Weingarten Takes a Dive for Capitalism

Last week, Valarie Strauss (Answer Sheet) interviewed American Federation of Teachers (AFT) boss Randi Weingarten about why she went to Philadelphia and got arrested. Weingarten correctly noted that the people of Philadelphia, who had asked for a one-year moratorium on school closures, have been repeatedly ignored by the mayor. She also correctly pointed out that the push to close the schools is largely the initiative of the mayor, the city’s School Reform Commission (SRC) and an outside consulting firm, Boston Consulting Group (BCG). “When the powers that be ignore you, and dismiss you,” she told Strauss, “then you have no other choice than to resort to civil disobedience to confront an immoral act.”

The problem is that there is nothing immoral about it. While the majority of schools to be closed are in low income communities of color, the motivation to close them is not wicked, sinful, nor is the goal to harm poor black kids. Rather, the proponents are capitalists exploiting an essentially legal method to crush the Philadelphia teachers union and transfer public K-12 tax dollars to private charters and online schools. Calling it an immoral act merely obfuscates the financial motives (and legal methods) behind it, undermining teachers’, parents’ and students’ ability to successfully resist it.

Another problem is that a single arrest at one high profile public meeting is essentially just a publicity stunt. It is not an organized or effective strategy for reversing a large-scale public giveaway to private business.

One justification for the closures is the school district’s perennial budget problems. Yet the district voted to spend $1.4 million to hire BCG, according to Workers World. BCG Partner Sanjeev Midha is a trustee for KIPP Philadelphia (an online charter school) and BCG members serve on numerous other KIPP boards, as well. Not surprisingly, BCG promotes online education and stands to profit handsomely from the closures by offering online courses to students displaced by the closures.

Other BCG alumni include Mitt Romney, Benjamin Netanyahu, hedge fund manager John Paulson, and GE CEO Jeff Immelt, as well as hedge fund manager and Democrats for Education Reform[er] Whitney Tilson—all cheerleaders for charter schools and teachers’ union-busting. SRC members include Feather Houstoun, a former president of the William Penn Foundation (which donated additional money to hire BCG) and Pedro Ramos, who currently sits on the board of the United Way (which also coughed up funds to hire BCG).

BCG was also hired by the Transition Planning Committee (TPC) of Memphis to oversee their mass transfer of students out of the public school system and into private charter schools and has been involved in the post-Katrina plundering of the New Orleans school system, as well as pro-charter and anti-teachers’ union activities in Cleveland, Seattle, Chicago and Dallas. According to Diane Ravitch, their goal in Memphis is to increase charter enrollment from 4% to 19% of all students by 2016, which will effectively transfer $212 million from the public school budget to private charter schools.

Union-Sanctioned Union-Busting

If the school closures go through, the district will lose dozens union jobs. According, to National Educators Association president Dennis Van Roekel, the NEA, alone, has lost 150,000 unionized teaching jobs over the last three years. The AFT has lost thousands, more. If Weingarten wants to save her own job (and her more than $600,000 per year income) she needs to maintain membership levels, not let them shrink further. However, to do this requires mobilizing Philadelphia’s teachers, who are affiliated with the AFT, to do far more than protest at school board meetings. They need to engage in concerted and ongoing job actions and civil disobedience, something neither Weingarten nor any other major union leader wants to do.

The paradox is that while union bosses depend on their members’ dues to pay their salaries, they depend on the good graces of the ruling elite to exist in the first place, graces that have been granted to them in exchange for keeping the system running smoothly. The quid pro quo is that if they keep their members quiescent and on the job, the unions are tolerated and minor concessions are sometimes granted them. The bosses will even tolerate the occasional angry rant, arrest or otherwise uncivilized act by union leaders if it helps them to keep the rabble in line. Consequently, union leaders have been relying more and more on legal and political action than on strikes and other job actions, a strategy that has, at best, merely kept the decline in union membership from occurring any faster than it has. An occasional high profile arrest, while doing nothing to improve teachers’ job security, working conditions or compensation, does help boost union bosses’ street credibility by making them look like tough, self-sacrificing fighters, rather than parasites.

 
In order to keep members in line (and maintain the good graces of the ruling elite), union leaders need to convince the rank and file that alternatives to strikes and other job actions will be effective. In the case of the Wisconsin state house occupation, the unions argued that they could best reverse their state’s union-busting legislation at the ballot box and convinced everyone to go home.

In the case of Philadelphia’s school closings, Weingarten has similarly distorted the issue, ignoring the impact on job security and collective bargaining power and focusing on political corruption. She described events in Philadelphia as a strong “statement” that the mayor, governor and SRC are not on the side of the people. In other words, the school closures are an attack on democracy (an immoral act?)—a politically popular concept that is likely to appeal to community members’ sense of patriotism, but not one that is likely to save teachers’ jobs or stop the closures. Indeed, if the problem is merely the product of bad politics, as she has implied, then the solution is supposedly to fight back in the political arena, thus squelching any movement for workplace actions.

Why Weingarten Got Arrested

This week, Valarie Strauss (Answer Sheet) interviewed American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten about why she went to Philadelphia and got arrested. Weingarten correctly noted that the people of Philadelphia, who had asked for a one-year moratorium on school closures, have been repeatedly ignored by the mayor. She also correctly pointed out that the push to close the schools is largely the initiative of the mayor, governor, the city’s School Reform Commission (SRC) and an outside consulting firm, Boston Consulting Group (BCG). “When the powers that be ignore you, and dismiss you,” she told Strauss, “then you have no other choice than to resort to civil disobedience to confront an immoral act.”

What Weingarten did not say was why they want to close dozens of schools (i.e., open up space for private charter schools to set up shop) or whether she was planning on engaging in ongoing civil disobedience to achieve her goals. The fact is that a single arrest at one high profile public meeting is nothing more than a publicity stunt. It is not an organized or effective strategy for reversing a large-scale public giveaway to private business.

One justification for the closures is the school district’s perennial budget problems. Yet the district voted to spend $1.4 million to hire BCG, according to Workers World. BCG Partner Sanjeev Midha is a trustee for KIPP Philadelphia (an online charter school). Not surprisingly, BCG promotes online education. Other BCG alumni include Mitt Romney, Benjamin Netanyahu, hedge fund manager John Paulson, and GE CEO Jeff Immelt. SRC members include Feather Houstoun, a former president of the William Penn Foundation (which donated additional money to hire BCG) and Pedro Ramos, who currently sits on the board of the United Way (which also coughed up funds to hire BCG).

If the school closures go through, the district will lose dozens union jobs. According, to National Educators Association president Dennis Van Roekel, the NEA, alone, has lost 150,000 unionized teaching jobs over the last three years. The AFT has no doubt lost thousands, as well. If Weingarten wants to save her own job (and her more than $600,000 per year income) she needs to maintain membership levels, not let them shrink further. However, to do this requires mobilizing Philadelphia’s teachers, who are affiliated with the AFT, to do far more than protest at school board meetings. They need to engage in concerted and ongoing job actions and civil disobedience, something neither Weingarten nor any other major union leader wants to do.

The paradox is that while union bosses depend on their members’ dues to pay their salaries, they depend on the good graces of the ruling elite to exist at all, graces that have been granted to them in exchange for keeping the system running smoothly. The quid pro quo is that if they keep their members quiescent and on the job, the unions are tolerated and minor concessions are sometimes granted them. The bosses will even tolerate the occasional angry rant, arrest or otherwise uncivilized act by union leaders if it helps them to keep the rabble in line. Consequently, union leaders have been relying more and more on legal and political action than on strikes and other job actions, a strategy that has, at best, merely kept the decline in union membership from occurring any faster than it has.

 
Weingarten described her action in Philadelphia as a strong “statement” that the mayor, governor and SRC are not on the side of the people. In other words, the school closures are an attack on democracy, which is a politically popular concept, but not one that is likely to save teachers’ jobs. If the problem is merely the product of bad politics, as she has implied, then the solution is supposedly to fight back in the political arena, thus squelching any movement for workplace actions. 

Ultimately, Weingarten's got arrested because she needed to look tough to her constituents. It was a relatively painless and cheap way to win points among parents and teachers, but not an effective strategy for ending the school closures or saving union jobs.

NCLB is Killing Science

Valerie Strauss just posted “Why NAEP science scores were so low,” which points out what should be obvious: we’ve gutted content and good teaching practices in order to raise NCLB test scores.

“What is surprising about the newly released science scores in the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as the nation’s report card, is that anybody is surprised that they were, on average, so low.

Over the past decade, the accountability system of No Child Left Behind has pushed schools to focus on reading and math because those were the subjects on which students were tested and the results used to grade schools and teachers. That results in less time for other subjects, including science.

No Child Left Behind did require that science be annually assessed in various grades starting in 2007-08, but the entire testing regime came under criticism when it became obvious that states were lowering standards to ensure higher test scores.”

I teach science in California, where 52% of students scored below basic. Much of what Strauss mentions in her article I experience firsthand. Science budgets have been slashed, making it extremely difficult to do hands-on, inquiry-based lab activities with students. My entire science department has a budget of only $1,000 to share between seven teachers, and this must cover office and lab supplies. There is no way to buy equipment or even repair it for this amount.

However, it is not just that schools are spending less time on science. Many have entirely abandoned teaching science in grades K-5. With pressure to raise NCLB test scores, science is often tossed out the window, along with arts, foreign languages and physical education. Kids who do not have any science in the lower grades enter secondary schools with an enormous disadvantage. They may start middle school without any formal experience with microscopes, the metric system or the ability to distinguishing between variables and controls. As a result, NCLB actually creates an achievement gap in science.

Another salient point that Strauss does not mention is the growing attacks on reason and scientific thought by both the religious right and corporations. This tendency reached new heights under the second Bush administration, and continues today with the ascendency of the Tea Party movement. It includes young Earth creationists and intelligent design advocates, who push doubt about Natural Selection and evolution, as well as corporate doubt mongers, like Big Tobacco, Big Petroleum and Coal, which try to convince us that smoking is harmless and that climate change is not a serious problem. While purely anecdotal, it seems like I’m getting increasing numbers of students who believe that scientific knowledge in general (not just evolution) is simply a matter of opinion, or one of many possible explanations, and all are equally valid. Under such conditions, it should not be surprising that students would do poorly on science exams. This tendency also influences teachers and is one reason why so few teach evolution well (if at all).

Few High School Biology Teachers Accurately Teach Evolution

I hate to bag on my own colleagues, but the evidence is overwhelming: most high school biology teachers either do not teach evolution or undermine their own teaching by giving nods and winks to creationist ideas. (See Most high school biology teachers don’t endorse evolution, by Valerie Strauss.)

 

Tom Schmal

The result is that few U.S. high school students are really being taught evolution in an accurate or comprehensible way. Not only is this unfair to students who graduate believing they have mastered biology, when many have not, but it is a violation of teachers’ responsibility to accurately teach the content standards, including the scientific process (how scientists obtain data, analyze it and determine the validity of their hypotheses).  

Here are some of the details from Strauss’ article:

• Only 28% of biology teachers consistently teach the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) recommended evolution curriculum,
• Around 13% of biology teachers explicitly include creationism or intelligent design for at least part of their curriculum
• The remaining 60% either fail to explain the scientific process sufficiently, undermine the authority of evolution experts, or legitimize creationist arguments
• Many teach evolutionary biology as if it is only applicable to molecular processes, but not to populations or the process of speciation.
• Many tell students that they don’t have to “believe in evolution, but they have to know it for tests, which, for many students, implies that it is just one of many explanations that may or may not be true.
• Others tell students to decide for themselves what to believe, even though scientists are as certain of the validity of evolution as they are about any other scientific fact. We would not tell students to decide for themselves if the Holocaust or slavery occurred (although I wonder, based on the evolution data, if there are many biology teachers who are also climate deniers).

This is Not Simply a Problem of Religious Teachers Refusing to Do Their Jobs

Just like a Christian pharmacist should be required to sell all legal drugs, including birth control, a Christian biology teacher should be required to teach the content standards, including evolution. However, the problem is not just an issue of religious activists deliberately refusing to do their jobs. For some teachers, the last two examples above (e.g., “you don’t have to believe; just know it for tests” and “you decide what to believe”) may result more from a desire to respect their students’ cultural and religious beliefs and not insult or alienate them, than from their own religious biases or activism. I regularly have students tell me that they don’t have to learn evolution because it’s against their religion. My response is, “Well, actually you do. It is an important part of biology and it is in the content standards. Furthermore, it is impossible to understand other parts of biology without a foundation in evolution. Evolution helps scientists to develop new medicines, understand certain diseases and even make predictions about climate change.”

My response is not insulting or demeaning, nor does it undermine the science by implying that evolution is just one of many explanations that one can choose to believe, or not. On the contrary, it emphasizes that evolution is a lynchpin of biology, not just a stand-alone branch of the discipline. It is important to emphasize that evolution can be taught and misconceptions about it can be corrected, without engaging in the kind of hostile and insulting discourse expressed by people like Richard Dawkins. This sort of behavior probably does more to shut down students’ curiosity and openness to new ideas than to dispel their faith-based misconceptions.

In order to correct misconceptions is important to clarify the scientific process, particularly the meaning of the word “theory,” which many people misuse to mean “belief” or “opinion,” rather than its actual scientific meaning: “fact, based on a collection of related hypotheses that have been repeatedly verified.” Also, before I even get into the nuts and bolts of evolution, I emphasize the distinction between the scientific process, which is evidence-based, and faith-based thinking, where one believes without (or despite) evidence. I even go so far as to tell students that in certain circumstances faith-based thought is sometimes the most effective way to think (for example, having faith in oneself can help one remain motivated and focused during sports or academic challenges), but that in science, evidence is required, lots of it, and it must be verifiable by independent researchers using controlled experiments. Faith that a scientific hypothesis is right (without evidence) can lead to deadly consequences.

Another problem is that many science teachers have little or no experience doing “bench” science, having earned a degree in biology and then a teaching credential without having worked in a lab. As a result, they sometimes do not fully understand the scientific process themselves. For example, many cannot explain why a randomized, double blind, controlled study is more compelling than anecdotal evidence. Even doctors sometimes have this problem. Consider all the times you have heard doctors give advice based on their anecdotal experience with other patients.

Many Americans (including some biology teachers) do not truly understand evolution, making it difficult to believe and even harder to teach. This is due in part to the considerable misunderstandings and oversimplifications that are perpetuated in our culture (e.g., “we came from monkeys,” which implies that monkeys gave birth to humans or had sex with humans; in contrast to the idea that we share a common ancestor).

Even without the misconceptions, evolution is not an easy theory to understand. For example, the idea that an organ as complex as the human eye could be the result of random mutations and natural selection seems really far-fetched, until one realizes that the rudiments of vision, proteins that sense and respond to light, have existed for millions of years and have been utilized in sensory organs of animals that existed long before the evolution of the modern eye. It is also difficult to really get a handle on the slow rate of random mutations and how they can accrue in organisms without some background in biochemistry. For example, I don’t think that most biology teachers understand or teach that human DNA polymerase, the enzyme that builds new DNA molecules during replication, has a natural mutation rate of about 10^-8.

Of course none of this is to say that there aren’t creationist biology teachers who deliberately try to undermine the teaching of evolution. A recent Gallop poll shows that 40% of Americans believe in young Earth creationism (i.e., the Earth and all its life were created by God 10,000 years ago), while another 38% believe in a form of evolution with God playing a role in it. No doubt some of these folks have made it into biology classrooms as teachers.

Michelle Rhee, Child Abuser, Wants More Abuse in School

Check out one of the latest by Valerie Strauss, “What Rhee’s Comments About Her Children Say About Her.” Apparently, Michelle Rhee, not to be out done by Amy Chua, publicly humiliated her own children on public radio and then called for the same in our schools. Rhee went on to extol the virtues of centralized state-run Korean schools, while espousing discredited sociobiological explanations for development and learning. Strauss does a great job of showing Rhee’s hypocrisy and idiocy, essentially ripping her a new hole through which to spew more of her silly ed deform.