Brown’s Budget Shuffle: Something From Nothing is Still Nothing

"Equal treatment for children in unequal situations is not justice"—Gov. Jerry Brown, California (quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle)

Gov. Brown is correct—funding poor schools the same as affluent schools is not only unjust, it is pedagogically irrational.  Poor children have greater educational needs, while their parents have far less to donate to school fundraisers. Funding them equally only guarantees unequal outcomes. Yet his solution—reallocating revenues from wealthier schools to poorer school—is neither just nor rational.

None of California’s schools currently receives adequate funding. The state has slashed over $20 billion from K-12 education over the past five years and none of this will be restored under the state’s new “millionaire’s” tax. Furthermore, basic aid school districts (the so-called affluent districts that receive only the “basic” aid from the state because they have higher than average property tax bases) have already lost 90% of the funding they once received from the state. Therefore, taking away scarce resources from these schools only serves to make them more like the state’s low income schools.

While it is true that affluent schools have fewer needs than lower income schools, they were not receiving sufficient funding from the state or local property taxes even before the economic meltdown and draconian budget cuts that followed. Consequently, they have relied on fundraising to make up some of the difference, something they can do with greater ease and success than lower income schools, since the parents tend to be wealthier and have more disposable income. Yet even this hasn’t prevented basic aid schools from losing counselors, librarians and nurses; increasing class sizes to 35 students per teacher (or higher); imposing out-of-pocket fees on teachers for health insurance; and freezing or cutting wages. Furthermore, even within basic aid districts there are often low income schools with student demographics similar to poor, inner city schools. Reducing their funding because they happen to be in an “affluent” basic aid district would end up harming the lower income students Brown’s plan is intended to help.

Of course it is important to provide low income schools with additional funding, over and above what the affluent ones receive, because of their greater needs. However, this must be accomplished through increased tax revenues, not by ripping off other schools. Yet increased school funding, alone, will not solve the myriad ways in which poverty impacts educational outcomes. To really close the achievement gap, poor kids in poor schools need relief from their poverty so they aren’t coming to school hungry and suffering from stress and untreated medical conditions. Their parents need relief from poverty before they even have children, since poverty increases the chances children will be born premature, with low birth weight, and suffer from stress, malnutrition and environmental toxins, each of which contribute to cognitive impairment and learning disabilities.

Short of this, low income schools need large infusions of cash—far more than they would receive under the Brown plan. They need enough revenue to lower class sizes and hire extra teachers and reading specialists. Low income schools need full-time nurses or on-site clinics to care for uninsured children and reduce the amount of class time lost to treatable and preventable illnesses. Low income schools need staff and resources to provide adult education and English language support for parents. They need extra funding for after school programs so that children aren’t watching television or getting into trouble or hurt when classes end. They need mental health specialists to help students suffering from stress, anxiety and other common mental health problems that often go undiagnosed or treated in poor children.

If the schools truly are public, then parents should not have to pay more out of pocket for fundraisers and benefits, in addition to what they contribute through their taxes. If they were adequately funded, there would be much less need for this.

This is another major problem with school finance. Affluent families are affluent, in part, because they can shelter much of their income from taxation (e.g., deductions and write-offs) and many do not want to pay a penny for the education of other people’s children. By maintaining tax rates at their current levels (which are far lower than they were during the Reagan era and earlier), the affluent can continue amass great quantities of wealth, while getting an excellent free education for their children at the exclusive public schools in their wealthy enclaves. They can then supplement their schools’ mediocre budgets with tax deductible donations that further lower their tax liabilities, while increasing the education quality gap to the benefit of their own children. Thus, they (and their legislators) are unlikely to accept Brown’s proposal (or the tax increases necessary to put a serious dent in the problem).

Chicago Teachers Vote to Continue Strike

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) House of Delegates voted Sunday to reject the latest contract proposal and continue their strike, in a challenge to both the leadership of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and the leadership of their own union, who had negotiated the tentative agreement.

The leadership of CTU is seen by many as a progressive, fighting leadership, willing to go toe to toe with their powerful parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), led by Randi Weingarten, as well as powerful Democratic Party leaders like Rahm Emanuel and even President Obama. Indeed, the CTU leadership challenged all of these individuals with their initial rejection of the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers.

Yet their most recent compromise tentative contract agreement with CPS sold their members out by permitting student test data to account for as much as 30% of teachers’ evaluations, the WSWS reported today. Any use of student test data is unacceptable, even as little as 1%, because student test data is an unreliable and inconsistent proxy for teacher ability. It can lead to false positives and false negatives, and result in good teachers getting bad reviews and possibly even laid off as a result.

The tentative agreement also gives principals considerable discretion over hiring, eviscerating recall rights for recently laid off teachers, while also slashing layoff benefits in half. (The details of agreement were released Sunday evening).

Bargaining teams and unions often justify compromises with bosses or legislators that harm former or future employees, arguing that their role is to protect the interests of their existing dues-paying members. Not only does this strategy lack compassion, it is also stupid since it undermines the union’s own power. Thousands more Chicago teachers will be laid off in the next five years under the city’s plan to shut down up to 120 schools, resulting in fewer union members. Of those who get rehired by one of the 60 new privately-run charter schools slated to open in that time, most, if not all, will lose union representation.

In an indication of just how far the CTU leadership is willing to go to end the strike and make peace with the bosses, CTU President Karen Lewis plans to force through another vote on the same tentative agreement this Tuesday, without engaging in any further negotiations with CPS. This implies that she intends to ignore the delegates’ concerns and criticisms of the tentative agreement and pressure them to vote against their members’ own interests. She is counting on mounting criticism by the press and the threat of fines and jail to coerce delegates into accepting a bad deal.

Mayor Emanuel responded to the rejection vote by threatening court action against the teachers. According to the WSWS, he said he would “not stand by while the children of Chicago are played as pawns in an internal dispute within a union,” implying that both CPS and the union leadership are the only reasonable parties in the dispute, while the House of Delegates and general membership are crazy for rejecting the tentative agreement. His threat to obtain a court injunction against the teachers suggests that he has lost faith in CTU President Karen Lewis’ ability to keep her members in line.

Emanuel has called the strike illegal (teachers in Illinois can strike on wage issues, but not evaluations) and a threat to the safety of children. This latter argument is particularly cynical considering the district has done little to repair dilapidated facilities and broken air conditioning or to reduce class sizes to a safe and healthy level. He has overseen and encouraged school closures that have only exacerbated staffing and class size problems, thus jeopardizing the safety of children.

His argument that the strike is illegal is only partly true. They are striking over wages, and they happen to be unwilling to make any compromises on that issue as long as the district plays hardball on other working conditions and safety matters.

The issue of the strike’s legality has much broader significance. The ruling class can take away workers’ rights any time they think they can get away with it, as they did in Wisconsin and continue to attempt throughout the nation. Workers’ power lies entirely in their ability to withhold their labor, not in making alliances and compromises with politicians, particularly considering that the politicians are members of the ruling class and have far more in common with other wealthy members of the ruling elite than they do with workers.

Not long ago, unions had no legal standing and any strike could be declared illegal. Workers were often imprisoned, beaten or killed for participating in strikes, yet they continued to use this tactic and win improvements in working conditions. Workers today have the choice to disobey unjust laws and resist oppressive demands by their bosses or continue to see their wages and working conditions deteriorate.

Unions today, however, have a great distaste for strikes and the risks they entail. There have been very few large teacher strikes in the last few decades. The CTU strike is unique in this respect. Still, the CTU leadership has an interest in ending the strike quickly. The leaders do not want to spend time in jail or receive fines or lose their status and influence. They do not want to challenge unjust laws or corporate giveaways or the district’s “right” to shut down schools and give them away to private charter school operators, even if these undermine the union’s power in the long term. Furthermore, they do not want to burn their bridges with their allies in the Democratic Party or their parent organization, the AFT, even if that means accepting less power as a result of privatization and layoffs.

The Chicago Strike and the Rebirth (or Death) of Unionism

The current Chicago teachers strike is the first major teachers strike in years. Indeed, there have been few major strikes in any industry over the past decade, with a general trend of declining job actions and union membership over the past thirty years and a corresponding downward spiral in wages and living conditions. In Michigan, for example, there were 454 teacher strikes between 1967 and 1980 (an average of 35 per year), resulting in substantial wages gains, but only 18 per year in the 1980s, according to William Boyd, David Plank, and Gary Sykes. The National Educators Association (NEA) has lost over 100,000 members since 2010.

In contrast, during the post-World War II era, strikes were common in the U.S. In the period from 1945-1946, 400,000 miners and 750,000 steel workers went on strike in the largest strike wave in U.S. history. At one point during this period there were 1.6 million workers simultaneously on strike. By the end of the year, more than 4.5 million workers had engaged in strike actions. (Sources: Daily Kos, New York Times, Marxists.org, Counter Punch). The Chicago strike is the largest strike in the past year.

The “death” of unionism, or its declining membership and influence, is generally blamed on union busting politicians (e.g., Scott Walker, Wisconsin, or Reagan’s mass firing of the PATCO air traffic controllers), or outsourcing and downsizing by the bosses, (which reduce the number of union jobs and thus the number of unionized workers). Indeed, the Taft-Hartley Act (1947), which made the General Strike illegal, was a serious blow to workers’ power (there hasn’t been an effective General Strike in the U.S. since then). However, another major cause is the unions themselves, which have, for the most part, relinquished their most powerful weapon—withholding labor—in exchange for increasing reliance on political action (e.g., lobbying, initiatives, phone-banking for candidates) and behind-the-scenes deals with the bosses.

It is important to recognize that job actions are a form of direct action in which the workers have direct control over the action, how long to continue, how aggressively to pursue it, and what kinds of compromises (if any) to accept. Political action, in contrast, requires that they give up their power and control to second and third parties. The union bosses, not the rank and file, generally determine which campaigns and candidates to support, even though the campaigns are funded with the dues paid by the rank and file. Once a candidate has been chosen, it is not a sure thing that that candidate will win and, even if he does, there is no guarantee he will do anything the union wants. In fact, because the politicians’ interests are more closely aligned with those of the capitalist class, it is unlikely the politicians will do much at all in support of workers other than a few modest reforms that allow them to maintain social and economic hegemony and continue reaping huge profits.

One particularly refreshing aspect of the CTU strike is that teachers are not just fighting for increased pay (which they certainly deserve). They are also fighting against deplorable working conditions (dilapidated and unsafe facilities, large class sizes, inadequate health and social services for their students) and an abusive evaluation system which would cause teachers to be laid off en masse because their students’ test scores didn’t rise sufficiently. And they are engaging in this fight even though the president of their parent union, Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers, has cut deals with politicians to allow similar evaluation “reforms” in other school districts.

Likewise, the fight against using student standardized tests to evaluate teachers is a direct challenge to the Obama Administration, which has been pushing for similar “reforms” across the nation, and to the leadership of both the NEA and AFT, which both gave early support to Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign, despite his support of high stakes exams, privatization and charter schools.

Strikes are, of course, a risky endeavor. If you lose, you could find yourself worse off than before or even jobless. They are difficult to organize and maintain (e.g., strike funds generally cannot sustain workers for long; scabs might be brought in to do the work and keep the system functioning, thus undermining the effects of walking off the job). Public sentiment can be manipulated to oppose the workers and support the bosses’ goals.

This is particularly challenging for those in the “helping” fields, like teachers and nurses, where walking off the job can easily be spun to seem like a selfish and greedy act that harms their constituents (i.e., students and patients). Indeed, many in the “helping” fields, particularly teachers, see themselves first as advocates and benefactors for their students and only secondarily, if at all, as workers. This tendency makes it very hard to get teachers to walk off the job and it leads many to accept declining pay, benefits and working conditions so long as the bosses claim these concessions are necessary for the wellbeing of the students.

Yet teachers are workers. The overwhelming majority rely on their paychecks to put food on the table for their families. They do not go to work solely because they want to help children, though this may be why they teach rather than something else. Teachers, like all workers, necessarily have an adversarial relationship with their bosses, even when those bosses seem nice or appear to have similar interests (e.g., the wellbeing of children).

This is because they do not truly have the same interests. For one, the administrators have the power to fire teachers and to impose demands on them. Teachers do not have this power and must make considerable sacrifices and compromises to appease their administrators or risk losing their jobs and the ability to feed their families. Teachers are, like all other workers, dependent on their salaries for their own survival and thus are wage slaves.

Our Working Conditions Are Your Children’s Learning Conditions

• While teachers’ interests often do not coincide with those of their administrators and school boards, they often do coincide with those of their students. Here are just a few:
• Decent pay helps attract and retain the best quality teachers, which is certainly in the best interests of students. While everyone wants to get the best deal for their money, including the taxpayers, one needs to consider the quality they are getting. Better quality almost always costs more. If teachers are not paid a decent wage they will look for work elsewhere.
• Evaluation “reforms” that emphasize using student test data are terrible for kids since the scores have almost no meaningful or consistent correlation with teacher quality. Teachers who work with low income, special education and ELD students tend to get lower average student test scores. According to Karen Lewis, president of the CTU, the Chicago plan for making student test scores worth 25% of teachers’ evaluations could result in 6,000 teachers losing their jobs over the next two years. By anyone’s calculations, this would be a disaster for kids. How can CPS find 6,000 highly qualified teachers in two years?
• Smaller class sizes make it easier for teachers to give individualized one on one attention to students. Smaller classes means fewer papers to grade, which means teachers can put more time into each paper, providing more detailed and useful comments. Smaller classes are easier to manage and thus are safer for students. This is particularly important in physical education, science and some of the industrial arts course.

There's a lot at stake for teachers and other workers with the current strike in Chicago. A victory could provide the confidence and momentum for other unions to start resisting the standardized test mania, demanding wage increases, and fighting for better working conditions through job actions. A loss for the CTU would likely lead to even fewer teacher strikes in the future and a further evisceration of the teachers unions.

Teacher Shortage or Glut?

It is often said that we are suffering a teacher shortage and that terrible pay and working conditions are only worsening it. However, due to several years of mass layoffs, combined with increasing class sizes, most districts have plenty of teachers to fill current needs.

The problem is no longer a shortage of teachers, but a shortage of teaching services. There are sufficient teachers to cover the desired number of classes, but there are far fewer course offerings and desired classes offered to students. They have far more classmates in the remaining classes, which results in less one on one attention from their teachers. Because of the increased workloads, teachers are resorting more and more to multiple choice exams, instead of open ended tests that requiring more reading and team; less inquiry-based labs and more pen and paper or computer simulations.

Teacher Strike Vote in San Francisco

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Members of the United Educators of San Francisco (UESF), the union representing San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) teachers, are set to vote this week on whether to authorize a strike, the San Francisco Chronicle reported today. The district is demanding a $30 million cut to teachers’ salaries and benefits over the next two years. UESF wants a 2% pay increase and says the district is sitting on an $80 million surplus.

Less than a week ago, the district declared an impasse in their contract negotiations. The 6,000-member UESF will take the first of two required strike votes this Thursday. Even though there are only three weeks left in the school year, UESF President Dennis Kelly said there is still time to strike. Indeed, a strike at the end of the year could be particularly effective, as it could delay or prevent the issuance of grades and report cards.

Like other districts throughout the state, SFUSD is crying “Uncertainty,” and claiming that any surplus is needed as insurance.

It is true that K-12 education faces $5 billion in cuts if voters reject the governor’s tax initiative in November. It is also true that even if the initiative does pass, SFUSD will still receive the same anemic funding it did during this school year. What is not clear is the veracity of the district’s claim that the failure of the tax initiative would result in $80 million in losses to SFUSD.

Squeezing Blood From Turnips

Even if the district’s claims are accurate, there is no justification for making further cuts since, by their own math, they would need only $80 million to cover the losses caused by the possible failure of the tax initiative (and only $30 million to cover teachers’ salaries, a sum they most definitely have in reserve). Nevertheless, their current contract proposal demands that teachers accept four additional furlough days for each of the next two years, even if the tax initiative does pass. (This would add $7 million to the district’s surplus), while Superintendent Garcia wants an additional five furlough days each year if the tax increase fails in November.

The austerity does not end there. Sup. Garcia wants to eliminate sabbaticals and the extra prep periods currently offered to Advanced Placement teachers, which would save the district another $3.5 million. The district has called for a reduction in teacher training, to save another $3.1 million. And it wants to cut pay and health benefits for full-time substitutes, which would save another $1 million. The district also wants to increase K-3 class sizes from 22 to 25.

Strike Early, Strike Often

San Francisco teachers (indeed most teachers) have made so many concessions over the past few years that there is virtually nothing left to give. Their union has argued that the concessions would save jobs or keep conditions close to the status quo. In reality, it has resulted in a downward spiral in pay, benefits and working conditions for teachers and a concomitant decline in learning conditions for students, with increasing class sizes and declining services, course offerings, librarians, nurses and counselors.

There have been very few significant teacher strikes in the past thirty years. As a result, school districts have grown more aggressive in their demands and tactics. They have become accustomed to the unions making compromises, giving concessions and accepting austerity in exchange for jobs and labor “peace.”

During this same time period, the locals’ parent organizations (AFT and NEA) have increasingly focused their resources and energy on political campaigns, often at the expense of organizing and the promotion of strikes.

The time has come for unions to start taking a harder line. It is time to start thinking of strikes as something potentially positive (since they are the most effective way of achieving improvements in working and living conditions), rather than something to be feared and avoided. While strikes may be risky and bad for students in the short term, they also have the ability to slow down and even reverse trends that are bad for students in the long term.

Strikes also have the ability to beget more strikes by inspiring workers in other districts or even in other industries. During the past few decades of increasing union-management collaboration and declining labor militancy, bosses had no reason to take seriously the threat of a strike. In contrast, when bosses start to see an increase in strikes, they understand that workers are becoming more aggressive and militant and they start to take their demands more seriously. If enough teachers unions go on strike at the same time, they can start to pressure the state, as well as their districts. In fact, a state-wide General Strike of public sector workers may be the most effective tactic for achieving a sufficient increase in taxes necessary to adequately fund schools, health, safety and other public services.

Helping SPED Students by Increasing Their Class Sizes?

Full Inclusion or Full Immersion? (Image from Flickr, by Gui Seiz)

One of the latest trends in Special Education is “Full Inclusion.” The idea is that all students benefit from being in the “least restrictive” environment. Special day classes (SDC)—where many special needs students were traditionally exposed to much of their curriculum—segregated them from the general student population and relied on special education (SPED) teachers who were not necessarily credentialed in the subjects which they were teaching.

Many schools are now placing these same students in regular education classes (e.g., science, English, social studies, math). In California, this means they are sometimes in classes with 35-38 students. In the past, most SDC students would have been in small classes of 7-14 students, with a SPED teacher and another 1-3 paraprofessional aides to assist them. Thus, SDC students had very low student to adult ratios ranging from 2:1 to 15:1.

While I don’t wish to argue the merits of full inclusion in this piece, I think it should be obvious to most observers that this is a bastardization of the spirit and goals of the program. Throwing 3-5 SDC students into a class of this size, especially without any aids to assist them, is like throwing a beginning swimmer out of a boat without a life jacket. These are students who generally require additional support. They are often reading far below grade level and may have a range of disabilities that challenge their abilities to access the content.

With budget cuts plaguing school districts throughout the nation, schools are looking for any sort of trick that saves them money. Increasing student to teacher ratios is one way of doing this. More students per teacher means fewer teachers need to be on the payroll. Mainstreaming SPED students without providing paraprofessionals or other aides to assist them also saves districts money.

Teacher Morale Lowest in 20 Years

In a recent survey of the nation’s teachers, more than half expressed reservations about their jobs, according to the New York Times, the highest level of dissatisfaction since 1989. Nearly one-third said they were likely to leave teaching within the next five years (three years ago only 25% expected to leave teaching within five years). Many expressed concerns about job security, increased class sizes, cuts to programs and services.

The annual MetLife Survey of the American Teacher revealed other anxieties and concerns pervasive among teachers. About 40% were pessimistic about achieving further gains in student test scores and many expressed anxiety about the increasing use of these scores to evaluate them. Over 75% of teachers said their schools had suffered budget cuts last year, with 50% experiencing layoffs at their schools. Nearly one-third said their schools lost arts, music or foreign language programs.

Considering the increasingly vitriolic attacks on teachers unions, the equally absurd accusations that teachers are to blame for every malady afflicting public education, real and imagined, along with the declining pay and working conditions, it is surprising that only 33% are planning on leaving the profession in the next five years. However, this is likely an artifact of the terrible state of the economy. There just aren’t a lot of jobs out there, making quitting a very risky prospect. Furthermore, teachers who have tenure and seniority have considerably more job security than they would if they found a new job, increasing the risks of quitting.