that would be in all likelihood less experienced. Here in Philadelphia the highest proportion of inexperienced teachers is in the lowest performing schools, mostly in poor African American and Latino neighborhoods. While obviously not every experienced teacher is an effective teacher, research does show that experience is an important predictor of teaching success.   We should be about retaining experienced teachers. The attacks on tenure and seniority will have just the opposite effect.

As teacher unionists, we should be about fighting the layoffs which will increase class size and undo some of the positive gains in student achievement over the last decade. But if they come, and it seems certain they will, we should defend the seniority principle and demand that no new hires, including Teach for America and Teaching Fellows, are made until every displaced teacher is recalled.

The Bipartisan (and Union) Assault on Tenure

Last year, President Obama called for teachers to be rewarded for their “effectiveness,” a call he repeated last week in his State of the Union address. He propped up these calls with Race to the Top (RTTT), which offered states large bribes (which he euphemistically called grants) for facilitating privatization schemes and for undermining tenure and seniority by tying teacher evaluations to student achievement.

Republican Governors in Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Nevada and New Jersey have called for the elimination or dismantling of tenure, with anti-tenure bills in the works in those states and in several others. Michael Bloomberg has been pressuring Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo to dismantle tenure in New York. Democratic LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wants to make it easier to fire ineffective teachers. Michelle Rhee, also a democrat, has made tenure abolition one of the cornerstones of her anti-education StudentsFirst movement, having advised the governors of Florida, Nevada and New Jersey. With debilitating budget deficits putting teachers unions on the defensive, many believe that such measures stand a good chance of passing.

Both national teachers unions, the National Educators Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) have declared support for some sort of tenure “reform.” The AFT, for example, endorsed a law in Colorado last year that made it much easier for administrators to remove tenured teachers and that tied teacher evaluations to student achievement. And many locals have also voluntarily given up tenure protections and/or seniority rights. Keith Johnson, embattled boss of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, recently negotiated a contract that gave up seniority rights. The Chicago Teachers Union, Illinois Education Association, and Illinois Federation of Teachers endorsed “Accountability for All” which links tenure to classroom performance, measured in part by student achievement.

It’s important to remember that tenure doesn’t guarantee a teacher’s job; it guarantees due process so they aren’t fired arbitrarily or vindictively, or because of their race, sex, political views or cronyism. Ironically, New Jersey was the first state to pass a tenure law back in 1909. Also, the entire debate about tenure reform is predicated on the false premises that there are a lot of bad teachers and that poor student achievement is caused by all these bad teachers. Tenure reform is a red herring.

They Really Want to Dismantle Tenure Because It Will Allow Administrators:

•  to fire teachers they don’t like, who speak out against unpopular policies, who advocate for teachers or students, or who are active union organizers
•  to fire veteran teachers who earn much more than novice teachers and cost more to districts
•  to save money by stacking their staffs with younger teachers who earn less
• to more easily push through unpopular, untested or ineffective reforms  because younger, less experienced teachers are more likely to buy into the reforms and more willing to put in the extra hours to implement them
• to weaken unions by getting rid of union activists and supporters and replacing them with younger teachers who often have less class and union consciousness

More Dirt on Sleazy Deasy

For more dirt on sleazy Deasy,  check out JOHN DEASY IS A DISAPPOINTING CHOICE FOR LAUSD SUPERINTENDENT

from 4LAKids