[RSCT] "The global teachers' anthem" by Jesse Hagopian/Common Dreams 4/3/09

[rick at kissell.org]

The global teachers' anthem
	    
        


  
by Jesse HagopianCommonDreams.org4/3/09





"Raise the threat level to 
a code red," they cry out.      


From Baghdad to D.C., a growing 
chorus of a-tonal anti-union executives around the world (the only choir 
that may be left after all the public school budget cuts) are asserting 
that the teacher union menace must be neutralized.   


In Iraq, Paul Bremer (as former 
head of the Coalition Provisional Authority) threw out most of Saddam's 
legal code but kept the 1987 Decree No. 150 that made it illegal for 
employees in the public sector to have a union or negotiate over the 
terms of their labor. This opened the door for the Iraqi government's 
inharmonious announcement at the end of March, 2009 that it intended 
to dissolve the Iraqi Teachers' Union (ITU)-a move sure to make 
Washington, D.C. public school chancellor Michelle Rhee's cheeks flush 
with excitement. 



Rhee's discordant bluster 
was on display in a March 
2nd interview [1] with 
the Huffington Post: "We are going to impose the new evaluation 
tools regardless" of the outcome of talks with the union. "We 
are going to be moving people out who are not performing."  


New York Times columnist Nicolas 
Kristof stated in his out-of-pitch March 
10 column [2], "Education 
reform is going to mean challenging the unions, and Obama signaled that 
that's what he plans to do."   


None of these recent union-busting 
voices have been as off key as George W. Bush's Education Secretary, 
Rod Paige, when he called [3] the largest teachers' union in the 
US, the National Education Association (NEA), a "terrorist organization."  
However, the similarity of the current tune from corporate education 
deformers is unmistakable: because teachers have some measure of job 
security, schools in America are dysfunctional.  


If only we could treat our 
teachers like Wal-Mart employees, test scores would rise and students 
wouldn't be left behind.  As a Time 
Magazine article [4] 
recently contended, "The most glaring example of the backward logic 
of schools is the way most teachers receive lifetime job security after 
one or two years of work."  


But as the NEA explains [5], "Tenure does not mean a ‘job 
for life,' as many people believe. It means ‘just cause' for discipline 
and termination, be the reason incompetence or extreme misconduct. And 
it means ‘due process,' the right to a fair hearing to contest charges."  


Moreover, these Pinkerton style 
attacks on teachers' rights to collectively bargain suffer from the 
common problem middle schoolers face when attempting a first research 
paper: a scarcity of factual information to back up claims.   


Those who argue that unions 
prevent improved student achievement are at a loss to explain the high 
unionization rates of schools internationally that they lament are outperforming 
American youngsters.  Or why Southern "right to work" states 
that have managed to avoid unions in public schools score lower on the 
standardized tests that antiunion zealots overemphasize as the only 
real measure of student success.  As Arizona State University's 
Education Policy Research Unit reported [6], "Several studies found math, economics 
and SAT scores in unionized schools improved more than in non-unionized 
schools. Increases in state unionization led to increases in state SAT, 
ACT, and NAEP scores and improved graduation rates. One analysis attributed 
lower SAT and ACT scores in the South to weaker unionization there."    


In addition, a Department of Education 
study [7] found that 
public school students' test scores in reading and math are as good 
as or better than the scores of comparable students in charter schools-- the 
vast majority of which are nonunion.   


The gospel truth is, teachers 
unions the world over are raising the volume in the struggle to improve 
public education.  Time and again these unions have used their 
power to collectively bargain-and collectively strike-in defense 
of the schools:  


In 2005 the British 
  Columbia Teachers Federation in Canada led the 46,000-strong union in 
  a successful strike in protest of budget cuts to education, large class 
  sizes, and government attempts to take away collective bargaining rights. In May 2006, 70,000 
  teachers in the Mexican state of Oaxaca went on strike to prevent the 
  privatization of education and demand more funding for student services. On February 21, 
  2008 the Teachers Federation of Puerto Rico led a strike that was successful 
  in stopping government's privatized charter scheme.In Bellevue, Washington 
  the teachers' union proved it was the most important voice for public 
  education in the region when it led a successful two week strike at 
  the beginning of this current school year to protest the implementation 
  of what the school district called the "curriculum web"-a system 
  that would ensnare students in mandated, daily, scripted lessons that 
  would deny them access to the teachers' individualized knowledge, 
  skills, and passion for the subjects they were teaching.
On March 28 of this year, over 
500 protesters joined the Iraqi Teachers' Union in a demonstration 
against the attempted undemocratic government takeover of their union.  
Champions of public education and union supporters are encouraged to sign their petition [8] that demands that the union remain 
independent and that the union organizers not be imprisoned for their 
activity.      


If coming teacher struggles 
are successful at keeping funding for our music programs, students across 
the world should be taught in every language the great Woody Guthrie 
anthem "The Union Maid," with a refrain as relevant today as when 
America's great troubadour wrote it in 1941:  
 "Oh, you can't scare me, 
I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union 'til 
the day I die."   



Jesse Hagopian is a teacher in the Seattle Public Schools. Visit teachersforceomeritpay.com [9] or contact Jesse at: info at teachersforceomeritpay. com [10].



    
	
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

    URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/03






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