Teachers Are Winning in Seattle - And That is Good

Sara Bernard

On one block of the Central District last Thursday: dozens of teachers wearing bright-red Seattle Education Association T-shirts, hoisting “On Strike” and “Fair Contract Now” signs, singing and chanting and playing conga drums as passing cars honked their horns.

On another: an equally passionate gathering of teachers, students, and parents at Summit Sierra—one of Seattle’s first-ever public charter schools—wearing bright-blue “Keep Our Schools Open” T-shirts, toting hand-drawn “Don’t Close My School” .

Which is, more or less, what everyone is saying. From the teachers’ union to the Seattle Public School District, from the Washington State Charter Schools Association to the state Supreme Court: Save. Our. Schools.

It’s been a tumultuous few weeks for public education, to say the very least, and the news is giving us whiplash. Rallies, picket lines, 14-hour bargaining days, and monumental Supreme Court decisions are all making national headlines as some of the most fraught and long-standing debates in public education descend en masse on the state of Washington. The Seattle teachers’ union went on strike over contract issues for the first time in three decades, delaying the start of the new school year by more than a week; the state Supreme Court ruled Washington’s nascent charter-school law unconstitutional, effectively pulling public funding from the nine charters around the state that just opened their doors; and the state legislature is getting penalized $100,000 per day until it passes an education budget in line with the 2012 decision that condemned it for systematically underfunding public schools.

It’s a mess. But for a lot of educators, it’s pivotal. Despite plenty of frustration to go around, today’s mayhem does seem to have reached a fever pitch—and right now, teachers’ unions have the high note.

“I think the union has finally found its stride with the membership in a way it hadn’t previously,” said Laura Lehni, a history teacher at Washington Middle School and member of the SEA’s bargaining team, as passersby on South Jackson Street honked and cheered for the striking teachers last week. “The people you see out here on the lines, you probably wouldn’t have seen in years past. Now we’re seeing that educators have had enough. We’re not going to bend over for the district any more.”

Save Our Schools

Save Our Schools returns

by rethinkingschoolsblog

by Stan Karp
Last summer, the Save Our Schools march brought thousands of teachers, parents, and supporters of public education to Washington, D.C. The march and rally were hopeful signs of pushback against corporate ed reform.A school year that began with the media blitz around the pro-charter propaganda film Waiting for Supermanended with the voices of grassroots resistance in the nation’s capital.
From August 3 to 5, Save Our Schools supporters will gather again in D.C., this time for a “peoples convention” focused on giving more shape and substance to the SOS effort.
Rethinking Schools will be there, joining longtime friends and advocates for educational justice like Jonathan Kozol, Deborah Meier, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, and many others. We hope you will join us. More info here.
Rethinking Schools editor and parent activist Helen Gym and I will host a workshop session Saturday morning on education activism. We’ll share some lessons from Rethinking Schools’ 25-year history as a voice for social justice inside classrooms and communities. We’ll also share our experience with efforts to create local, state, and national coalitions to defend and improve public education, and we’ll invite discussion about how SOS might move that effort forward amidst the strongest corporate counterattack on public schooling we have seen in our lifetimes.

SOS: Save our Schools

by Deborah Meier,
Dear Diane,
HELP!!! SOS!!! "Reformed" schools are literally becoming reform schools for the poor. It's a sign of "the future" as some people envision it. Although, of course, these are not the schools for the reformers' kids.
Mitt Romney "declared that this century must be an American century," and President Barack Obama insists that "anyone who tells you that America is in decline ... doesn't know what they are talking about." Well, it's hard to argue with Romney since his "must" is a preference, not a prediction. But I do worry about Obama's statement because it contains truth, and it covers up a potential falsehood. (See "America's Place in the New World," by Charles A. Kupchan in The New York Times.)
But why should we care if we're first? (See last week's letter!) If the first is a nation we respect, being second is just fine. What we care about is the health and welfare of our nation's people and their future prospects both economically and politically, not our place in somebody's ranking system. We might also like a president who hopes for the best for other nations' people, too. And, while American business may not be in decline, it has the advantage of transferring its own future health and welfare to almost any nation it chooses. The American people have a harder time following suit. Indeed, global business has no country. Our inventiveness won't help if we off-shore the production of the inventions "made in America"—to nations that operate with 19th century sweat-shop wages and working conditions.

Jonathan Kozol's speech at the Save Our Schools March in DC, 7/30/2011 (...

Why We March- Save Our Schools

Monty Neil:My organization, FairTest, also endorsed Save Our Schools. True, in time more specifics are needed, but the most fundamental task is to save our schools from the education ‘deformers’ who have decided that tests (the standards don’t really matter except for the tests) and punishments are the core of a ‘solution’ to the very real problem that too many students do leave school not having learned enough to be effective citizens. It is a destructive ‘solution.’
California Rally and  March
Saturday, July 30, 11am-3pm
State Capitol Building
1315 10th Street, SacramentoJoin other Californians on the Capitol steps to support public education. Sponsored by California supporters of the Save Our Schools March, National Call to Action .

Finland, by contrast, decided to build a system based on having high-quality teachers who would be prepared well (not a BA and short training course, a la TFA), engage in ongoing shared professional learning, and be largely in charge of the shape of schooling. They have brief national standards, but those are not imposed through tests. Finland does far better than the US, which chose a disastrous detour through testland. Finland also has a child poverty rate under 5% while the US is now well over 20%. Finland is more homogeneous, but has growing numbers of immigrant students (15% if memory serves) with 43 different languages. But of course US poverty is an ‘excuse’ to the deformers, who have managed to simultaneously promote damaging education ideas while deflecting attention from massive poverty.

There are many reasons why the basic framework, the paradigm, of federal and state laws and policies must be changed – I use the US failures and Finnish success simply to highlight how a different approach has produced markedly different results, though the underlying social structures and poverty also matter.

Save our Schools March in Sacramento

By Duane Campbell

In addition to the extended public funding crisis caused by the Great Recession, parents, teachers  and families from around the country say they are fed up with so-called “reform” policies that falsely label more than 80% of U.S. public schools as failures.  A  coalition of individuals and organizations is mobilizing for a national day of action in support of public schools. 
  
On Saturday, July 30, 2011, thousands of people will gather at the White House in Washington, DC, in Sacramento,  and at locations around the nation for   “Save Our Schools” marches.   The  events are being organized by a network of teachers, parents and community activists. 
  You can contact the march efforts and locate your regional demonstration at  http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org,

 
“For too long, public school stakeholders have been treated like second class citizens in our own communities,” said Sabrina Stevens Shupe, a former Colorado teacher, who is a member of the March’s organizing committee. “Teachers’ knowledge has been dismissed because we are falsely presumed to be self-interested and incompetent.  Students and parents who vocally oppose the disruption and destruction of their schools are often entirely ignored.  At the same time, ideologues with little to no experience in public schools have made misguided decisions that devastate educational quality and equal opportunity.”

California Rally & March
Saturday, July 30, 11am-3pm
State Capitol Building
1315 10th Street, Sacramento
Join other Californians on the Capitol steps to support public education. Sponsored by California supporters of the Save Our Schools March, National Call to Action & the Student CTA. 
  

Save Our Schools March- Sacramento

March in Sacramento.  July 30.  State Capitol.
California Rally & March
Saturday, July 30, 11am-3pm
State Capitol Building
1315 10th Street, Sacramento

Join other Californians on the Capitol steps to support public education. Sponsored by California supporters of the Save Our Schools March, National Call to Action & the Student CTA.

Save Our Schools March- Sacramento

TEACHERS, PARENTS GEAR UP FOR JULY 30 SAVE OUR SCHOOLS MARCH ON D.C.;  SACRAMENTO; ALLIED ACTIONS AROUND THE NATION

Educators and families from around the country say they are fed up with so-called “reform” policies so poorly designed that they may falsely label more than 80% of U.S. public schools as failures. To counter what they see as relentless attacks on teachers and the institution of public education, a growing coalition of individuals and organizations is mobilizing for a national day of action in support of public schools.

On Saturday, July 30, 2011, thousands of people will gather at the Ellipse in Washington, DC and at other locations around the nation-- including Sacramento, California-- to express their desire to reclaim the right to determine the path of school reform in their own communities. The “Save Our Schools” March and allied events are being organized by a network of teachers, parents and community activists.

Save Our Schools- Sacramento

TEACHERS, PARENTS GEAR UP FOR JULY 30 SAVE OUR SCHOOLS MARCH ON D.C.,
ALLIED ACTIONS AROUND THE NATION
  

Educators and families from around the country say they are fed up with so-called “reform” policies that falsely label more than 80% of U.S. public schools as failures. To counter what they call unfair attacks on teachers and public education, a growing coalition of individuals and organizations is mobilizing for a national day of action in support of public schools. 
  
On Saturday, July 30, 2011, thousands of people will gather at the White House in Washington, DC and at locations around the nation to express their desire to reclaim the right to determine the path of education reform in their own communities. The “Save Our Schools” March and allied events are being organized by a network of teachers, parents and community activists. 
  
“For too long, public school stakeholders have been treated like second class citizens in our own communities,” said Sabrina Stevens Shupe, a former Colorado teacher, who is a member of the March’s organizing committee. “Teachers’ knowledge has been dismissed because we are falsely presumed to be self-interested and incompetent.  Students and parents who vocally oppose the disruption and destruction of their schools are often entirely ignored.  At the same time, ideologues with little to no experience in public schools have made misguided decisions that devastate educational quality and equal opportunity.” 
  
Addressing high-stakes “accountability” policies, such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, Florida businesswoman and parent advocate Rita Solnet explained, “A decade of NCLB's incessant focus on high-stakes tests narrowed curriculum in many schools. Each new initiative ratcheting up the stakes behind these tests, has resulted in the abandonment of the very children NCLB sought to serve. NCLB has not improved overall achievement, and it has diminished the quality of teaching and learning. We must reverse this wrong-headed direction.” 

Save Our Schools March

On Friday, March 18, Rethinking Schools editors Bob Peterson and Stan Karp will be featured in a 90-minute web "teach-in" designed to build this summer's Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action. The webinar begins at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central/5pm Pacific time and is open to the first 100 people who sign up here:http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RethinkingSchoolsWebinar
This event is part of a series of web discussions with supporters of the National Call to Action leading to coordinated events around the country and a march in Washington, D.C. on July 30. The July events are built around four demands:

• Equitable funding for all public school communities
• End to high stakes testing for student, teacher, and school evaluation
• Curriculum developed for and by local school communities
• Teacher and community leadership in forming public education policies

For more info, visit the SOS March web site, www.saveourschoolsmarch.org

Save our schools

The message we want to get out to as many people on Valentine’s Day is that everyone who cares about young people should also care about our public schools. Our best schools nurture our children and make them feel safe and able to take the risks they need to in order to learn. But our schools are in danger of becoming even more narrowly focused on test preparation while class sizes rise and teachers are blamed for the ravages poverty inflicts on their students.

We are responding. We love our schools. We declare the week of Valentine’s Day, 2011, to be

I  Love Public Education Blog Day. On this day we will write our hearts out, about why public education is so important to us, to our children, and to our democratic society. If you or your readers will join us and tell why you love public education too, send your comments and posts tosaveourschoolsmarch@gmail.com.

Writing will be displayed at the www.SaveOurSchoolsmarch.org website, and will be tweeted with the hashtag #LovePublicEd. We offer the march and events of July 28 to 31^st in Washington, DC, as a focal point for this movement, and we ask participants to link to this event, so that we can build momentum for our efforts. If your readers wish to repeat this post on their own blog, we would welcome it. We would love if you could use our attached graphic to indicate that this is part of our campaign.

If you are not familiar with our new grassroots movement, please go to our webpage and look at our endorsers and also at “About Us.”You will see that many of our endorsers are well-known people, such as Diane Ravitch, Deborah Meier, Alfie Kohn, and David Berliner. You will also find a list of our demands on the webpage. A new website will go live in the next few days.