Former Teacher, Union Leader elected to Mayor of Chicago

 First of all, let me begin by congratulating Brandon Johnson on being elected as the next mayor of Chicago, and Janet Protasiewicz on her decisive win in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. These are two huge victories for progressives and for our movement. 

If we are serious about creating transformative change in this country — and if we're serious about taking on the powerful special interests that want to protect the status quo — we need to elect more great candidates at the grassroots level. That's why Brandon Johnson and Janet Protasiewicz's victories are so important. 

Our campaign was proud to have played a role in these victories, and I would like to thank supporters like you for all you've done to help make these victories possible. Our team reached out to people all across Chicago to encourage them to turn out to vote for Brandon Johnson, and to attend our GOTV rally with him last week. And we contacted Wisconsinites statewide informing them about early voting and Election Day voting for Janet Protasiewicz in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. 

Brandon Johnson is a former teacher who ran a campaign centered on economic justice and racial justice. What he did during his campaign for mayor, and what we have got to do all over this country, is continue the struggle to build a government that works for all of us, not just the wealthy few.

Chicago deserves a mayor who will invest in affordable housing, health care, fully-funded neighborhood schools, and good jobs. That's the kind of mayor that Brandon Johnson will be. He understands that we need not only job creation, but jobs that provide workers with decent wages, benefits, and working conditions. 

During the runoff election, Brandon overcame incredible odds after being outspent 2-to-1. The way he was able to do that was by bringing people together in a multi-racial, multi-generational movement. This past Tuesday, large numbers of working people all across the city of Chicago came together to say enough is enough. It is time to finally create a government that invests in the needs of its people. And with Brandon Johnson as mayor, Chicago will now have a city government that supports the working class and unions.

In Wisconsin, Janet Protasiewicz ended the conservative majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the first time in 15 years. Her victory will help protect the future of our democracy and will have an enormous impact on voting rights, abortion rights, redistricting, and potential challenges to 2024 election results in a key battleground state. 

Candidate for Chicago Mayor

Throughout his campaign, Johnson made fighting inequality across the city a central theme, prioritizing working-class communities while taxing Chicago’s wealthy. He received major backing from the CTU and United Working Families, a coalition of left-wing organizations and unions that has become a highly influential player in city politics over the past decade. He also received support from national groups like the Working Families Party.

Johnson’s ascent sets up a stark choice for Chicago voters, who will decide in April whether to embrace a progressive approach to urban politics or return to the neoliberal model that created many of the problems now plaguing the city. Crime, in particular, will be central to the campaign, making the runoff a test case of whether Johnson’s anti-carceral, pro–social services approach can defeat a traditional law-and-order, reactionary appeal by Vallas.

A Movement Mayor?

Johnson got his start teaching in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) in 2007, first at Jenner Elementary in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood on the Near North Side and later Westinghouse College Prep on the West Side. He then joined CTU’s staff alongside its then president Karen Lewis, who helped reshape the union into a democratic and militant force that fought austerity not only in public education but in city politics generally. In that role, Johnson helped coordinate the historic 2012 teachers strike, worked to block school privatization schemes, joined hunger strikers at the shuttered poor and working-class Dyett High School and successfully advocated for its reopening, and fought to win an elected school board (rather than one handpicked by the mayor), which finally became law in 2021.

In 2018, Johnson was elected to the Cook County Board, where he continues to serve. In office, he has sponsored the Just Housing Amendment, which ended discrimination against the formerly incarcerated, as well as the Budget for Black Lives, which helped lead to a multimillion-dollar investment in community resources and violence prevention — including affordable housing, health care, and other supports — as part of the 2021 Cook County budget. Johnson also helped to create a program aimed at canceling up to $1 billion in medical debt, secure legal representation for immigrant refugees facing deportation, and launch a guaranteed income pilot that offers $500 per month to thousands of low-income residents.

In his mayoral run, Johnson’s stated priorities include increasing funding to neighborhood schools, year-round youth employment programs, reopening the city’s public mental health clinics shuttered by former mayor Rahm Emanuel, reducing fares on public transit, investing in new affordable housing, and instituting a “Chicago Green New Deal” to boost environmental protections. To pay for this agenda, Johnson proposed a real estate transfer tax on luxury home sales, a financial transaction tax, a head tax on large, profitable companies that do business in the city, and new user fees for high-end commercial districts. According to Johnson, “The ultra-rich and large corporations continue to benefit from the subjugation and the isolation of poverty, and my budget plan speaks to these critical investments.”

When it comes to public safety, which played a central role in the mayor’s race, Johnson plans to pass the “Treatment Not Trauma” ordinance advanced by socialist city council member Rossana Rodriguez, which would create a hotline to deal with crisis response, invest in violence prevention programs, end no-knock warrants, establish a dedicated office to deal with illegal guns, and end the city’s gang database, which opponents have claimed in a class action lawsuit is racially discriminatory.

Taken together, Johnson’s agenda represents a profound break from the corporate-friendly politics that have dominated Chicago in the neoliberal era. As the leader of the third-largest city in the country, a Mayor Johnson could be positioned to usher in a new era of urban progressivism unseen in recent memory, if he and the forces supporting him can overcome the massive pushback that capital will mobilize against him.

In order to win, however, he will first have to overcome both a well-financed opponent and a political and economic establishment fully at odds with his platform, especially as it relates to the issue of policing.

Johnson made it to the runoff — even while competing for liberal votes against García, who was the standard-bearer of left-wing politics in the city’s mayoral race two cycles ago — by articulating a progressive approach to crime that does not include massively expanding policing. He noted on the campaign trail that the Chicago Police Department’s budget of $1.94 billion is “bigger than it’s ever been, and we’re still not safe. 

From Jacobin. 

Teaching & TikTok: kindergarten teacher goes viral on socia...

Teacher, Dreamer, DACA

I remember life before DACA. I remember the fear, when, in my senior year of high school, my government class was required to apply to community college. I so worried people would find out that I was undocumented. I remember the frustration, when, despite having the chance to go to college anywhere in my home state of Texas and graduating from UT-San Antonio, I couldn’t yet pursue my dream of teaching. Instead, I volunteered at reading initiatives, and through communities in school programs --anything to be in and around a classroom. And, I remember the unbridled joy when President Obama signed DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). I was able to finish grad school, and today, I am proud to be going into my fourth year of teaching three and four-year-olds who are deaf or hard of hearing. Educator, the fear, anxiety, and stress I felt all those years is something no one should have to go through. It will take all of us to ensure that the opportunities and futures of the Dreamers who live, study and work in the United States can continue. That is why I am asking you to show your support today.   Thank you. Together, we can stand up for all Dreamers, and make sure each and every one is able to live his or her best future. Karen Reyes Special education teacher, Austin, TX NEA Member

Here To Stay Rally (Jose Torres)

Senate Bills Take Aim at California's Growing Teacher Shortage.

But, they do not deal with the problem of a shortage of Latino teachers created by the actions of many CSU- Campuses as described in the prior posts.
excerpt.

"But credentialed teachers from the Latino community and several Asian communities will not be available to hire because the Sac State pipeline for minority teachers  has been broken.  A new generation of mostly Anglo teachers will be hired which will continue the past failure to integrate the teaching profession in this region. Ending the pipeline will shape the nature of the local teaching profession for decades. Latino students make up 37 % of Sac City Unified students, Asians 17.4 %, African Americans 17.7 %, and White students 18.8 %. Latino families now make up over 37 % of California residents and Latino descent children now make up over 50% of public school students.

   The Bilingual Multicultural Education Department at Sac State was  set up as  a structure so that the university, CSU-Sacramento, could  serve the community by preparing and advancing hundreds of Chicano and Asian teachers each year.  Unfortunately, others shut down this vehicle. Between 1994 -2006, Latino descent students were about 35% of the total teacher preparation students each year ( 60 -90 students per semester).  After the termination of the department in 2010, Latino descent students were less than 10% of the total students in teacher preparation at Sac State (about 7 students).  This decline was a direct consequence of eliminating the department. "

See the post below this one.  Area Shortage of Latino Teachers Caused by...

Tuesday's  News Conference 
Each of the local news organizations, the Bee, KCRA, CPR, repeated the comments in the news release (below) as news. They did not consider the context of the "news" which ignores the lack of Latino teachers. Only publishing government sponsors news releases without analysis and context is commonly known as propaganda. 

Helping future teachers with the old programs...

SACRAMENTO -- Following on the heels of a Senate Education Committee hearing that highlighted the severity of a growing shortage of qualified teachers in California, three senators are proposing legislation to address the crisis.

After years of decline during the lean budget years that followed the Great Recession, the demand for teachers is again on the rise, as districts hired an estimated 20,000 new teachers for the current school year. This comes at a time when enrollment in teacher preparation programs at state universities has plunged — falling by 75 percent from 2001 to 2014.

As a result, school districts are increasingly being forced to hire individuals who are not fully prepared. The state Commission on Teacher Credentialing reports that nearly 8,000 teachers with substandard credentials or provisional permits were working in California classrooms in the 2014–15 school year — a 63 percent increase from just two years earlier.

Anti Teacher Union Case Before Court in January

U.S. Supreme Court to hear Freidrichs case in January
What you need to know about who’s behind this anti-union lawsuit
THE SUPREME COURT is scheduled to hear arguments in Friedrichs v. CTA on January 11. Reflecting the high stakes for all unions, the AFT and more than 70 labor organizations led briefs with the court opposing this right-wing attack on union membership and bargaining power.
The court is considering whether to overrule its 1977 decision allowing states to require public employees to join a union or pay a fee to cover collective bargaining costs. These fees cover the worker’s share of the re- sources the union spends on negotiating contracts, representing workers in grievance procedures, and other services that benefit the entire workforce.
Depending on how a particular union operates, the cost of representation for each agency fee payer may range from a small fraction of the membership cost to almost as much as membership. The right of unions to collect fair share fees was settled by the court’s unanimous 1977 decision Abood v. Detroit Board of Education.

A Teacher and Her Refugee Students

BY ROBYN BARBOUR

Every morning when I get to school, I see students from many countries in the hall. They are dropped off early so they can have a hot breakfast before class. The students speak Farsi, Arabic, Pashto, Spanish, Vietnamese, Tagalog and many more languages. They have fled violence and war, and their most compelling desire is to learn English and begin new lives here.

One student has been with me for three years, but this is the first year I have had him in an English class. He was injured in the Iraq War when he was young and he still bears the scars and the trauma. Other students are new to me, but they all share the struggle of learning not only a new language, but a new culture.

The students work from textbooks designed for English as a second language students. They also work on independent reading – books that every kid their age reads – and two supplemental reading websites. During the second half of class, the nine boys work on 12 donated Chromebooks while the girls read, and then they switch. They hand each other the computers carefully, and there is no arguing or play, even though some of these students are only in sixth grade.

Students need more funds, not more tests.

As a teacher of more than 20 years at an inner-city high school in Los Angeles, I saw the value of federal dollars sent to our local public schools through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. In fact, millions of America’s poorest schoolchildren depend on the Title 1 funding that was established in the law as part of the landmark 1965 “War on Poverty” legislation. 

In Los Angeles, Title 1 funding allowed us to buy paper, pens and pencils that, while taken for granted in many communities, were a luxury for children and parents living in poverty. It also allowed us to hire instructional aides and provide programs that gave thousands of students the help they needed to succeed in school and prepare for college.

Congress must now decide whether to reauthorize the act, and whether to continue with the high-stakes testing mandates adopted as part of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top.

Tenure important for teachers

Due Process Prevents Capricious Firings: Diane Ravitch

Diane Ravitch, a historian of education, is the author of several books, including "The Great School Wars," a history of the New York City public schools.

A century ago, teaching was one of the few white-collar jobs open to women. Classes were large, salaries were low, and working conditions were poor. Supervisors and school boards, male-dominated, made many rules governing teachers' lives. In some cities, for example, school boards fired teachers if they married, or if they were allowed to marry, they were fired if they became pregnant.

In the early days of the formation of teachers' unions, teachers cared most about two issues: tenure and pensions. Teachers wanted some guarantee that they would not retire to a life of poverty. And they wanted assurance that they could not be fired for arbitrary and capricious reasons. They wanted to be sure that they could not be fired by a school board that wanted to hire a colleague's daughter or sister, or fired by a principal who didn't like their looks or their religion.

The Vergara decision in California strikes at one of the issues that matters most to teachers today. Unlike tenure in higher education, public school tenure is not a guarantee of a lifetime job. In elementary and secondary education, tenure is a guarantee that a teacher can be fired only for just cause, with due process.

Charter networks push 2-4 years and out for teachers- that is a career.

 Motoko Rich.  NYTimes.

Studies have shown that on average, teacher turnover diminishes student achievement. Advocates who argue that teaching should become more like medicine or law say that while programs like Teach for America fill a need in the short term, educational leaders should be focused on improving training and working environments so that teachers will invest in long careers.

“To become a master plumber you have to work for five years,” said Ronald Thorpe, president of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, a nonprofit group that certifies accomplished teachers. “Shouldn’t we have some kind of analog to that with the people we are entrusting our children to?”

Teachers’ unions and others in the traditional education establishment argue that charter schools are driving teachers away with longer hours and school years, as well as higher workplace demands. (At YES Prep, for example, all teachers are assigned a cellphone to answer any student call for homework assistance until 9 p.m.)

AERA 2013 Speech on Teacher Leadership

Labor Day - thank a teacher

 Thank you for your work, your dedication and your commitment to the children and people you serve.

Labor Day means many things to many people—back to school, the end of summer, a needed respite from the daily grind. For us, as working people and union members, Labor Day stands for something special and profound.

It’s a day to honor the deep commitment each of us has to serve the children we teach, the families we heal and the communities we love. It’s a day to reflect on the values we hold dear—that every American should have access to a good job that can support a family, with access to affordable healthcare; that every child should be able to attend a high-quality public school in their neighborhood; that college should not be a luxury for the few but should be affordable for all; and that we should be able to retire with dignity after a lifetime of hard work, without worrying that we’ll be a burden to our loved ones.

Working people built this country—we did it together—brick by brick, school by school, town by town. Through these collective efforts, we built the middle class, each generation did a little better than the one before, we advanced the ideals of equality and justice, and we expanded opportunity for all. 

The Myth of the Korean Super Teacher

Myth of the Korean Super Teacher and the 3 Bird Tragedy

   Recently, teachers at my elementary school were subjected to a poke in the eye with “data” confirming that we were among the lowest 5% of performing schools in California.  A presenter threw out the latest mantras. “It’s all about teachers. Teachers matter. In Korea, teachers are held in high esteem.”

    Whoa, stop right there reformer. Pull out a factoid (It’s all about teachers) with: no inkling of the realities accompanying it. Then “reform incorporated” pushes to transfer that one little factoid without the rest of the support pyramid beneath the factoid.  I lived in Korea, taught in Korea, my wife is Korean and although it is wretched I can speak some Korean.

      Korea’s phenomenal educational performance has little to do with teachers. It is entirely about parents. Parents who were weaned on a Confucian ethic which echoed for centuries - education is the route to success and status. Korean parents sacrifice all for their kids. One of the most disturbing and tragic outcomes is the three bird syndrome. Many educationally inspired families are separated, moms live overseas with their kids from New Zealand to Canada, anywhere the natives speak English. The dad’s reside in Korea or other nations and they work to pay the overseas bills.  If they make lots of money they can fly often and see their kids and wife regularly (eagle dads), some less monied fathers only visit once a year like a migratory bird (goose dads), saddest of all are the fathers who toil in dire solitary poverty, and reside in horrible conditions. They are separated by miles and years. These wingless dads rarely see their families. (Penguin dads) Their willingness to sacrifice their families for educational opportunity is commendable, yet sad and shocking. Teachers play no role in this.

      Educational intensity in Korea is off the scale – one-hundred days before the one and only national test date, moms and dads go to churches and temples and pray three or four times - a day and for each of those one hundred days. They are praying for high scores. Church calendars even come with these days pre-marked.

Dear President Obama

(Letter from a teacher) 
I mean this with all respect. I’m on my knees here, and there’s a knife in my back, and the prints on it kinda match yours. I think you don’t get it.

Your Race to the Top is killing the wrong guys. You’re hitting the good guys with friendly fire. I’m teaching in a barrio in California. I had 32 kids in my class last year. I love them to tears. They’re 5th graders. That means they’re 10 years old, mostly. Six of them were 11 because they were retained. Five more were in special education, and two more should have been. I stopped using the word “parents” with my kids because so many of them don’t have them. Amanda’s mom died in October. She lives with her 30-year-old brother. (A thousand blessings on him.) Seven kids live with their “Grams,” six with their dads. A few rotate between parents. So “parents” is out as a descriptor.

Here’s the kicker: Fifty percent of my students have set foot in a jail or prison to visit a family member.

Do you and your secretary of education, Arne Duncan, understand the significance of that? I’m afraid not. It’s not bad teaching that got things to the current state of affairs. It’s pure, raw poverty. We don’t teach in failing schools. We teach in failing communities. It’s called the ZIP Code Quandary. If the kids live in a wealthy ZIP code, they have high scores; if they live in a ZIP code that’s entombed with poverty, guess how they do?

Support Teachers in Wisconsin

As NEA members, we all have a big stake in stopping Governor Scott Walker's attempt to slash the benefits and take away the labor rights of teachers here in Wisconsin. He's made it clear that he hopes to be in the vanguard of a national movement to undermine collective bargaining.

For my wife Heather and me, the stakes are as personal as they can get. We're both teachers here in Sun Prairie, and, if Walker's plan doesn't get blocked, we'll be looking at a $13,200 pay cut. I don’t have to tell you how scary and disheartening that is for a family with two young children.

But what galls me the most is that this attack comes specifically because we are teachers. Our out-of-control governor is going after K-12 teachers, higher education faculty and staff, nurses, and public service workers. We all have to band together – because if it succeeds in Wisconsin, Governor Walker's strategy will be repeated in state after state. Already, the governors of Ohio, Indiana, Idaho, Florida and New Jersey are going after teachers. That's why we need your immediate PAC support to keep the pressure on.
Help the NEA Fund fight to protect public education and defend our right to collective bargaining.
Heather and I are doing our part to take a stand against Governor Walker’s dangerous proposals. I've been working the phones, mobilizing colleagues in the Wisconsin Education Association Council to call and email their legislators, and to attend rallies at the statehouse.

Teach for America : Looking past the spin

Looking Past the Spin: Teach for America
By Barbara Miner

Rethinking Schools - Spring 2010
submitted to portside by the publisher

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/24_03/24_03_TFA.shtml

    Most Teach for America recruits are idealistic and
    dedicated. But who is behind the organization, and
    does its approach bolster or hinder urban education
    reform?
Great article. explains much about the recent controversy in Sac City Unified

Florida votes to end teacher tenure

From the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Wednesday, March 24, 2010. See http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/education/fl-teacher-tenure-bill-032310-20100322,0,3262837.story  --  

***************************

Florida Senate kills teacher tenure pay system; raises tied to student success

By Josh Hafenbrack

TALLAHASSEE - In a major shift, the salaries of Florida's 167,000 teachers could soon be tied to student test scores, rather than seniority and education level.

The state Senate on Wednesday approved a controversial bill by a 21-17 vote to dismantle teacher tenure, a decades-old system in which educators' pay is based on years of experience and whether they earn upper-level degrees.

New teachers hired after July 1 would work on one-year contracts and face dismissal if their students did not show learning gains on end-of-year exams for two years in any five-year period. For them, job security would be based soley on two factors: standardized scores and job reviews by principals. Existing teachers would have future pay raises tied to student scores and reviews but would keep their current job security.

"It takes a sledgehammer to the teaching profession," Sen. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, said Wednesday.

Bill sponsor Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, said the bill means teachers who earn high marks will get higher salaries and it "will help put a good teacher in every single classroom."

Despite President Obama pushing merit pay on the federal level, Florida Senate Democrats were unified against the proposal -- and joined by four Republicans in opposition. Still, Republicans, who have a 26-14 majority in the state Senate, had a comfortable margin to push the bill through, which now must be considered by the Republican-controlled House.

Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican running for U.S. Senate, indicated he likely would sign the bill into law if it passes the Legislature, as expected.

"Generally, I support that," he said Tuesday. "That's how it is for most of us -- you do well, you keep your job. It seems to me that wouldn't be a bad idea in the area of education, too."

Well, as described, this is not really tenure. It is the pay system.