Court Thinks Billionaires Know More About Schools Than Teachers
Today there was a decision in California. A judge struck down basic protections for teachers. His logic: For students to win, teachers must lose. Of course, that’s ridiculous.
The judges decision reads almost as if there was no trial or evidence presented. However for anyone who followed the trial, they know this is not the case. Here are some good rundowns from GottaLaff and David Atkins.
So here’s the background: Basically, a tech entrepreneur named David Welch from Silicon Valley formed a shadily funded non-profit called StudentsMatter. He’s backed by some of the big education privatization money including Michelle Rhee, Eli Borad, and others. They sued the state of California over specific teacher protections. They focused mainly on seniority based layoffs and permanent status (what many people refer to as tenure). They claim that these rules protect bad teachers and deprive children of an excellent education. But after testimony from education experts, their claims were blown out of the water. And even more experts testified beyond that!
I think a key thing to highlight is that ed reformers of the Michelle Rhee and Eli Broad style point to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) PISA results as proof that American schools are falling behind. The PISA is a international study of test results, and the U.S. consistently ranks in the middle. So-called reformers say it’s the teachers fault that we are not performing at the top of this study, so we should judge the teachers based on things like standardized test scores. Their solution is more testing.
And they see unions as an obstacle. Personally, I’m grateful that unions are standing up to testing. But because of this, they go after unions, vilify them and attack them.
Randi Weingarten, President from the American Federation of Teachers said in a statement:
“It’s surprising that the court, which used its bully pulpit when it came to criticizing teacher protections, did not spend one second discussing funding inequities, school segregation, high poverty or any other out-of-school or in-school factors that are proven to affect student achievement and our children. We must lift up solutions that speak to these factors—solutions like wraparound services, early childhood education and project-based learning.”
Now, what they don’t tell you is that along with the PISA study, the OECD releases findings about why this is the case. Did you know that the counties that outperform us on these international tests have strong unions? In fact, the OECD specifically recommends working with unions rather than vilifying them. They also point out that the testing fixation we have in the US doesn’t happen in the countries that outperform us because… they focus on actual learning not scoring teachers.
The AFT released a compelling video describing these results.
Back to the case at hand. There are real actual solutions, but the Vergara Trial does nothing to address inequities in public education. They include having wraparound services and fully funding schools to make sure they have the resources they need to deal with students.
You can’t fire you way to better schools. You can’t test your way to better schools. You can fund your way to them.
If students really mattered to David Welch, he would be funding real solutions rather than attacking teachers.
