Teachers Union Enemy No. 1

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... hp_opinion


"For several months running, the Bill and Eva Show has been the talk of New York City politics. He is the new mayor, Bill de Blasio, an unapologetic old-school liberal Democrat, scourge of the rich and of public charter schools. She is Eva Moskowitz, fellow Democrat and educational-reform champion who runs the city's largest charter network.

How did Ms. Moskowitz, a hero to thousands of New Yorkers of modest means whose children have been able to get a better education than their local public schools offered, end up becoming public enemy No. 1?

She is the city's most prominent, and vocal, advocate for charter schools, and therefore a threat to the powerful teachers union that had been counting the days until the de Blasio administration took over last month from the charter-friendly Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Assailed by Mayor de Blasio and union leaders, Ms. Moskowitz is fighting back with typically sharp elbows.

"A progressive Democrat should be embracing charters, not rejecting them," she says. "It's just wacky."

As she reminds every audience, the 6,700 students at her 22 Success Academy Charter Schools are overwhelmingly from poor, minority families and scored in the top 1% in math and top 7% in English on the most recent state test. Four in five charters in the city outperformed comparable schools."...

For the teachers sake we need to drag those minority kids back to underperforming schools! It is wrong to give them a chance to excell.

Unlike public schools, charter schools in Colorado do not have to accept students with disabilities. Once the current board gets done with Jeffco schools, disabled kids will have no where else to go but underfunded public schools. Money is already flowing to Jeffco charter schools and that flow is undoubtedly going to increase.

I think of charter schools as good life rafts leaving sinking ships behind. It's great for those who were able to escape, but the rest of the kids who left shore on the big ship of traditional neighborhood schools are doomed.

I'd prefer to see fully-functional traditional schools first. A collection of life rafts in the ocean is where we end up in adulthood. Expecting children and unskilled parents to navigate the seas of educational opportunity is not what our state constitution envisions by way of a free and uniform education to children throughout Colorado.

This is a meaty issue and as a routine participant on the Colorado EdNews site, I realize the prevailing winds are blowing charters' sails forward. But I think in this community especially, we should recognize that our strong traditional public schools are the jewels in the community's collective crown -- and that all children everywhere are entitled to this same high quality exposure to opportunity and excellence. We should not, in other words, turn our backs against the ones left behind in struggling traditional schools and unable to manage the maze of alternative "choices" that may be closed before the kids can graduate.

What's the upside to once again having a 2 tiered education system, one for the haves, and one for the have nots.? If money is siphoned off the public system that handles the majority of children in a community to a charter system that cannot handle all the children in a community, are we not relegating a large number of students to a 2nd class education? Or do you all envision only charter schools and close the public schools? Would the current tax base support that?

How would a bus system handle multiple small schools with kids from all over the district?

As a separate post, I would like to comment that public workers in Colorado do not have the statutory right of union representation. That's why the focus of de-unionization is taking place here.

All that any school district needs to do here, in order to get rid of its teachers union, is for a Board of Education to collectively Resolve to refuse to recognize the union as the exclusive representative for all workers (teachers) in the bargaining unit. There is no statutory requirement to contract with it, as opposed to most other states.

Colorado has the first, and one of the strangest, labor laws in the country. Called the Labor Peace Act, the statute resonates with history from the bloody event we call the Ludlow Massacre. Striking miners had made a tent city not far from Pueblo, and one day the city was set afire by gun-toting company reps supported by the state. Women and children sent for protection into hollows beneath tents were burned alive.

Imagine that you are traveling on a train through Colorado, en route to California. Your train stops on the track in order to give cover to wounded miners being attacked by the state of Colorado militia. When you get to your destination, you tell everybody you know that Colorado has gone crazy and is killing its own workers! and a nationally embarrassed Colorado gets the nation's very first collective bargaining act, which gives private workers the right to elect their own labor representative.

Public workers (e.g., teachers) are excluded from the Act and are never added. So a local government here can recognize -- then threaten to de-recognize at the cessation of the contract -- a union that is really just a managerial arm of itself. Colorado should either add public workers to the Labor Peace Act so there is a mechanism whereby a representative can be fairly elected, or declare that public workers cannot unionize, but instead we sort of drive down the center lane and hope for the best.

archer, children attending charter schools are to get there on their own. That's part of the problem. The poorest members of society count on the traditional schools.

The decline of public schools began with the teaching of "cursive" in "Middle School".
The intellectual underachiever "teachers" who introduced "cursive" (instead of "script") and "Middle School" (instead of "Junior High") were the ones who began of the decline of academic rigor necessary for a solid education.

archer wrote: What's the upside to once again having a 2 tiered education system, one for the haves, and one for the have nots.? If money is siphoned off the public system that handles the majority of children in a community to a charter system that cannot handle all the children in a community, are we not relegating a large number of students to a 2nd class education? Or do you all envision only charter schools and close the public schools? Would the current tax base support that?

How would a bus system handle multiple small schools with kids from all over the district?

So, you would relegate ALL children to a 2nd class education? How wonderful!

Arlen, most of us on the pro-traditional schools platform would like to see the resources being directed toward charters, re-invested into the traditional schools instead.

There is a public confusion about charters -- specifically, they ARE public schools. There's a limited amount of resources in the school system -- and in deciding where to spend them, my personal "choice" continues to be in the traditional schoolhouse. That's partly because I have seen great charters (focusing on everything from the Arts to European languages) close their doors, leaving would-be graduates stranded.