Scott Walker's Real record in Wisconsin

Educate for Democracy: Walker’s Budget Undermines Public Education, with ...: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is expected to do two things in the next few days: Formally announce his candidacy for President and sign W...

When we abandon our public schools, we not only abandon democracy, we abandon our children's future.

Gov. Walker has the most far-reaching budget veto powers of any governor, and can literally change the budget line by line. How he uses that veto pen will foretell his national plans as he enters the Republican presidential primary.

In Wisconsin, where we have four years of experience with Walker, we expect him to continue his policies of abandoning public institutions and undermining the middle class. Hopefully, national observers will see through Walker's rhetoric and analyze the realities of his state budget.

[Bob Peterson is a founder of Rethinking Schools magazine and former president of the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association.]

All Schools Need Assistance - Viewpoint

Every Sacramento school should be a ‘priority’ school

Special to The Bee   PUBLISHED THURSDAY, SEP. 12, 2013

As a teacher in Sacramento City Schools for the past 18 years and a parent of two children in the district, I join Marcus Breton in celebrating Father Keith B. Kenny’s rise in test scores (“A school that cares triumphs,” Sept. 4). The teachers and students worked very hard and deserve to be lauded for their efforts. However, in trying to establish a cause for the rise in scores, Breton left out many important details and did not paint a complete picture.

To assert that the gains were made because of “a break in teacher seniority” as he states in his column, is an oversimplification at best and is not supported by the facts. The school that made the biggest API gains in the district was not, in fact, one of Superintendent Jonathan Raymond’s “priority” schools. It was Maple Elementary, whose students were also all eligible for free and reduced lunch. Maple was one of the seven non-priority schools closed by the district last June.

Not talking about the real school issues

The Sacramento Bee editorial writers again attack teachers unions in their support of SB 1285 to alter seniority rules. Lets look at what they  are actually advocating. In low performing schools, new teachers, teachers with 1 -3 years of experience would not be laid off. So, more experienced teaches, teachers with 4-6 years of experience would be laid off. There is little gain here.

 It is a tragedy that young teachers will be laid off. It will impact their lives, their careers, and the future of the schools. But, what are the Bee editorial writers not saying ?  The national economic crisis produced a fiscal crisis in the states, and now California has cut over $16 billion from its schools.   The financial crisis caused the lay offs, not seniority.

It is most interesting that writers focus on teachers and seniority.  Why would that be?   In an excellent editorial, What’s Up with All the Teacher Bashing?   in the Summer issue of Rethinking Schools  the editors say,

 “But if these attacks on teachers aren’t about ending the systemic racism that continues to undermine our education system, what is the goal?  With forces as seemingly disparate as the Obama administration, the Walton Foundation, the late Milton Friedman, and the New York Times all pushing the same ideas, this is a complicated question, but there are at least two major goals: destroy the power of the teachers’ unions, and turn the public school system from a public trust into a new market for corporate development. From the time of Reagan, who used his “welfare queen” stories to scapegoat the poor as a basis on which to destroy the welfare system, this has been a tried-and-true approach to privatization: use visceral anecdotes to whip up hysteria that a system is “broken,” argue that only market competition can fix the situation, and then sell off pieces of the public sector to private corporations. This time, teachers are the scapegoats.