Honduran Teachers Strike

Honduras After the Coup (by codepinkhq)

Three weeks into a teacher’s strike, Honduran President Porfirio Lobo is threatening to fire all teachers and dissolve their unions. The Associate Press reported that teachers who fail to show up to work today will be suspended without pay, according to the president's decree. If they don't show up to work by April 4, they will be fired. The unions rejected Lobo’s ultimatum. Teachers want back pay for the past 6 months and a return of President Manuel Zelaya, who was deposed in a U.S.-backed coup in 2009. They also oppose attempts to privatize public education and to give the Catholic Church more control over public education.

Hospital workers have vowed to join the strike, while Zelaya supporters and the People's National Resistance Front are calling for a general strike on Wednesday. There was another general strike in February, which Lobo ruled illegal and has used as justification for not paying the teachers.

The teachers have been a key force within the Front, while the recent strike is only the latest in a series of protests dating back to the coup. One teacher, Ilse Ivana Velasquez was killed by police during these protests, according to the Argentina Independent, while several people have recently been killed by police at demonstrations in support of Zelaya’s return. Numerous people have also been assassinated and disappeared since Zelaya’s ouster.

Lobo’s attempts to crush the teachers’ unions should be seen as part of the broader attempt to legitimize the coup government and liquidate its opposition. While this movement includes a broad coalition of Hondurans, including peasants, unionists, nurses, writers and GLBT activists, the teachers have continued to be one of the strongest contingents, going out on strike the day after the coup and striking regularly since then.

The attempt to privatize education in Honduras has an interesting link with Ed Deform in the U.S.: Vander Ark/Ratcliff, a private equity fund (Learn Capital) that invests in digital learning companies. Ratcliff was named in a Wikileaks document as one of the PR hit men hired by the Honduran coup government to help them attack their opposition, including the teachers.

Lowered Expectations: School Failure is the New Success

(Image by Tinou Bao)

In response to teacher concerns that school reform efforts were moving forward too quickly, without adequate discussion, analysis or teacher buy-in, an administrator suggested that it was okay to “fail forward.”

The most appalling implication of this statement is that failure is considered a reasonable goal. However, this statement is also a not so subtle way of saying “your concerns are not wanted, the decision has already been made. So live with it.” It also is also based on the disturbing premise that it is better to try something new, even if it is not likely to work, because any change is better than no change. After all, you can’t have progress without taking risks. And what the hell, if it turns out to be a mistake, you can always learn from it, fix it, and grow stronger as a result.

The problem is that you cannot fix all mistakes, especially in institutions like schools with deeply entrenched bureaucracies. In fact, administrators often deliberately push through policies quickly, precisely to avoid opposition, knowing that they will be difficult or impossible to reverse. Consider NCLB, which has been a total disaster, still going strong after nine years.  

Even ineffective site-based changes can become entrenched. However, when an administrator loses the trust and respect of his or her staff by ruling autocratically or ignoring their concerns and suggestions, it becomes much harder to implement any new reforms. When reforms are not supported by staff they are unlikely to result in improved learning outcomes because staff will not put much energy or passion into the changes and may even undermine them.

Lastly, though it should be obvious, this administrator needs reminding that change in of itself is not necessarily good. A cost-benefit analysis must always be done. If the costs are too high or the benefits too small the reform is a bad risk and not worth doing. Costs must necessarily include the labor and time to implement the change, while anticipated benefits should be based on accurately parsed data, not on hypotheses or assumptions. Just because a reform sounds like it should be good for students or seems to be a “no brainer,” doesn’t mean that it will actually improve learning outcomes or that the improvements will be significant enough to justify the investment and sacrifices.

Why So Many Teachers Have Martyr Complexes

Teacher Martyrs Before the Lion (Jean-Leon Gerome)

In a recent posting I mentioned a colleague who said he was a “teacher first, and unionist second,” by which he meant that he would advocate for his kids and make decisions based on what he perceived as their interests, even if it went against his own interests as a worker, teacher, father or citizen. Keep in mind that this wasn’t just a teacher, but a union representative, with the duty to carry out union functions, and his comments were in defense of his refusal to carry out a union activity. This colleague, like many teachers, has a martyr complex.

Of course we all advocate for our students and most of us do far more than we are paid for because we care about our students and it is impossible to carry out all of our job duties and to do a great job teaching entirely within our contractual hours. However, with all the hysteria about our failing schools and the real problems of low graduation rates and a persistent achievement gap, there is constant pressure to do far more to solve these problems, to create and implement extensive, large-scale reforms, efforts that often require enormous amounts of unpaid labor. Sadly, even super human efforts that are richly remunerated cannot solve problems like the achievement gap, low graduation rates and failing schools, unless these efforts are directed at closing the wealth gap and addressing the effects of poverty, the primary cause of these problems.

Yet by constantly accepting more and more work and asserting that kids come first or that we will do anything for our students, we undermine our own integrity and status as professionals. The message to bosses and politicians is that we are uncritical pushovers who will accept all of their demands, regardless of whether they have much hope of actually helping kids and regardless of the costs. My colleague’s statement that he is a teacher first and unionist second implies that he would be unwilling to strike or work to rule in order to defend collective bargaining or tenure or other union protections because this might harm his students. Yet loss of tenure would do much longer term and far reaching harm to his students than would a strike. Advocating for students by speaking openly, critically and honestly at faculty meetings or directly to administrators runs the risk of pissing off bosses who, without tenure, can fire you at will.

Why are there so many martyrs in the teaching profession?

(Image by brutalSoCal)

According to Vicki Lavick, Assistant Clinical Coordinator at Proctor Hospital's Addiction Recovery Center, many people who are drawn into the helping professions exhibit symptoms of co-dependency:

1. Co-dependents have a need to be liked and accepted by others; they get positive feedback from doing so beyond what normal people get from such social interactions. (Wanting parents to like you)

2. Co-dependents are rewarded for focusing mental attention on others, and they find this personally fulfilling. Their own self-esteem levels rise in proportion to how helpful they think they have been. (Wanting students to like you)

3. Co-dependents cannot trust their own perceptions of themselves; they are validated by others. (Teacher first, Union second)

Michigan: Crush the Unions and the Unemployed!

Michigan Worker? (Image by AlexStaubo)

Michigan has become the first state in the U.S. to cut unemployment benefits below the 26-week standard set by the federal government. Starting in January, 2012, unemployed workers will only be able to collect benefits for 20 weeks, according to the WSWS. With 44% of unemployed workers out of work for more than six months, and the average unemployed worker requiring nine months to find a new job, this move is a vicious attack on working people.

Michigan has had an unemployment rate of more than 10% for over two years now and the situation is not likely to improve any time soon. Consequently, they will likely see dramatic increases in homelessness and hunger. Many unemployed workers will be forced to accept dangerous, mind numbing, or abusive working conditions for low wages just to be able to stay in their homes. Those lucky enough to have union jobs will start to feel increasing pressure to accept more cuts to their pay and benefits or risk losing their jobs to the increasingly desperate long-term unemployed. Those who choose to go on strike will find a ready army of scab strike breakers willing to cross the picket line for a chance to earn some money.

Yet again, the unions, by their refusal to take a militant stance, are contributing to their own demise.

LAUSD: Killing Student Enthusiasm With Value-Added

Image by Gummo

The L.A. Times reported today that Los Angeles school district leaders are “poised to plunge ahead with their own confidential 'value-added' ratings this spring, saying the approach is far more objective and accurate than any other evaluation tool available, despite its complexity.” Incoming Superintendent Deasy said “We are not questing for perfect. We are questing for much better.”

Supporters of Value-Added systems for evaluating teachers agree that there are unresolved issues with how to tweak the mathematical models to provide the most accurate measures of teacher performance. However, because Value-Added models are based on student test scores, no amount of tweaking can make them a meaningful measure of teacher performance.

The first problem is that there is no universal agreement on which formula can most accurately isolate a teacher's influence from other factors that affect student learning — and different formulas produce different results.. The Times referenced a 2010 study by researchers at Stanford University and UC Berkeley who found that teachers with more African American and Latino students received lower value-added scores than those with more Asian students.

However, it is possible that no formula will be able to accurately tease out the teacher’s influence from influences like home life and socioeconomic background. Student test scores can only tell us how students are doing. They cannot tell us why. Students who are disengaged from school, come to class ill-prepared, have short attention spans and give up easily are less likely to make significant gains on exams, regardless of the quality of their teachers.

A more significant issue is that the entire push for Value-Added evaluations is predicated on the continued abuse of high stakes standardized exams and the bogus premise that they are a useful measure of student learning. Yet the obsession with standardized tests has been a disaster for public education and it is a terrible way to measure learning or teaching. Our goal should not be to graduate people who excel at multiple choice tests. Rather, it should be to graduate people who can solve problems, think critically, and work well with other people. Good teaching should not be measured by how well you can make kids sit still and bubble in answers.

By accepting Value-Added schemes, we are necessarily accepting a continuation of high stakes exams and the concomitant loss of instructional time, creative teaching, inquiry-based learning and critical thinking and, worst of all, a stifling of student curiosity and enthusiasm for learning. When teachers’ evaluations, pay and promotions become tied to how much their students improve on standardized tests, they will be even more inclined to teach to the test. Indeed, with their careers on the line, teachers may entirely give up on creative, engaging and thought-provoking lessons in exchange for rote memorization drills and practice ruling out the “obvious wrong answer.”

Today In Labor History: March 28

March 28, 1911: Part of the anarchist Bonnot Gang was caught & killed by cops after months of bank robbing & mayhem.

March 28, 1915: Emma Goldman was arrested for giving a lecture on contraceptives. Goldman believed that knowledge of and access to contraceptives was key to women’s ability to control their own bodies and thus their social and material wellbeing.

March 28, 1918: 2,000 Canadians protested against conscription and forced police to retreat.

March 28, 1968: Martin Luther King led a march of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Police attacked the workers with mace and sticks. A 16-year old boy was shot. 280 workers were arrested. He was assassinated a few days later after speaking to the striking workers. The sanitation workers were mostly black. They worked for starvation wages under plantation like conditions, generally under racist white bosses. Workers could be fired for being one minute late or for talking back and they got no breaks. Organizing escalated in the early 1960s and reached its peak in February, 1968, when two workers were crushed to death in the back of a garbage truck.

March 28(?), 1972: A General Strike was called in Quebec to support workers locked out of La Presse newspaper. The workers went out in early April and again in May, however, some sources also give late March as the beginning of the General Strike. (Also see here and here).

(Sources: AFSCME, Socialist Worker, Daily Bleed, and Workaday Minnesota).