Florida Man

Florida Man. 

Every teacher I've known has been the enemy at one time or another. It may have been remote and impersonal, like a newspaper article, denigration in Big Media, or disinformation on the socials -- Groomers! Pedophiles! Indoctrinators! Communists! 

It might have been very personal, with a principal who resented being challenged with difficult questions, with a parent at a meeting with a struggling student, at Thanksgiving with your crazy uncle -- Groomer! Pedophile! Indoctrinator! Communist!

Some of that stuff is ignorance, some is probably fear, some of it is just bullies being bullies. The hardcore loony shit can be dangerous if, for example, you happen to be wearing a mask, or some lunatics decide they don't like you and want other lunatics to know where you work, where you live.

This bunch is unhinged and cruel, but they can be arrested, and sued. It's not a perfect answer, but at least the harassment is illegal.

I'd argue that the extralegal threats and intimidation are not sufficient for the reactionaries and fascists to achieve the outcomes they desire. Their activities must be buttressed by a legal framework. That's why the lasting damage, the real danger to teachers and schools and to students, the stuff that turns teachers into officially certified villains, is what's being done legally, through bills being passed to codify the intimidation and authorize the harassment. Which brings us to Florida, and Ron DeSantis.

I'm really angry, so I'm going to go on for a while. For a more concise, less DeSantis-is-a-fascist-y take, PEN America has this really good breakdown from last year. It reviews the Florida laws I discuss in this post, plus one that chills speech on college campuses. 

Here goes...

Is Florida ground zero for the war on teachers? Or just an aggressive overachiever who refuses to lose? 

If you've been paying any attention at all, you know that Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, is building his MAGA bona fides on the backs of teachers and a paranoid delusion called WOKE (They can't define it--SEL! DEI!-- but they know it when they see it and it's baaaad.). How bad is DeSantis? Let's just say he made Florida so repressive and disgusting even mini-despot and world class suit-wearer LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said "I'm out of here." Maybe the town just wasn't big enough for the both of them.

Side note: What, exactly, would be the opposite of "WOKE"?

I'd heard a lot about DeSantis's campaign versus teachers and schools, among other things, but I didn't really know anything beyond the smug nastiness oozing from news clips on the teevee machine (h/t Charles Pierce). Who is this tiny troll? As with so much addressed in the Answer Key corner of the world, I needed to educate myself in order to write about it. 

Note: I have no first-hand information about the number of centimeters in one DeSantis (sources say 5' 9", 154 lbs. He looks bloated, right?), but he's certainly tiny on the inside.

Stipulate that the culture wars did not start in Florida, nor did they start three years ago with The Great COVID Conspiracy and a bunch of MAGA nuts and privileged white elites yelling "you're not the boss of me... er... my child!" while  burning their masks in a ceremonial freedom bonfire while blaming teachers and their union! for school closures (instead of, you know, a deadly virus).

Stipulate further that Florida has spent years dumping brain cells into the Gulf of Mexico and is now seeing vastly increased return on that investment.

Ripeness is all, as the only Shake-scene in a country might say, and so we have the fusion reaction of stupidity, racism, ambition, and homophobia in one great supercollider and out pops Ron DeSantis on Crusade.

And the boy has been busy. Ron of Santis came out swinging, wielding the sword of self-righteousness as he vanquished the enemies of the realm one by one and two by two. 

Start with COVID. Florida's response is instructive in a couple of ways.

I know this post is focused on laws, but I just have to say that if I'd seen DeSantis treat one of my students the way he bullied those kids at his photo-op for simply wearing masks, I'd have kicked his lawyer-not-a-real-SEAL ass right up between his ears. If you haven't seen this asshole working hard to be the biggest asshole, here he is:

In early 2020, DeSantis declared a public health emergency followed by a comprehensive state of emergency for the entire state of Florida. Within a couple of weeks DeSantis had issued "self-isolation" orders for travelers entering Florida (an action he blamed on other states and especially on New York City. In a nice touch, there was also a gratuitous shot at Florida's "southeastern counties and other urban cores"). 

In an additional "safer at home" executive order (signed April 1, ha ha), DeSantis continues to blame everybody else for making him order Floridians "to limit their movements and personal interactions outside of their home to only those necessary to obtain or provide essential services or conduct essential activities." 

The notion of respecting the guidance and expertise of anyone not named DeSantis clearly grinds his gears. Thus, by the end of April 2020, DeSantis had "convened the Task Force to Re-Open Florida" and begun to do so. 

On July 6, the Florida Department of Education ordered that "Upon reopening in August, all school boards and charter school governing boards must open brick and mortar schools at least five days per week for all students..." When the Florida teachers union sued DeSantis and Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran over safety concerns, DeSantis did what DeSantis does: He blamed somebody else. From Politico:

DeSantis on Monday put the order squarely at Corcoran’s feet and said it was meant to give parents the option of sending their children back to school.

“I didn’t give any executive order, that was the Department of Education,” DeSantis told reporters.

On September 25, the governor essentially lifted remaining restrictions. Cases immediately began to rise, with new cases peaking at over 15,000 per day in early January 2021 (up from about 2500 when DeSantis signed the order). 

Even that wasn't good enough for the governor. Seeing which way the crazy wind was blowing and eager to ride the MAGA wave--and subsequent waves of COVID--DeSantis signed an order in May 2021 prohibiting local jurisdictions from implementing local restrictions and mandates. Three months later the state topped 50,000 new cases a day.

On a roll and giddy with power, with sights trained directly on the White House and President Biden, the governor called the Florida legislature into special session to finish the job and pass four anti-mandate laws into existence as part of his "freedom agenda." In true fratboy style, DeSantis signed the bills in November of 2021--in Brandon, Florida. In early January 2022, new cases spiked over 70,000 a day, reaching over 100,000 at one point before receding to previous levels. 

DeSantis had ridden the waves without wiping out and that was it. Or was it? Reluctant to abandon a winning strategy and apparently wanting to get the most mileage out of being a dick, we got this in January 2023: "Governor Ron DeSantis Announces Initiative to Make Protections from COVID Mandates Permanent, Enact New Protections for Free Speech for Medical Practitioners." I'm not sure what "permanent" means in a democracy, but the November laws were scheduled to end in June and DeSantis was not about to let go of a good thing. 

In fact, he has upped the ante, now requesting a grand jury to investigate complaints about the vaccines, complaints that DeSantis amplifies and that are based on misinformation and junk science. Complaints that would be surprising to an earlier version of DeSantis who was at the time trying to keep his state alive and hadn't yet taken the temperature of the rubes and reprogrammable meat bags (h/t Rude Pundit). Here's a little video amuse-bouche of DeSantis's evolution.

I put you through all this for two reasons. One, DeSantis is an expert at finding what works. He has no principles except "I'm the boss!" and he will root around like a truffle hog until he finds that perfect blend of cruelty and sanctimony. He always has an audience because he's mean to the "right" people and there's nothing too big or too small for him be a dick about. He'll find the bright lights and run the perfect play. Over and over. For as long as it works. 

Works at what? Two, DeSantis is entirely a creature of power. It is his only reason for being on the planet. With COVID, as with all things DeSantis, there is no number of dead people that will stand in the way of his ambition. Being the biggest dick in the room is existential for him. Sound familiar? Except DeSantis thinks strategically. 

In June of 2021, while all the COVID hubbub was bubbling, DeSantis was expanding the battlefield in the culture wars. On June 1, 2021, the first day of Pride Month, DeSantis approved a bill that restricted athletes in public schools and colleges to sports teams based on their "biological sex at birth." Then on June 29, DeSantis approved the "Parents' Bill of Rights" establishing, among other things, the right of a parent "to direct the education and care of his or her minor child." 

The sports bill, CS for CS for SB 1028, started out as "An act relating to charter schools" and had zero to do with sex, gender, or sports.  After months of legislative chicanery it ended up as "An act relating to education," with an inserted section (Section 12. Section 1006.205, for those of you playing along at home). 

Designed to address a problem that doesn't exist except in the Fox-addled minds of the MAGA base, the so-called "Fairness in Women’s Sports Act" amended Florida law to require "Interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural, or club athletic teams or sports that are sponsored by a public secondary school or public postsecondary institution must be expressly designated as [male, female, or coed/mixed] based on the biological sex at birth of team members."

DeSantis got the librul tears he was looking for as the law prompted objections from Human Rights Campaign, the LGBTQ+ community, and of course Democrats. NPR reported on the bill signing: 

"In Florida, girls are going to play girls sports and boys are going to play boys sports," Gov. Ron DeSantis said as he signed the bill into law at a private Christian academy in Jacksonville that would not be subject to the law.

COVID was kind of played and the governor had found a new passion. He was now all tingly over school kids and their naughty bits. 

I'll put this here to draw the connection between the COVID DeSantis and the school DeSantis. (spoiler alert: it's the same asshole) This flyer concerns the November 2021 laws and comes from the governor's website.

So, again, November 2021, and you can see the school/family half of the menu starts with "nobody tells us what to do" bs about COVID and masks and quarantine, and it ends up with lawsuits and parents' rights and radical school boards. DeSantis runs a potent con and he doesn't hesitate to run it again and again. 

By December, DeSantis adds race to his mission and goes to war with "woke," whatever the fuck that means. On 12/15 DeSantis announces his "Legislative Proposal to Stop W.O.K.E. Activism and Critical Race Theory in Schools and Corporations," described as "a legislative proposal that will give businesses, employees, children and families tools to fight back against woke indoctrination."

Side note: Teachers are aware of their limitations. I know if I'd had any power to indoctrinate I'd have washed their brains full of empathy, curiosity, and joy, not to mention a love for hard work and a passion for Shakespeare. Turned out I was just not that important or powerful. 

Anyway, "Stop W.O.K.E." (with W.O.K.E. an acronym for the dopey "Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees") is such a hit as a follow-up to the great COVID rebellion that it played on all the stations right through the winter. By spring they were ready to roll.

In March we get the news on instructional materials with CS/HB 1467 which, among other things, outlines the clearance requirements for materials. There's also a requirement that each district school board create a process for parents to object to a specific material on any of several grounds. Pay extra attention to Florida statute s. 847.012! That's the "Harmful materials; sale or distribution to minors" portion of this freakshow, and you'll discover that any educator who provokes a parent objection takes a risk. It reads, in part, "Any person violating any provision of this section [which includes 'nudity' and 'narrative accounts of sexual excitement, or sexual conduct...that is harmful to minors'] commits a felony of the third degree." So long, Romeo & Juliet. Bye bye David. You guys had a good run.

After taking the weekend off, DeSantis was back at it again on Monday, March 28, as he signed CS/CS/HB 1557 , known as the "don't say gay" bill among those with a heartbeat and as the "Parental Rights" bill among Republicans. It builds on the "Parents' Bill of Rights" bill You can read it and make up your own mind, but for my money it does two things: prohibits discussion of " sexual orientation or gender identity" in grades kinder through 3 and to infinity and beyond if not "appropriate," and it forces educators to out their students to parents regardless of consequences for the kids. 

Finally (if only), we get the right-wing orgasm they've been edging for since last year aka forever. DeSantis signs the Stop W.O.K.E./Individual Freedom Act CS/HB 7 on April 22, 2022. 

It's true the college parts of the stopwoke circus were enjoined last November by Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker who called the law "positively dystopian." DeSantis then got called out for not working that hard to obey the injunction against stopwokeness in college. However, in January a new judge said the governor was doing just fine.

Seems the younger schoolkids are still being shielded from the WOKE, and the bill reveals a pattern of verbal trickery common to the Laws of DeSantis. At least. Let's have a look.

Part of the Act is a caution on teaching about race. See if you can find the traps. Okay, I'll help:

(3)     The Legislature acknowledges the fundamental truth that all persons are equal before the law and have inalienable rights. [The bait. We're all friends here.] Accordingly, instruction and supporting materials on the topics enumerated in this section must be consistent with the following principles of individual freedom: 

(a) No person is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously, solely by virtue of his or her race or sex. [Strawman.] 

(b) No race is inherently superior to another race. [Convinced? Agree?] 

(c) No person should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, disability, or sex. [Wait...What? Can you define that?] 

(d) Meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are not racist but fundamental to the right to pursue happiness and be rewarded for industry. [What are we talking about again? Dog whistle. Also, There's a fundamental right to be rewarded for industry?] 

(e) A person, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. [What if the person continues to benefit from those actions? Or do we want students to think racism is just... over? And responsibility to do what?] 

(f) A person should not be instructed that he or she must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress for actions, in which he or she played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. [The switch. Strawman, sure, but mostly gobbledygook cobbled together to get them where they always wanted to go: Shut up about race.]

                                (all emphasis and commentary mine)

It's a con, a bait and switch, a rhetorical flimflam. They use vague wiggle words so the boss can decide what they mean. Who adjudicates the words "adverse treatment"? Who decides when "may" becomes "must"? This allows the perps to deny the real meaning, purpose, and predictable effect of the law while satisfying the crazies.

Whether it's Orwellian or Lewis Carrollian, DeSantis and the De-Lites use language to deflect and enrage. Hence we get this doozy from the governor:

“No one should be instructed to feel as if they are not equal or shamed because of their race,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida.”

In keeping with tradition, they run this con over and over--and by "they" I mean DeSantis (the royal "They"). Regarding Don't say gay Parental Rights CS/CS/HB 1557, the Tampa Bay Times reported:

The text of the seven-page bill never mentions the word “gay.” Its vague provisions offer few details for how the ban on teacher-led instruction of gender and sexuality will be implemented in Florida’s public schools and yet both sides say they understand precisely what the intent is.

Then the paper went on to frame it as an "opponents say"  to describe a bill that, indeed, "both sides" precisely understand:

Opponents warned it is a solution in search of a problem because the primary provisions of the bill — banning teacher-led discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade — is a subject currently not taught in public schools. They say the law is intentionally vague, intended to suppress talk of gender inclusiveness in schools, intimidate teachers into avoiding the topic and target LGBTQ students. (emphasis mine)

Yes. Yes it is.

The sponsors of this perversion repeatedly say "nuh uh!" when confronted with the obvious intent of their fuckery. They are lying.

Doublespeak--descended from the marriage of Orwellian binary stars Newspeak and doublethink--is deliberately ambiguous language and allows a reader to think words mean one thing while the writer can claim they meant something different. 

But they (DeSantis) are not actually that interested in hiding their intentions. For example, in the stopwoke bill, almost every reference to "gender" is replaced with the word "sex," and every time the term is used with regard to protection against discrimination. In "don't say gay," "gender" appears twice, both times followed by "identity" and both times to tell everybody what not to talk about. "Gender" doesn't come up at all in the materials bill which is, I suppose, meant to warn teachers and librarians off everything to do with gendersex.

Even though everyone understands what the laws mean (and who they're meant for), I guess I was still surprised that the laws didn't say exactly what I expected from what I had heard. Turns out, the vagueness is the villainy and also the point. In trainings, out of the TV lights and away from the podium, the rules are being... clarified.

Librarians are being trained to "err on the side of caution" when considering materials. Here's the slideshow, from the Florida DOE. And here's the slide:

Here's a reminder about the law:

s. 847.012 is the pornography statute. How do you know if it's pornography? Glad you asked:

Need more? Here's part of what's illegal:

Harmful to minors? Who decides that? Guess:

Still not sure if Romeo and Juliet is okay? Before you decide, have a look at the penalty:

Like they said, err on the side of caution.

If you're thinking, "Well at least they're trying to protect librarians and media specialists," ask yourself if you trust any of them to decide or even know what "predominantly," "offensive," or "serious" "value" mean. Educators are being threatened and told they will be subject to severe penalties if they don't interpret the statutes correctly. Words can mean just what they want them to mean, and everybody knows what that means.

If you're thinking, "Well, that's for librarians. I'm a teacher," just stop. 

You should be thinking, "First they came for the librarians..." Or maybe, "Nice career. Be a shame if something happened to it." 

Anyway, the law applies to everybody and everything instructional.  "instructional material." 

You don't need a crystal ball. It's happening right now as Manatee County errs on the side of caution. Florida is leaving no doubt about what is expected. Here's a video! courtesy of Duvall County.

Who wouldn't be silenced cautious when you risk losing your job for getting too close to a very fuzzy and sinister line.

And just like the COVID con, DeSantis knows a good thing when he sees it and he is going to ride that train all the way. You will not be surprised to see that he has re-upped his war on teachers for another season. On January 23 he announced something called--I shit you not--a "Teacher’s Bill of Rights" that would, in his words, "increase teacher pay, support teacher empowerment and protect teachers’ paychecks by ensuring they have control over their hard-earned salary.” 

He called it a "huge package," but he may have been just boasting.

The "agenda" is essentially a recipe for breaking the union with cash prizes and permission to beat up kids as incentives. I'm not kidding. This, from the governor's website:

This proposal will establish teacher empowerment provisions in law and will include these main provisions:

• Establish a new process for individuals to notify the state of a violation of teachers’ rights and ensure that the Department of Education can investigate those claims.
• Empower teachers to maintain safe classroom environments by creating a “stand your ground” classroom safety policy to protect teachers who are often judged unfairly for maintaining order and safety in their classrooms.
• Clarify that teachers have the choice to join their local teachers union and will not face any repercussions if they opt not to join.
• Providing civil remedies for teachers who are asked to violate Florida law and punished by their employers for standing up for what is right.

It's a bribe for teachers to demolish their own union. And DeSantis is not stopping at high school. Those college perfessers are a thorn in his side, too:

The Governor’s proposal will create more accountability and transparency for public sector unions, including K-12 teacher unions and higher education unions.

Public sector unions. Hmm... That covers a lot of ground. However, it is not at all clear that the "accountability" includes unions that support the governor such as as firefighters and police. Sounding a little like a kid scared of getting the only spanking, union leader Terrie Brady wondered. This, from WJXT television in Jacksonville:

Terrie Brady, President of Duval Teachers United, questioned why DeSantis is targeting teachers unions and not other unions like those used by police and firefighters.

“In Duval County, we have four or five other unions here that represent members in the exact same way. They do collective bargaining, they have dues deduction, they are a stand-alone, they represent grievances due process, all sorts of things. Maybe it’s because we are the largest, you know, that could that could be it, maybe it’s because we are politically active,” Brady said. “I do want to stress that no union dues are used for political activities.”

Yes, do stress that. And I'm pretty sure "politically active" doesn't tell the whole story of why you're getting shit on. I'm sure that if you just gave up the idea that history happened and all kids should be protected and have equal rights, you might get out of the doghouse. But maybe not. DeSantis needs somebody in there that he can be tougher than.

All must bow before the fratboy king.

Next: The Teacher and the Fascist

Playing Politics: How did teachers get to be the bad guys?

 We have met the enemy, and it is us ???

If you are wondering how teachers got to be the bad guys, you are definitely in the right place. Of course, it's complicated.

Take a profit-driven industry pissed off about labor costs,

Mix in a bunch of taxpayers pissed off about paying taxes,

Sift together free-market monomania, political ambition and religious fanaticism,

Marinate in racism, sexism, and a scoop of toxic nostalgia (at least overnight, over centuries is best),

Stir in memories of all the terrible teachers you ever hated and

Voilà!

We have definitely been depicted as villains; let's take a look at how and why.

Teachers are viewed by the privileged and powerful as the delivery systems for dangerous ideas such as LGBTQ+ rights and race equity (don't say anti-racism!) and, of course, income equality. Therefore, educators are at the nexus of legislation prescribing what can and can not be taught (and how), and the implementation of those laws. In other words, teachers are responsible for sanctioning and distributing certain kinds of knowledge while delegitimizing and withholding others.

We'll start with the laws. I'll focus on "CRT," sex, and "parents' rights" for now and leave most of the mask mishegoss for next post when we'll get to the who and why of all the bashing. (For those of you looking for a school choice rage party, please be patient.)

It's not just for Florida anymore. It never was.

UCLA School of Law has a CRT Forward Tracking Project. It has an interactive map and, as they describe it, "includes state and federal legislation but also goes much further, into areas where systematic research tools are sparse. It tracks actions by school boards and other local governments, as well as non-legislative actions at the state level, such as regulations, executive directives and attorney general opinions." 

The ACLU has an interactive chart "Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S. State Legislature[s]" that links to the text of bills and provides each bill's status.

Parents' Rights are all the rage, and they serve as the rich canopy under which anti-CRT, "don't say gay," and rules for book-banning and outing kids to their parents, can grow and flourish. These PR bills may take first place in the "words mean what I want them to mean" race. 

Most of what's in most of the bills is a rehash--this time louder and in ALL CAPS--of stuff parents already have and can do. Section 445 of the General Education Provisions Act (first passed in the 1970s and re-upped in 2020) gives parents the right to view instructional materials and opt their students out of surveys and "analysis" based on challenged materials. When it comes to sex, most states already require parent notification and offer an opt-out (or opt-in) to families. That doesn't stop these folks from passing the same "new" law over and over. Red meat eaters need red meat.

This is the latest from PEN America. Read it and weep.

They get away with birthing this calamity in part because the laws hurt the people the base wants hurt, and partly through rhetorical legerdemain. The language of the bills is both redundant and deliberately ambiguous. Concepts like "age-appropriate" and "unsuitable" rely on nonexistent good faith and invite parent/?/activists and the billionaires who own them to contest lessons and materials that conflict with their personal (corporations are too persons!) ideologies. 

As a result, the laws that claim to promote transparency and protect a parent's right to "direct" their child's education function as a way for those parents to also direct the educations of other parents' kids. Rights for me, not so much for thee.

The bonus is the ability for parents to sue for damages and costs along with "injunctive relief" if the school district does not rectify the issue to the parent's satisfaction. This is the main mechanism for chilling speech and erasing disfavored knowledge, experience, history, and people from the public conversation that occurs in schools. 

If you're thinking that most people won't go so far as to sue a school, or that they can't afford to, you might be right. But there are a lot of interested groups that are eager to finance just such an effort, and as anyone who has worked in a school can tell you, the bosses are terrified of lawsuits. So terrified you don't actually have to bring them. Maybe one or two.

Reminds me of The Maltese Falcon: 

Gutman: "Well, sir, there are other means of persuasion besides killing and threatening to kill."

"Sure," Spade agreed, "but they're not much good unless the threat of death is behind them to hold the victim down."

For now, the lawsuits can go both ways. But not smoothly. 

Of course not all of these legislative grenades make the national news and when they do, as in the New York Times here and the Washington Post here, NBC here and ABC here,  the reports have often just reviewed some of the hundreds of bills proposed. And in Congress, a federal "Parents' Bill of Rights Act" remains under the radar and has so far made barely a ripple.

Even when it does occur, reporting on the bills is usually smothered in partisan horse-race "analysis" that rarely pierces the veneer of process and "for the children" bad faith. Instead, these articles split their inches between dramatic horror stories from the frontlines and tedious "who's winning?" back-and-forth conflict porn. 

What is much harder to find is an honest investigation into the origin and purpose of these culture wars. Kathryn Joyce who writes for Salon and Vanity Fair among others, has this, about which we will hear more next time (Vanity Fair also has this and this.) The New Yorker has this and that.

In the blog and blog-adjacent universe, Peter Greene @palan57 does a great job connecting the dots at Curmudgucation, Forbes, and The Progressive. 

Anne Lutz Fernandez @lutzfernandez puts it together on her substack. 

Steven Singer @StevenSinger3 is a Gadfly on the Wall who has been at it for a while. 

Nancy Flanagan @nancyflanagan is a Teacher in a Strange Land. 

Jan Resseger @JanResseger brings the hammer on her blog, sometimes reprinted on the awesome... 

...Network for Public Education @Network4pubEd website (boasting a team that includes Executive Director Carol Corbett Burris @carolburris and Leonie Haimson @leoniehaimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters), and on... 

...Diane Ravitch's essential blog that serves as a crucial platform for amplifying these voices along with many others. 

For the digitally inclined, Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider are masters of the domain with their podcast, Have you Heard.

For the enlightened and antediluvian, there are books! I haven't read them all, but I'm still young (at heart) and still learning. The following titles are a sample of those I've either bought, started, finished, or had recommended to me.

A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School by Schneider and Berkshire

Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy by Derek Black

And anything from Diane Ravitch, but especially The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education

☝

There is a lot more than culture wars legislation in the work of these writers. If you want to know what's really going on out there, you should start here. Read their stuff. Listen to it. Follow them on twitter. Don't spend your career in a silo like I did. 

Next up, the guest of honor. The hero responsible for bringing together all the bad ideas and shitting them out as a state-sized turd hanging off the asshole of the country. Florida Man.

LAUSD Up -- Periodic Reporting on the Los Angeles Unified School District - Episode Four

deja vu all over again

Today marks the 4th anniversary of the @UTLAnow 2019 strike! All 32,000 UTLA educators out at 900+ schools, over 80,000 folks on the streets. Now UTLA is back at the table demanding LAUSD use its $4.9B to fund better wages, smaller class sizes, special education. We will win. pic.twitter.com/pFlHk3yor1

— Jollene 🍞🌹 (@jollenelevid) January 14, 2023

Hello and welcome to our periodic report on the conditions inside the LAUSD. These days you might be forgiven for feeling like you've seen this before. 

A couple of updates from previous posts:

• Apparently last year's data breach started long before the district admits. Shocking, I know. Potential victims should receive a "Notice of Data Breach." Still, according to the district, even though dates of birth and addresses of some students and staff were affected, the breach "does not appear to extend to the payroll records and Social Security numbers for the tens of thousands of district employees." Take that for what it's worth. District contractors were not as lucky. They were significantly impacted and lost payroll records. I guess they probably should contact the district and check their mail.

• Did somebody say acceleration days? The acceleration days seem to have come and gone with nary a ripple. The Daily News reports that although some 70,000 students signed up, "only about 40,000 attended one or both days in person" according to Chief of School Operations Andres Chait."

         "One or both" is a nice dodge. In other words, of the 140,000 student days signed up for, perhaps as few as              20,000 actually occurred. That's slightly less than the 60,000 (120,000 student days) originally reported by           the district. That the district and superintendent overestimated themselves and puffed up the numbers                  should come as a surprise to exactly no one.

Now for the news:

First, congratulations to Jackie Goldberg for her election as president of the LAUSD school board. After teaching in Compton Unified for sixteen years, Goldberg was first elected to the LAUSD Board of Education in 1983, serving two terms before also serving on the Los Angeles City Council and in the California State Assembly.

Goldberg was once again elected to the school board in 2019, shortly after the strike, and her election marked a shift in what had been a period of antagonistic, pro-charter dynamics on the board. Her elevation to president, the election of Scott Schmerelson as vice president to replace pro-charter Nick Melvoin, and the November election of Rocio Rivas to replace Monica Garcia may spark progress on a new contract for UTLA. 

In the meantime, the stonewalling over a new contract continues as we enter 2023. Much of the stuff the union is proposing this time sounds a lot like the stuff from 2019 as teachers continue to fight for their students in spite of opposition from what is often referred to as a "school" district but what might be better called the "boss" district.

Met mostly with sneers and silence from the district, LAUSD teachers have been working without a contract since June of 2022 and the district's bargaining position seems to be "no." Over a series of more than a dozen "bargaining" sessions, the district has barely budged, offering two 5% salary raises over the next two years and some one-time bonuses meant to be the shiny object suckering teachers into taking their eyes off the ball. 

The bonuses do not count for base rate nor pensions, and will not incentivize new candidates to dedicate themselves to careers that won't start for years, well after the bonuses have evaporated into the mist. And a one-time bump that disappears just as you're trying to buy a house, or your own kid heads off to college, and that doesn't benefit your retirement doesn't look great for veterans either. 

Now, for those of you who think teachers are already paid well, you either don't know or don't want to know the truth. I've written about it several times such as here, and here. Teacher pay nationally has not kept up with inflation much less made anybody rich, and in Los Angeles the cost of living makes recruiting and retaining teachers even more difficult. 

For those of you screeching on social media about paid vacations and test scores and--gasp!--teachers unions, and especially those of you accusing the union of corruption and teachers of not caring about their students or even being "groomers," I say this as a dues-paid lifetime member of UTLA and former union rep and organizer for my school: you are full of shit and go fuck yourselves. I may be out of the classroom, but I'm not out of the fight.

Not only was LAUSD's latest money offer inadequate, but the district proposal rolls back a crucial element of the 2019 settlement: class size caps.  In 2019 we fought for and won the elimination of squishy "may not be achieved due to circumstances" class size language, and although class size maximums are still too high, the district now proposes that they be allowed to place an indeterminate number of students in a class. That is not a typo. 

If you're a teacher and your class is at the limit, and your school decides to program a couple more students into it, CONGRATULATIONS! You get a fixed payment of an extra $500 per semester. If they put in two more? Five hundred. Ten additional students? Still just five hundred bucks. Twenty? You do the math. 

It's almost like LAUSD is not bargaining in good faith. So what happens next?

It's hard to know if the changes in the school board will have any impact on negotiations, especially as salaries and class size are only two facets of UTLA's Beyond Recovery platform of proposals. It is noteworthy that the vote to hire Alberto Carvalho as superintendent was unanimous (I first wrote about the guy here and here). Baffling in light of what we knew then, which is very much the same as what we know now. 

Times education reporter Howard Blume writes--accurately--that "[t]he school board, including Goldberg, has so far stood publicly united behind Supt. Alberto Carvalho in negotiations and policies." Four years ago, according to the Times, Goldberg "supported the teachers union’s claim that the district could use its reserves to meet teachers’ demands." Whether a similar argument has traction in present negotiations remains to be seen.

At any rate, education autocrat and world-class suit-wearer Alberto Carvalho, in one of his first official acts apart from photo ops from his never-ending public relations carnival and publicity tour, suffered a stinging defeat over the acceleration days, and is likely eager to demonstrate his authority.

Regardless of how the money shakes out, Carvalho is certain to target any power-sharing elements of any prospective contract. We've seen Big Shots before, both at the district level and on school sites around town. They come in ready to kick some ass and they hide behind their professed concern for kids as they unironically bash teachers to prove it. Thing is, teachers can actually do their jobs without a superintendent. Superintendents without teachers are just clerks.

Nevertheless, this has all the makings of a drive to break the union as a partner in LAUSD schools and schooling, and the stalling and stonewalling is clearly a tactic designed to frustrate and enervate. It would be self-defeating if UTLA were to, out of frustration or fatigue, take the bait and settle for cash. It would be tragic if that became their only option to keep their membership together because they failed to cultivate support.

I urge UTLA to begin preparations for a strike. That means a strategic information battleplan to mobilize community support and bolster teacher awareness and solidarity. 

Don't look for help from the press. The L.A. Times is already printing alarmist scolding from Chapman University's Joel Kotkin and "tech-entrepreneur" Marshall Toplansky, reliable "naysayers" whose podcast, "The Feudal Future Podcast," claims to "explore what we can do to liberate the global middle class." 

Their Times piece, in which they argue that "California’s regulatory and tax regimes discourage new investment" and accuse Governor Newsom of "hand[ing] out thousands of dollars of goodies to struggling households," and "creat[ing] massive direct subsidy programs for housing and healthcare," characterizing it as "largesse," leans heavily into entrepreneurship and venture capitalism. It is titled "California’s budget surplus has vanished and its economy is in danger. It can go one of two ways." It's not hard to figure out which way they recommend. 

It's not that the authors don't have a point--or at least a point of view--it's that the Times is forever promoting tax relief and deregulation on its way to "schools cost too much." This is no exception. 

More annoying and perhaps more dangerous if allowed to stand unchallenged, is the Times' propensity for characterizing teachers and our union as self-serving, as if we care only for personal advantage rather than for the needs of our students. In his latest, education reporter Howard Blume, who has been better recently, defaults to describing Goldberg's election as "signal[ing] a potential school board majority shift to priorities of the teachers union" without acknowledging how thoroughly those priorities align with and support the needs of students.

No, the press is unlikely to be helpful. It is up to UTLA to communicate a clear, coherent message and unite teachers and cultivate broad support. What's needed is a strategic information battleplan. People--and especially members and potential members--need to know in concrete terms what the fight is about. Some of it sounds... aspirational. "Support for anti-poverty programs in Los Angeles"? I'm all for big ideas, but I want to know how we get them done. 

However, most of the program is ambitious and extraordinary, and detailed. But I'm not going to lie. When I read it, it's a little overwhelming. 

This is better.

Still, I think members need to have a clear-cut answer that we can all remember. Something that's unassailable and unambiguous. Something we can deliver to friends and family, to our students and their parents. An answer to "What do you guys want?" that receives an "Oh, I get it."

I think we did a pretty good job of this in 2019. The UTLA team and then-president Alex Caputo-Pearl crafted a cogent message out of "69 pages of demands to the school district," and they made the rounds talking to members at school after school in order to deliver it. A lot of people have taken shots at Caputo-Pearl, particularly for the settlement, but the overwhelming support for the strike (and the strikers) speaks to the advance preparation. 

I was able to walk out of those meetings and into the rooms of my colleagues and talk about the issues in ways that spoke directly to the immediate concerns of members. I was even able to speak to nonmembers about the importance of unity, focusing on the fact that our demands were crucial for making every teacher's workspace and every student's learning space better. 

"Think about your class sizes," I'd say. "Think about the size they need to be for you to do a better job." "Now think about how big they would be if you had no union fighting to make them smaller." I'd ask them if they thought their paychecks would get bigger or their classes smaller without a union. I'd ask them if their days were too long, and how long they thought those days would be if the district had their way. Tenure. Pensions. Grievance protections against bad bosses.

However, over the last six months when I've asked my friends about updates, they tell me they haven't heard anything. I know it has been better lately, and I know a news blackout around negotiations is not unusual, but members need to know if talks are continuing (or not) and what next steps might look like and what they should be doing to prepare. I have seen no evidence that timidity in the face of tyranny mollifies the tyrant. Power concedes nothing without a demand. 

Prior to 2019, I can remember being frustrated that the union wasn't more forthcoming with respect to contract negotiations, and I know my friends still in the business are now. It doesn't have to be this way.

In a really good article in The New Yorker, Jennifer Gonnerman explores the long relationship between UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and there's a lot to pay attention to in the context of UTLA's present battle.

With respect to messaging and preparation, the Teamsters have been working for a year to prepare the membership for what's to come and for what will be necessary in order to be successful. Through designated organizers they have been running rallies, meetings, informal discussions, as they prepare for battle. UTLA doesn't have a year, so it needs to gear up existing efforts. You can't grow a job action unless you cultivate the membership. 

The message needs to be clear and constant. Sean M. O’Brien, General President of the Teamsters’ told Gonnerman that the two-tiered compensation and protections of UPS workers was going to be a "strike issue" in the upcoming negotiations. 

What are UTLA's strike issues? The elaborate and extensive Beyond Recovery platform is admirable, and I understand the drive to connect local concerns to broader global struggles, but can the union really ask members to strike over green spaces? 

If the answer is yes, then how do we justify that to our members face to face in their classrooms? How do we explain to parents and our students? To the public? I'm not saying back away from the big ideas in the package, but rather find the five or ten things that you message on. Over and over. The answer to the question "What do you guys want?"

The UPS Teamsters also face many of the same obstacles faced by UTLA and teachers around the nation. There are non-union private contractors (Amazon). 

"The drivers of those vehicles are not Amazon employees; they work for delivery services that have contracts with Amazon." 

 "These convoluted arrangements make it much more difficult for Amazon to be held legally responsible for the drivers’ treatment. It also makes unionizing them nearly impossible; if drivers at a delivery company try to unionize, Amazon can simply cancel that company’s contract."

O'Brien relates how "the government has allowed this independent-contractor model to basically exploit obligations of employers." Any private school teacher and most charter school teachers can relate. He goes on to say that this fragmented model has "made it difficult for UPS, with its full-time drivers and regular start times, to keep up." He then "imagined what might be going through the minds of UPS executives: “How can we compete with this nonsense?” 

I used to say the same thing, about private and charter schools.

Even with a union, UPS workers face micromanagement and surveillance, coerced labor (driver Antoine Andrews says of new workers, "'They do know better...But they are scared.'”) and a driver's workday that does not end until their last package is delivered, birthdays and anniversaries be damned. Sound familiar? Now imagine work life without the Teamsters, without UTLA.

Vinnie Perrone, president of Teamsters local 804, knows one very important thing:

To succeed in their contract battle this year, the Teamsters will need to keep a united front—between inside workers and drivers, between veteran drivers and 22.4s, between “feeder” drivers (who drive tractor-trailers) and everyone else—and Perrone has been insisting on total solidarity.

The divide between "inside workers" and drivers, between veterans and newer workers reminds me of the way our veteran and less experienced teachers, our classified and credentialed personnel are often strangers when we ought to be allies. We need to be fighting side by side to strengthen each other's positions. Seeing contracts among different working constituencies as a zero-sum game only benefits the bosses. 

It's our job. It's everybody's job, a sentiment expressed slightly differently at a meeting in the union hall, by a member and former driver who was shot on the job and shuffled to another position:

Looking out over the crowd, he exhorted his fellow union members to stick together in the coming months, to not let their managers divide them. “My question to us is: How are we going to help them”—the union leaders at the front—“get us the best contract for 2023?” he said. “That’s the question we should all go home, talk to our families, meditate on, and, Monday morning, come in and fight. Because we need better language for everyone, from driver to preloader. We got to help each other out, brothers and sisters. We will not survive if we don’t.” 

Teachers are in a battle, and if we don't fight--against the "independent-contractor" model of schooling, for better pay and working conditions, for smaller classes, for more support for students, for more humane and just schools--the district is not about to just hand them over. 

The battle is not just for ourselves, but if teachers don't defend themselves and their co-workers, and their students and their schools against the autocrats with their blunders and bad ideas, who will? It must be teachers first, or who will step forward?

We need to get our story straight and buckle up. It's going to be a bumpy year.

Good Luck. See you next time.

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

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 make 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 teachers, no schools.

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, but in fact there are many, many days when other elements 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 as a result of action or inaction, direct attack or simply neglect, much of 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. 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, in every case it's the awareness that "things don't have to be this way" that makes them a part of the war on teachers. These working conditions are not inevitable nor are they acts of nature. They are choices made by bosses carrying out the choices of bigger bosses. And it's the deliberate, aggressive disregard for teachers' experience and expertise that makes these instruments of torture so effective.

Nevertheless, the results--degraded working conditions and a shortage of teachers qualified and willing to endure them--are the same.

First 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) training on restorative justice. Maybe it was trauma-informed teaching, special needs students, differentiation of instruction, 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 out-of-classroom coach who 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 Tuesdays coming out. Restraint, beginning... NOW.

Second, Dis    ru  p    t  ions.  

It's hard enough to get kids to focus.

It's hard to get anyone to focus in this 2023 world.

It's hard to string thoughts together in a logical sequence.

It's hard to do a lesson that starts where you left off yesterday and ends up where you need to stop for today.

Now add in announcements, late students, bathroom breaks, visits from "the office," trips to "the office,"--phone calls about attendance? For the love of god, email me!--tech glitches, fire drills, shake drills, fire false alarms, and you have dis    ru  p     t ions. Now it's harder than hard. 

These are the institutional disruptions. This doesn't even count the hungry kid or bored kid or crying kid or fighting kid or kid just having a bad day. The kids are easy. Well, not easy, but they're the reason you're there in the first place. Having kids called out of your class for pictures one at a time is not.

I was significantly more tired at the end of each day, each week just owing to the constant Dis    ru  p    t  ions. The pummeling may not have been intentional, but it took its toll. And again, operating in this careless way is a choice. It's a choice to make somebody's job easier while letting teachers and their students pay the price. 

Third, Active Shooter Drills. This one is in the "neglect and lack of imagination" category, but the failure to address gun violence in schools is another part of the war on teachers--and on students, staff and schools themselves. It's the shooting part of the war. 

Active Shooter Drills send students and teachers huddling in corners--away from the windows!--and remind everybody that they could die at any moment. Now back to complete sentences!

Where I taught, students were sadly familiar with gunfire and they knew the futility of putting a desk between yourself and a gun. The drills were a reminder that school was nothing special. They were also a reminder that the people in charge had no good ideas and didn't care enough to come up with any. So we did the drills--over and over until they were no longer taken seriously. 

And what's worse than active shooter drills? Active shooters. We had a couple where I worked. But think of Oakland. Uvalde. I think of the teacher in Virginia shot by her six-year-old student. I think of students having guns because practically everybody has guns. Answer? More drills. Wonder if parents and their kids and teachers and their kids think that's an adequate response. 

Fourth, Stupid rules. 

I was lucky to be inoculated against some of the dumb rules  simply because of seniority, and maybe union representation, and probably National Boards. I like to think my bosses were just too embarrassed or incompetent to make them stick. In any event, I was able to get away with ignoring a lot of them. That's not the case for everyone. And it isn't so easy in today's world of test scores and constant monitoring and micromanagement. Too bad.

A lot of the dumbest rules come from from the top, from the boss's bosses or from some stupid principaling program that teaches as its first lesson that teachers are all troublemakers and slackers and the only way to handle them is to show them who's boss. Make them do whatever you want the way you want, and you establish your authority, so the pitch goes. "How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?"

I always smelled the fear of a pretender worried about being found out. Lots of administrators are in charge of people who know much more about the job than they do, and the only way to counteract that is to be boss, when important stuff is happening but especially when the activity is meaningless. 

That's how we get to dress codes for teachers with rules for shoes and tattoos and jeans and even hair, rules that dictate no gum, and print out all your grades and I even heard about no sitting. Do not talk to any student in the hallway and Only speak directly with a student privately in the hallway. You even have stupid rules to make your students follow stupid rules: Backpacks must be stored on the backs of desk chairs, brain breaks every fifteen minutes

After I retired, the new principal where I had taught decided that everyone would come to campus for PDs in advance of the beginning of the school year. The school was just preparing to open after COVID closings, and they had a few days of prep scheduled. When everybody got there, they got a schedule and were sent to their rooms for professional developments--via zoom! I kid you not. "We could have zoomed from home!" my unlucky pals complained. Ah, but then he wouldn't have had the pleasure of making you do something stupid. 

I taught in what's called a span school and we had k-5 on one campus and 6-12 on an adjacent campus. Each campus had its own sign-in and life went on. We got a new boss one year and he decided he would have all the sign-ins at the elementary campus. It only took an extra ten minutes, and it seems like a small thing, but that's the point. He got to show us who was boss. Stupid rule.

And don't even get me started on scripted lessons synchronized among rooms so that they're portable--a student can leave my class and walk into Ms. Moran's and be on the same page! 

Has anyone ever been directed to "touch the poster"? We had posters of standards and objectives and--no kidding--we were supposed to walk up and actually touch them periodically throughout the period. If we happened to have an administrator observing, it was one of the things they knew to look for because it was one of the boxes they had to check. A kid could be on fire and they might miss it. But the poster...

Stupid rules are make-work for bureaucrats, signifiers of authority for administrators, and instruments of torture for teachers. 

Fifth, Idiot Evaluators.

The same people charged with enforcing stupid rules are the people who get to tell you whether you're doing a good job. what a racket.

I used to have a post-it on my desk just for myself. It read, "The answer to 90% of life's questions is 'because they're idiots.'" When it comes to education bosses--especially those tasked with evaluating you on something they've never done in a subject they've long forgotten, the number is closer to 100%.

As a tenured teacher with a fairly strong union, I had the advantage of performing the dog and pony show once or twice every couple of years, taking my eval and going back to teaching. Others, probationary teachers for example, and especially those in pilot schools with elect-to-work agreements that allow for nonrenewal and release, do not have that advantage. 

For everybody, however, the prospect of having someone who doesn't understand your job judge you according to a set of criteria that sometimes are at best peripheral to serving the kids, is maddening.

Sixth, Cameras in classrooms.

If there's a better expression of the contempt with which school bosses regard their students and staffs than cameras in classrooms, I don't know what it would be. The mistrust, the assumption of incompetence, the notion that teachers must be coerced into doing their jobs, all are revealed in this latest shiny object.

For students, even though their privacy has for years been sold by school officials, the enterprise is now juiced up with science fantasy as districts are investigating facial recognition software to augment to their systems. What could possibly go wrong? "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave."

To conclude, the war on teachers is a multi-dimensional campaign to grind teachers up and run them out of the classroom. It is deliberate, the result of specific choices. It is waged through neglect, lack of imagination, and direct attack and bolstered by a hierarchical power structure based on mistrust and that results in leaders who resist collaboration and shared decision making. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Working conditions like those discussed here--along with a variety of others that have impacted thousands of teachers--may seem less consequential than overriding concerns like teacher pay and pensions, or workload attached to excessive class sizes, but in the day-to-day these working conditions compound the destructive effects on teachers' work lives and careers and remind us that we are not valued. In fact we are degraded and disregarded as teaching is de-professionalized. This leads many to leave the profession as soon as possible, and discourages others from entering the classroom altogether. And one more time...

Thanks for hanging in with me these past few weeks. Again, I'd love to hear about your own experiences in the war on teachers. There's lots left, like poor ventilation, no heat or air conditioning, 20 minute lunches, bathroom breaks, covering classes, etcetera etcetera etcetera. And I didn't even get COVID re-openings and phantom safety measures. Feel free to comment anonymously if that's better for you. 

Next time we'll broaden the focus to include attacks on the institution of public schooling itself--you know: charters, vouchers, funding, school board takeovers, those crazy CRT book banners--that type of thing. Until then...