Unions

On his substack, Peter Greene offers a reminder that anti-union, anti-worker snake oil salespersons are not your friends. They promise you a little more now, but you're going to pay a lot later. 

Greene offers a quick inventory of some of these con artists and their funders, and regardless of their highfalutin names-- the "Liberty Justice Center," for example, and something called "Free To Teach," which is diabolically ironic--the goal of these frauds is to break and destroy the union. Full stop.

If you're familiar with the Janus case in which the Supreme Court ruled that public sector unions could not collect fees from non-members even for the limited purpose of representing the non-members in collective bargaining (agency fees), you already know that members now support freeloading nonmembers who get for free! the terms negotiated by the union. What you may not know is that Act Two is about to start. Please take your seats.

From Greene:

But Janus and the union busting crowd are not done.

They've been shopping about thirty follow-up cases, suing to have the union give back all the dues it ever collected from them. They appear to be using the same strategy as before-- zip on up through the lower courts with unfavorable rulings so that they can go to the big show, and so Janus has petitioned the Supreme Court to hear his case.

This case is aimed at literally busting the unions. Janus himself is suing over a whopping $3,000, but of course that's not the point. If the unions can be compelled to refund the back dues collected from every union member who left after Janus, the resulting bill would be crippling.

That, of course, is the point. There's more, and I encourage you to read and subscribe to Greene's substack and check in frequently on his outstanding CURMUDGUCATION blog.

These are my thoughts on one of the union busters, from last year. And I'm still getting the damn postcards!

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Freedom Foundation: YOU MAY ALREADY BE A WINNER!

The Enemies of Public Schooling - Part 2 of 10googol

Have you been getting post cards from something called the "Freedom Foundation" telling you to stop paying your union dues? 

According to SourceWatch, "[t]he Freedom Foundation, formerly known as the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, is a libertarian think tank based in Olympia, Washington," and is "funded in part by the Bradley Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation." 

It is aggressively anti-union--specifically public-sector unions. In the aftermath of Janus, attack ads and these "opt-out" post cards are part of the Freedom Foundation's campaign to dismantle the union (and, as a consequence, de-fund the Democratic Party). For additional reporting, there's this, from the L.A. Times in 2018.

These sleazebags have offered me a "summer bonus" (I didn't scan to find out), told me I'd have an extra $1000 for gas and vacations, sent me a "Labor Union Satisfaction Survey," and even wrote the "opt-out" letter for me (just fill it in!).

Are you thinking about how much more money you'd have in your paycheck if you didn't have to pay those bloody union dues? Then think about this: Your administration is still barred from forcing you to work weekends, during the summer, during your lunch. The union bargains for you, too, and now you want to ask them to do it for nothing? 

You get the raise, and you keep and extra thousand bucks! Sounds good, right? 

It's like the guy who saved money by teaching his dog to eat less and less each day. Just when he got the dog down to zero, the dog died. 

They are trying to kill the union. If they are successful, you can kiss your raise, your sick days, and your summers good-bye. 

They are scammers looking for suckers. Don't be a sucker.

***

That's it. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Join your union. Stay in your union. I paid my first union dues to the United Auto Workers in 1975. I'm a member of SAG-AFTRA and a life member of UTLA. UTLA is not perfect, no union is, and I've had my fights with them. Maybe you're like me: you want your union to fight harder, demand more. What we've got and what we've gotten is not enough--not nearly. But if you think things suck now, imagine how much worse they could be. Then imagine worse than that, and that's where you end up without a union. 

If you're a teacher, the only thing between you and fifty kids in a class (apologies and massive respect to PE teachers), between you and unpaid training days and zero say in what you teach, is your union. The only thing between your job description which is actually written down, and "duties as assigned," is your union. The only thing between being paid not enough to buy a house in L.A. and being paid even less than that, is your union. The only thing between a satisfying if challenging career and being ground into dust ten years too soon, is your union. 

If you're writers in WGA or actors in SAG-AFTRA or the hospitality workers of UNITE HERE Local 11 or SEIU 99 or SEIU 721 or UPS Teamsters or my first home--the UAW, or any of the other unions advocating and marching and striking and picketing during this hot labor summer, the only thing helping us go from bad to better instead of worse, is our union.

And if you are somebody who just takes the collectively bargained money and vacation and delineation of duties and doesn't pay union dues, then fuck you.

The Best PD I Ever Had

Tomorrow is LAUSD's first day with students for the 2023-24 school year, and that means most day-long PDs will be replaced by shorter, more concentrated periods of agony delivered during extended school days. Not great, but at least you're already at work. And there's always a nonzero chance one of them will be exceptional.

Last one in the PD series, also from Answer Key…

four

Fucking emails (addendum)

Know who your friends are, and respond to their emails.

Professional Development sessions are mostly bullshit, of course, but once in a while there is a PD that is both essential and memorable. It has the potential to save time instead of wasting it, it is clarifying, and it provides you with a story you can retell--over and over again--with knowing colleagues over favorite beverages.

The best PD I ever attended was on a topic I don’t even recall. Could have been serving special needs kids or it could have been the winter talent show, I don’t have a clue. What I do remember, however, was a friend of mine risking alienation and official sanction by offering some crucial advice to his colleagues, i.e. me and the rest of the staff.

After the usual foolishness getting the meeting started, the principal referred to something in an email he had sent to everyone to read before the meeting. Blank faces. Someone even had the temerity to ask what it said. The principal told them and we all dealt with that piece of business. Then the assistant principal rose and asked if there were any questions about the new tardy policy, or something. “What new tardy policy?” “Yeah, what new tardy policy?” “I sent out an email.” “What did it say?” It was aggravating and discouraging and totally predictable.

In other words, up to this point, this could be any of the thousand PDs I attended in my career where the stupidity is as thick as vomit, and chunky too. But then things changed. The school was brand new and the staff were generally unknown to one another (a couple of us were longtime friends, and some of the elementary teachers had come from the same previous elementary school and hated each other). So when my friend Nick stood up and spoke to the staff thereby making this the very best PD I ever attended, they were… surprised. They didn’t know for sure how to interpret the following:

“Chuck? Can I just say something?” Nick asked our principal.

“Go ahead,” our principal replied.

Nick stood up. “PEOPLE! CHECK YOUR FUCKING EMAILS! Thanks, Chuck.” Nick sat down.

Nick got all kinds of shit from staff who mostly didn’t know him and thought he was either joking or out of line to talk to them like that. He didn't much care, and all I kept thinking was, “Was he talking to you? If not, then what are you complaining about? If he was talking to you, then check your fucking emails.” 

And that was it. The meeting was over and we never got to enjoy those two hours of whatever same PD we had endured periodically for a hundred years. Instead, we all went back to our rooms to do actual work things until the designated time of release, thus proving that the best "professional developments" are short, focused, and come in the form of helpful guidance from professional teacher to professional teacher.

Good luck. Have a great year. Please don’t let the bastards grind you down. 

Your only job is to love them.

Bon voyage. 

PDs: Tactical Weapons in the War on Teachers

Why do they do it? Why do administrators high and low insist on putting teachers through these instruments of torture aka “professional developments”? This is how it looked to me:

Mostly, school site leaders (i.e. principals, assistant principals, coaches tasked with doing the dirty work) were just checking boxes handed down to them by other administrators who were checking boxes handed down to them by yet more administrators. The needs of students and the needs of teachers serving those students were not central to their thinking.

At the top of this power pyramid scheme were politicians cosplaying as educators. The rest of the players were trapped in an ambition loop that went around and around until it ground them into gristle or spit them out and up for a job higher in the food chain.

Principals are the most immediate tormentors. They are the ones calling you to the same PD over and over again. They are the ones “moving on,” instead of following up or following through. Principals are the ones delivering or introducing canned presentations or canned consultants who know a lot less than you do and get paid a lot more.

It’s principals who force teachers to gather together to do a bunch of busy work in the gym or the cafeteria just so they can surveil them while they do it, you know, to make sure no teachers escape to do any actual work. And at the end of it all, it’s principals who send out surveys asking “How can we make PD better?” while never intending to make PDs better. And that I do not forgive.

Principals are bad. They are much worse than they have to be. But they are pawns in a mediocracy that rewards them for never saying no, even to the worst ideas. I’ve often compared principals to amoebas: they simply move toward the food source and away from any negative stimuli. There is no intellectual or moral component. They’re just following orders.

The real villains are the frauds running the show, the Big Bosses who give the orders. The Super and their various lieutenants hold the keys to advancement and that’s what principals really care about. If principals give a specific pointless slide presentation, or host a particular consulting firm, or introduce a certain approach to grading or formula for creating collaborative groups, it’s either been delivered from above or improvised by some lackey who just found out it was their job and can be blamed if it doesn’t come off. The Big Bosses are sure to be watching, and a promotion is always on the line.

In other words, the PDs are bad because the principals are bad, and their bosses are much, much worse.

Fundamentally, the Big Bosses at the top of this misery machine are politicians. They are unscrupulous climbers in endless pursuit of greater influence and the next, even more lucrative job. As with all politicians–especially those faking their way upward–these walking vessels of ambition are forever afraid of being found out.

That’s why this bunch likes to act tough. It’s also why they respond and overreact to pressure. Some of that pressure is self-inflicted as they stress about being outed before they can bamboozle their way to their next big job.

A lot of pressure, however, comes via the “failing schools” narrative promoted by the Enemies of Public Schooling and amplified by school privatizers and charter cheerleaders with an assist from credulous “news” outlets. The narrative creates pressure for “solutions” for the “failure” coming both from bad-faith school privatizers and good-faith concerned citizens (including but not exclusively parents) who are simply mis- or under-informed.

Either way, for a politician the pressure is real and must be responded to. The terrible PDs and senseless directives, all the bullying and the ridiculous orders are proof of performance and they need to be delivered to and enforced on thousands of school sites in the face of tens of thousands of accomplished professionals. That’s what principals are for. Hence, additional “training” for teachers in the form of “See? We’re really doing something!” PDs. And the “solution” for the “failure” is pointed directly at the easiest of targets, the teachers.

It’s not an accident. It’s a war. A war on public schools and schooling. A War on Teachers.

Administrators are not teachers for a reason. Whether at your school site or in the privileged seclusion of district headquarters, administrators’ concerns are not teachers' concerns. That’s why, in what they call “professional developments,” they can conduct in schools and school districts all over the country these time-wasting black holes that they cynically and dishonestly claim to be helpful while actually acting as a powerful weapon in the War on Teachers. This is from January of this year.

Professional Development

PDs are Tactical Weapons in the War on Teachers

Wednesday, January 11, 2023

The War On Teachers Part Two: Working Conditions - Instruments of Torture

(excerpted and revised)

To review: The project to destroy authentic public schooling is a war fought on many battlefronts. Essential to the project is the war on teachers.

The Enemies of Public Schooling have lots of strategies for making the teaching work space unworkable: suppressing teacher pay and attacking pensions, pretending class size doesn't matter (or pretending you've already addressed it), endless testing.

The aim is to degrade teachers' work environment--and students' learning environment--in a multi-dimensional campaign to grind teachers up and run them out of the classroom. No public school teachers, no public schools, and Vouchers for Everybody!

I wish I could say that attacks on teacher pay and pensions were the only issues driving teachers out or discouraging aspirants from becoming teachers in the first place. Or that huge classes and ceaseless testing were the only working conditions weaponized in the war on teachers. I wish that these were the only features in our work environment grinding teachers down and driving them out of the business. In fact there are many, many days when other features are even more destructive.

Some of this stuff doesn't fit perfectly into the category of deliberate attack. Much of it is the result of neglect and lack of imagination combined with an administrative structure obsessed with authoritarian hierarchies. Whether a result of action or inaction, direct attack or neglect, the war on teachers is waged through the de-professionalization, even infantilization of teaching.

From scripted lessons to stupid rules, teachers who are experts in their fields are demeaned and ignored, setting them on a course toward burnout and early departure. Again, destroy the teachers, destroy the schools.

Stragety.

I'm sure every teacher has their own list of things that drive them crazy about their job (feel free to add your own in the comments!).

However, it's the awareness that "things don't have to be this way" that makes these headaches a particularly corrosive weapon in the war on teachers. Every teacher knows that their working conditions are their students’ learning conditions, and that a degraded environment is bad for their students. Teachers live with that knowledge day in and day out.

Teachers also live with the knowledge that these working conditions are not acts of nature nor are they inevitable. These acts of sabotage are choices made by bosses implementing the choices of bigger bosses. Nevertheless, the results--degraded working conditions and a shortage of teachers qualified and willing to endure them--are the same.

It's the deliberate, aggressive disregard for teachers' experience and expertise and judgment and commitment to students that makes these instruments of torture so effective. So it is with “Professional Development.”

Let's take a ride on the reform-a-go-round, that carousel of "Hey! I've got an idea!" snake oil that consultants sell ceaselessly and education bureaucrats buy, swallow, and then throw up all over teachers in some dumbass new PD that interrupts the string of old PD reruns.

The only thing worse than sitting through the same stupid blood-borne pathogen PD you've sat through every September since 1998 is sitting through a brand new stupid PD where "experts" who don't know a roll book from a jelly roll hand out all the answers--brand new! answers to replace last year's answers--often recited from scripts memorized during retreats and delivered with a sickening excess of zippiness.

The whole exercise saps the strength of even the bubbliest newbies and eventually coats everyone in cynicism. You're sitting there thinking about the thousand problems with which you could really use some help, and you can only experience the same cycle of ill-conceived ideas presented as solutions so many times before ceasing to take the whole charade seriously. Especially as, year after year, you watch the initial administrative enthusiasm disappear as the latest miracle cure is poorly implemented, terminated prematurely, and fades into oblivion. Pretty soon it becomes clear: that's the game plan.

I've been through whole language, phonics, and reciprocal teaching PDs. I've been through Open Court, READ 180, sustained silent reading, reading circles, independent book study, context clues, journaling, and I'm sure lots of approaches I can't even remember. Every one of them was delivered as if the "method" was a brand new discovery, and as though each one wasn't connected to all the others and all the others not named. It was ridiculous and everybody knew it and everyone had to pretend it wasn't.

And I've left out Lucy Calkins because I just watched that battle from afar. I've also left off "science of reading" because I don't know what it is and I don't understand how it's different or why it has to replace anything. Such is the nature of the reading wars.

Note: Just for kicks, I googled "methods of teaching reading" and was introduced to "the" 4, "the" 6, "the" 7, 8, 10, 11 and 12 methods of teaching reading. That's enough for a whole semester of PDs!

So that's just the bouncing ball of teaching reading. Maybe some of you have had PDs on Carol Dweck and growth mindset. Maybe you've been subjected to Kagan cooperative learning structures.

Maybe you've sat through (probably one isolated) training on restorative justice. Maybe it was trauma-informed teaching, special needs students, differentiation of instruction (theoretical only–don’t ask us to model examples!), classroom management, student engagement, culturally responsive teaching.

Every teacher I've ever known could benefit from an in-depth training in any one of these areas--I know I would have--but do we get that? I sure didn't. It was invariably a one-off check-the-box presentation by a district consultant or an out-of-classroom coach who may have found out that morning that they were conducting the professional development. And virtually every one of the presentations ended with the question of what to do next and a promise to follow up. Needless to say, there wasn't any.

The reform-a-go-round is a circle, built of one miracle cure replacing another until you get right back to where you started. There is never any follow-up, no consummation, no progress. It is debilitating, and it is a powerful weapon in the war on teachers.

Wow, that was a lot. Must be twenty-five years of wasted Mondays and Tuesdays and weeks and weeks of summers all coming out at once. Restraint, beginning... NOW.




To all of you suffering through this nonsense these past several weeks, I repeat: Your anger is righteous, you are not alone, and you can get through it if you keep in mind what’s really happening--and what’s really important.

Just for fun, next post is a short one about the best PD I ever had. 

"Learning? What Learning? We're in the middle of testing." "I was misinformed."

Testing + PD =

Nuclear Powered Bullshit

Of all the PDs in all the towns in all the world, the ones purporting to be about “data” are easily the most absurd. More from Answer Key:

So if meetings are mostly bullshit, and PDs are bullshit, and as I've written before here, and here, and here, and here (among other places), data–specifically data from "Big Standardized Tests" (h/t Peter Greene Curmudgucation)-- is bullshit, then…

forty-four

PDs about data are nuclear powered bullshit.

These are the toughest to take without going completely insane. Besides all the philosophical reasons for opposing the toxic testing-industrial complex, and all the moral reasons for fighting against the reduction of human beings to data points, the numbers are phony. It’s all a fraud. The data do not mean what they say the data mean.

Now if you are tasked with administering these tests and you happen to be arithmophobic (an arithmophobiac?), you may not notice or want to, but the tests do not measure what they purport to. They are not reliable. They are not valid. First of all, if you’ve ever given a ten question multiple choice quiz to your students, you will know that even if you test exactly the same material again a week later, sometimes the same student will score higher and sometimes their scores will go down.

Performance on a task including an examination depends on any number of factors including blood sugar level and the quantity and intensity of available distractions. That is why no teacher worth the name would ever rely on a single assessment given a single time to evaluate a student in any significant way. 

We give tests, but we also give projects and writing assignments short and long, formal and informal. We assign debates, we listen to conversations and questions and we try to get a comprehensive, meaningful picture of what each student knows and can do along with some idea of what they need--particularly from us--in order to be able to know and do more. In other words, it's the opposite of the testing-industrial imperative. And it's not likely to be featured in a PD.

But it’s even worse than that. In addition to not measuring what a student has learned, the tests don’t deliver even within their own narrow objectives. They do not measure what they say they do.

I’ll give you an example: My school hired a group of education consultants to boost our test scores. (Hilariously, we were not allowed to acknowledge that’s what we were doing.) We had days and days and days of meetings with these “experts”--only the math and English departments of course, because (sotto voce) That’s what we test. Meanwhile, everyone else could work on what they needed to do to prepare for actual teaching.

And when we were through with these literal weeks of PDs, we had created five exams to give in each class, one every five weeks and each test would assess five distinct standards representing five discrete skills. That’s five, then five weeks later a different five, then a different five, until we get to twenty-five. Why twenty-five? They’re most frequently on the test.

And after each test we would look at how dismal our scores were and compare them to the previous test to see if they went up or down. In a PD about data* we would assemble in the elementary cafeteria and show each other our dismal scores (our scores? our students’ scores?) and make up a story about why our scores might have gone down or up, and we’d make posters and cut out student names and put up the posters around the cafeteria and go one-by-one around the room and tell our stories and stand for our sins. That is, those of us in the math and English departments. All others adjourn to your rooms to work on teaching stuff.

The tests were all different and "tested" different standards and skills. We were told we could not test the same things twice even if just to see if we had made progress. We compared scores from different kinds of tests and had to pretend that the improvement or decline from one test to the next meant something. “Wow, those kids really got it this time.” “Oh, (downward inflection) that’s disappointing. What did you do differently?” “I taught different stuff!” And we did this for years.

I tried several times during the early days of the catastrophe to point out that we were not actually measuring progress or the lack of it. “It’s apples to orangutans!” “Five answers to five questions is not a valid measure of proficiency!” “Who chose four correct answers as the benchmark for proficient? And why?” “Skills? Standards? I looked at the data and my student scores tracked their reading levels. Aren’t we really just assessing their reading?” I was... unheard.

And there’s more. We were required to give the exam--in English--to every single student. Boost scores? Shhh! Yet we were required to prep for and administer the exams to seniors who would never be taking another test in high school. Our ELD teacher was forced to give the exam--in English--to newcomers to the U.S. who had been in country for a week and spoke zero English. For these students and others, and for the teachers in their classrooms, the tests were a deliberate insult.

So why doesn’t someone put a stop to it? The testing for ratings for rewards and punishments is big business, that’s why. Hundreds of thousands--maybe bazillions of people are deeply invested in its preservation.

But doesn’t your administration understand how destructive it is? Why spend so much time prepping and administering and "analyzing" data that is so meaningless?

“It is difficult to get a man [sic] to understand something, when his [sic]* salary depends upon his [sic]* not understanding it.” Words by which to solve the puzzle and unriddle the world.*

So what do teachers do? Do what you always do: use your experience, expertise and best judgment to assess and support your kids. Be honest: Why does this matter to us? It doesn’t, but do your best anyway. 

Students, not skills. Students, not curriculum. Students, never ever Big Standardized Test scores. Start with the kids and what you want for them. Work backward from there to the curriculum. Figure out the standards afterward, and leave the "data" for the bosses to figure out.

Whatever you do, do not take them seriously--not the scores, not the administrators, and certainly not the PDs about data. Give the tests. Look busy at the bullshit PDs. Keep your job. Do not internalize their madness. 

*I prefer accurately quoting a source even if they are trapped in the sexist language of their day, but I didn’t want you to think I hadn’t noticed. Feel free to translate to the 21st century: It’s hard to get someone to understand something if their stock options depend on their not understanding it.

The Bull Sessions also known as Professional Developments

In reading about the experiences teachers are having this PD season, I see a lot of frustration and even disgust at being trapped in a grueling, insulting dog-and-pony show. Of course, I have a lot of sympathy for those of you still out there grinding, and I write to offer some context and encouragement. 

Like many of you, I can count on one hand the number of PDs I attended  that were actually helpful and that were conducted by people who knew what they were doing. Mostly these sessions were just exercises in patience, in how to hold your tongue and keep your head from exploding while thinking about the gazillion really important things you could be doing with that time.

Writing as a guy who went through PDs summers, weekends, and Mondays-then-Tuesdays for twenty-five years, I want to reassure you that your anger is righteous, you are not alone, and you can get through it if you keep in mind what’s really happening. Second in a series.

 Bullshit

This is from something I wrote called Answer Key: A Teacher’s Completely Unofficial, Fiercely Unauthorized Handbook and Survival Guide.

forty-one

Meetings are mostly bullshit.

Most of the people who call meetings do so because it’s their job. You can begin by remembering that, if your job is to go to meetings, you think having meetings is a job. It is not. As a teacher, going to meetings is most often a thing that keeps you from doing your job, keeps you from your work, makes it harder and makes it take longer.

People who have meetings are mostly out-of-classroom personnel looking for a way to justify their paychecks. They need access to you in order to check an “I did this” box, and they need a mechanism for pushing their work onto you. I think you’ll find that you can ignore most of what happens in meetings because, and this is true, I probably had the same exact meeting about differentiated instruction twenty times. Every time they were going to follow up and we were going to create a plan and report back and blah blah blah, but nobody ever follows up. That’s why you have to start from the same place and say the same shit twenty times. Check box.

Meetings with colleagues where you work together to set your own agenda and are free from bosses “checking on you to see if you need anything” are not bullshit, but they are still a pain in the ass. Everybody is busy and you always have something else to do. But even though they may include a preliminary bout between anger and exasperation, and often a detour into bellyaching and recrimination, they are still the most productive meetings I ever had. We actually did stuff that was actually relevant to our actual jobs. At least it felt like we were on the same side, mostly.

forty-two

Professional Development(s) are Bullshit.

Meetings called “professional development” are almost always bullshit. They are often delivered by people who don’t know your school or your students, and sometimes the messengers may not even know their own material. They may be there to show a video or read a presentation to you. On occasion, the meeting you were asked to prepare for may not even be the meeting you get. 

On this one I couldn’t even blame my bosses–not entirely anyway. I’ve had decent administrators turn entire PD weeks over to a teacher or team of teachers and suddenly the district sends a directive at 2:45 and it has to be done that day yadda yadda compliance. Check box. However, that doesn’t make it any easier to take.

Administrators are not teachers for a reason. Everything you know about constructing a lesson, sharing important information, following up in a timely manner, all that stuff is missing from the administrative brain. That’s how for twenty-five years, instead of what ought to be a five hour deep dive into parent outreach or child abuse recognition and response or support for special needs students, you get the exact same first hour of that PD over and over and over again.

These things will always be true:

• It’s frustrating to sit through the same PD for twenty-five years.

• It’s not always their fault, but that doesn’t make it any easier to take.

• It’s exasperating that there is never any follow up or follow-through.

• It’s maddening to have to sit through canned presentations from consultants who know a lot less than you do and get paid a lot more.

• It’s demeaning to be forced to do busy work in a workspace shared with a hundred other busy workers just so the marshals can monitor your pace of play and your attitude, you know, in order to make sure you're smiling through the bullshit.

And finally,

• It is degrading to be asked by administrators, “How can we make PDs better?”   It’s degrading and infuriating. And fucking ridiculous. They know. Of course they know. 

And if, in a moment of weakness or amnesia you actually give them an answer, they just pretend they haven’t heard you.

And that I do not forgive.