The people running the Chicago union today were at the top level of their profession as teachers when they were elected 2 years ago. I got to know many of them when they were still in the classroom and much of their conversation was about the kids. They were as much driven by what ed deform was doing to their kids as what it was doing to teachers.....Even if they end up settling for relatively few gains on the surface, they have won already in the minds of teachers all over the nation. – Ed Notes
buoyed by energetic rallies in which even parents inconvenienced by the strike waved placards in support. Other unions were joining in, with school custodian representatives saying their members will walk off the job this week as well. -- NY Post
"This union figured out they couldn't assume the public would be on their side, so they went out and actively engaged in getting parent support," Bruno said. "They worked like the devil to get it." --Robert BrunoTo get this level of support amongst the members, a union leadership has to engage the membership who will then engage the parents. To do that requires breaking the level of cynicism that exists amongst the rank and file towards the leadership. And there was plenty of that in Chicago before CORE took over in 2010, only two years after their founding. To inspire trust in the leadership the rank and file has to sense that the leadership is on their side. Maybe some view it as symbolic, but the large cuts in salary Karen Lewis and the others took made an impact. And helped balance the budget of a union in debt when they took over. They used money saved to hire organizers to prepare the teachers for whatever come. I know some of these organizers and still much of their talk is about the kids.
To win friends, the union has engaged in something of a publicity campaign, telling parents repeatedly about problems with schools and the barriers that have made it more difficult to serve their kids. They cite classrooms that are stifling hot without air conditioning, important books that are unavailable and insufficient supplies of the basics, such as toilet paper.In a short time, an upstart group of relatively young teachers convinced 92% of browbeaten teachers under 17 years of mayoral control, that a strike, even in Leo Casey's vaunted you have to consider "the climate of the times," was not only feasible, but offered an opportunity to reverse the direction of ed deform and turn it into real reform.
"They've been keeping me informed about that for months and months," Grant said.
It was a shrewd tactic, said Robert Bruno, professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
"This union figured out they couldn't assume the public would be on their side, so they went out and actively engaged in getting parent support," Bruno said. "They worked like the devil to get it.
As the teachers walk the picket lines, they have been joined by parents who are scrambling to find a place for children to pass the time or for baby sitters. Mothers and fathers - some with their kids in tow - are marching with the teachers. Other parents are honking their encouragement from cars or planting yard signs that announce their support in English and Spanish.So how did the CTU in a time of much vilified teacher unions manage to get public support?
Unions are still hallowed organizations in much of Chicago, and the teachers union holds a special place of honor in many households where children often grow up to join the same police, firefighter or trade unions as their parents and grandparents. -- NY Post
To win friends, the union has engaged in something of a publicity campaign, telling parents repeatedly about problems with schools and the barriers that have made it more difficult to serve their kids. They cite classrooms that are stifling hot without air conditioning, important books that are unavailable and insufficient supplies of the basics, such as toilet paper.To those that disparage this fact, I don't see Stand For Children (last) out there being able to mobilize parents to march against the teachers. I heard their leader debating Diane Ravitch on NPR yesterday and he claimed to be grass roots. He must be smoking that grass.
"They've been keeping me informed about that for months and months," Grant said.
It was a shrewd tactic, said Robert Bruno, professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
"This union figured out they couldn't assume the public would be on their side, so they went out and actively engaged in getting parent support," Bruno said. "They worked like the devil to get it.
Ms. Weingarten, while showing solidarity with Ms. Lewis on Tuesday, has embodied a more collaborative approach to national school reform. She has supported teacher contracts—including one in Cleveland—that effectively weakened tenure rules and linked teacher evaluations to test scores.How amazing that Karen Lewis, barely involved in the union until 4 years ago, emerges as a national leader. It shows you how many potential leaders we have sitting in classrooms. I can attest to that from my own experience in meeting the always amazing Julie Cavanagh, who will be bringing 10 week old Jack to his first UFT Chapter Leader meeting today, only a little over 3 years ago when she became active, not as much in the union at that time, but in the charter school invasion struggles. I remember bringing up the union the first time I met her at a meeting at her house and she disagreed with me. I knew that was the start of a beautiful friendship. Over the next 6 months it didn't take long for her to start making all the connections. I believe there are many Karens and Julies sitting out there ready to go. What a difference from the old tired union bureaucrats. These are real teachers and Karen's amazing leadership emerges from the fact she thinks like a teacher.
The Chicago teachers' previous contract, negotiated by Ms. Lewis's predecessor, gave teachers a total wage increase of 19% to 46% over the contract period from 2007 to 2012, according to a fact finders report issued in July. Chicago's average teacher salary is now $71,000 a year, according to the city.
But some teachers were angry because they felt the union didn't do enough to prevent the closure of dozens of poorly performing schools and increase the number of charter schools, which generally hire nonunion teachers.
Ms. Lewis "has thrown down a national gauntlet, of sorts, and said mayors and other reformers won't define teaching—teachers will define it," said Barbara Radner, director of the Center for Urban Education at DePaul University. "This is about the soul of teaching and who is going to define it going forward."
Ms. Lewis, the daughter of teachers, had been little involved in the union over two decades of teaching. In 2008, she joined the fledgling Caucus of Rank and File Educators. --- Wall St. Journal
The strike also provides a powerful antidote to the propagandaMark and Brian keep the ball rolling as Chicago Teachers Union and Karen Lewis gain nationwide and local support for their stand against the corporate invaders.
campaign for the new Hollywood teacher bashing movie "Won't Back Down". The sea of red shirts marching through Chicago, and the teachers around the country wearing red in solidarity, show that teachers may not be as easy a target as the movie's backers anticipated. The Chicago Teachers Union has flipped the script on Michelle Rhee, Democrats for Education reform and other backers of school privatization and showed how a teachers union can be a militant advocate for the right of students to have a school experience which includes music, art, sports and class sizes small enough to receive individual attention. ---Mark Naison
God Bless Karen Lewis and the entire Chicago Teachers Union for having
the guts to stand up to this corporate onslaught against our public schools. Their fight is our fight. It is time to ask yourself : "Where do I stand"? ---Brian De Vale
The strike in Chicago is the long overdue stand off between those who got into education for a career in teaching vs. the corporate profiteers who
have labor and the working men and women they represent on the run.Make no mistake, these are rich powerful people who run the publishing, media, corporate education and the Wall St./Hedge Fund world. They are tough, cut throat and have deep pockets (Gates, Bloomberg, Walton Family, Koch Brothers, Democrats for Education Reform, Rupert Murdoch. Mort Zuckerman etc..) They are the melding of the neo liberal and neo con agendas. Neither of those groups like teachers and they despise public sector pensions as it bites into their wallets. They have bought off many of our traditional allies in the Democrat party and have effectively triangulated the unions that represented public school educators.Everyone has to take a stand, regardless of where any other union, their officials, educator or parent falls on this. I am with Karen Lewis. That is a woman who deserves to be Woman of the Year. To stand up to Rahm Emanuel, Arne Duncan, their boss Obama's misguided education policies and the entire "Reform" Movement takes guts!
These are not just run-of the-mill politicians, but well trained mercenaries for the corporate privatization movement.
God Bless Karen Lewis and the entire Chicago Teachers Union for having
the guts to stand up to this corporate onslaught against our public schools. Their fight is our fight. It is time to ask yourself : "Where do I stand"?
Brian De Vale
CSA Chairman
Community School District # 14
Whatever the outcome, the Chicago Teachers strike shows that cross
section of the nation's teachers are fed up with being made the
whipping boy for the nation's failure to reduce racial and economic
inequality and provide equal educational opportunity for its citizens.
You do not mobilize tens of thousands of people to put their jobs at
risk and take to the picket line without a powerful undercurrent of
frustration and rage with the way they have been treated. The strike
won't stop Education Reformers- who have the support of the nation's
biggest corporations- from cementing their stranglehold on education
policy on the local and national level, and from consolidating their
influence in both major parties. But it pulls aside the facade of
support and compliance with the Obama Administration's education
policies that the Democratic National Convention hoped to project and
revealed how wildly unpopular Race to the Top is with many of America's
teachers, and a small, politically savvy group of public school
parents.
The strike also provides a powerful antidote to the propagandaNewark Teachers:
campaign for the new Hollywood teacher bashing movie "Won't Back Down" which hits American theaters at the end of the month. The sea of red
shirts marching through Chicago, and the teachers around the country
wearing red in solidarity, show that teachers may not be as easy a
target as the movie's backers anticipated. The Chicago Teachers Union
has flipped the script on Michelle Rhee, Democrats for Education reform
and other backers of school privatization and showed how a teachers
union can be a militant advocate for the right of students to have a
school experience which includes music, art, sports and class sizes
small enough to receive individual attention. There is no guarantee
that the strike will achieve its major goals, but it has already
succeeded in giving America's teachers a huge emotional lift and in
forcing the media to recognize that teachers voices cannot be
marginalized and suppressed without significant consequences
Mark D Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Principal Investigator
Bronx African American History Project
640 Dealy Hall
Fordham University
Bronx, NY 10458
Ms. Lewis "has thrown down a national gauntlet, of sorts, and said mayors and other reformers won't define teaching—teachers will define it," said Barbara Radner, director of the Center for Urban Education at DePaul University. "This is about the soul of teaching and who is going to define it going forward." -- WSJThis is a good report from the WSJ and does a better job than the NY Times. The national press is getting the message that this is no typical teacher strike and is as much over ideology and the soul of teaching as anything else. They are also getting the message that the public supports them. You don't see any of the astroturf groups out there protesting the teachers. That is due to the amazing work in the community the union has done.
Only The New York Times was unable to locate Karen Lewis, Jesse Sharkey, Kristine Mayle or Michael Brunson on September 10, 2012. An amazing feat of reporting.....As The New York Times finally recognized that something big is happening in Chicago's public schools with the Teachers Strike of 2012, their reporters managed to get most of the story wrong — beginning with the notion, in their lead paragraph, that this strike is some kind of surprise. (It is only a surprise for those who use people like Rahm Emanuel and his ten closest friends as sources).---- Substance
READMEDIA WATCH: 'All the news that fits [the ruling class version of reality] we print'...New York Times gets it wrong on first try at reporting the Chicago Teachers Strike of 2012 as 'news'
One of the problems intelligent people face is when they let themselves be brainwashed by ideological versions of reality posing as fact... Over the years, a disturbing trend has developed, as professors who don't do their own street work have been given a free hand to quote any story published in The New York Times as factual....
The New York Times made a great effort not to quote any of the officers of the Chicago Teachers Union for its first "news" coverage of the Chicago Teachers Strike of 2012. Above, CTU vice president Jesse Sharkey speaking to reporters at the union's strike operations headquarters on Saturday, two days before the strike. Contrary to the implications of the New York Times's version of news, the officers and communications staff of the union were not in hiding on September 9 and September 10, 2012. Substance photo by Sharon Schmidt. Before reading the following story, consider the facts: (a) The New York Times preens itself as America's newspaper of record and sports the motto "All the news that's fit to print." (b) for many people the world over, this is the first inkling they have of what is going on in Chicago.
Had the following story been submitted to Substance (or in one of my journalism classes before I was blacklisted by CPS 12 years ago), would have demanded that the reporters find one of the union's officers before putting up the story. Only The New York Times was unable to locate Karen Lewis, Jesse Sharkey, Kristine Mayle or Michael Brunson on September 10, 2012. An amazing feat of reporting, when you consider how important this story is.
This came in from a CTU media contact:
Hello all,
You should all follow @DriXander on twitter. She is really in the loop when it comes to Chicago politics. Earlier today, she tweeted the list of 33 aldermen who signed the anti-strike letter. One was Aldermen Joe Moreno of the first ward. He paints himself a progressive and blogs for Huffington Post where his deal is that he reframes chicago machine behavior as being "progressive." He gives Rahm cover. When 2 dozen teachers were fired from Clemente HS after the IB announcement, he claimed it a victory. He refused to comment on the firings. He fashions himself a hipster and hangs out at indie bars. One of his major hipsterisms is that he's proud of his social media presence. Please leave a message to @alderman_moreno or "Alderman Joe Moreno" on FB.Be creative, but here is a sample tweet --@alderman_moreno Union busting is not a #ChicagoValue, please stand with @ctulocal1 #FairContractNow #CTUstrikeor@alderman_moreno Our schools need strong teachers advocating for kids, not political games. Support teachers. #FairContractNow #CTUstrikeAlso, I've attached a pic of a guy who calls himself @rebelpundit. He's one of the Education Action Group Tea Party guys who harasses people at protests. If you see him, do not engage. He will goad you. Let people around know that he's Tea Party and he's working against us and with Rahm. Let him know that you do not want to be filmed.Feel free to warn people on social media about him.
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“You have a situation where the teachers feel totally and completely disrespected,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the parent union of the striking teachers. In this case, she said she blamed Mayor Emanuel for an aggressive push to extend the length of the school day and for a promised raise that was later rescinded. “He created the seeds of a lot of frustration and mistrust,” she said.Yeah, it's about respect - we ain't got none in NYC. The longer day - Randi already gave that one away. A promised raise that was later rescinded by Bloomberg-- oops, where did that 4% raise everyone but teachers got go to? Wait a minute. Is Randi saying the same conditions exist here in NYC for a strike? No, Chicago has Rahmbo and we have mild-mannered Bloomberg.
Teachers also clearly saw the strike as a protest not just of the union negotiations in Chicago but on data-driven education reform nationwide, which many perceived as being pushed by corporate interests and relying too heavily on standardized tests to measure student progress....a teacher, said he believed the city was ultimately aiming to privatize education through charter schools and computer programs that teach classes online.Shhhh, Randi, don't tell anyone what it's really all about.
The rejection of the service model by CTU’s new leadership is reflective of a long debate in the labor movement—should unions serve their members, existing as an organization outside of the membership, or should the union be made by the members? This is partly why the media’s focus on Lewis is so problematic; her leadership is more of an anti-leadership. A central goal of the CTU now is to have members take control of their union and their workplaces.This is one interesting article on the Chicago union leadership touching on the role of the strike in union building. Have you seen how many young, female teachers there are on the picket line? Have you heard stories of scabs crossing the lines? Is this a 100% strike? I love this closing line:
a spokesman for Stand for Children Illinois, a pro-education reform group that is a favorite charity of hedge fund managers, saying, “Teachers need to decide if they’re going to be part of this [reform] process or not.” They have, but it’s going to be on the terms of the 99%.Featured are two Chicago CORE founders I know: Kristine Mayle and Al Ramirez. Al has been very helpful to us here in providing information on how CORE organized itself.
Chicago Teachers Push Back Against Neoliberal Education Reform================
by Matthew Cunningham-Cook
Picket lines can be sordid affairs. When a union is on strike or locked out—like the recent Caterpillar strike in Joliet, Illinois or the Cooper Tire & Rubber lockout in Ohio—the smell of receding worker power can permeate the air. The air in Chicago has none of that. At schools across the city, 29,000 Chicago teachers and education professionals are on strike—demanding both a fair union contract and a radically different vision of school reform than that propagated by nearly the entire nation’s political class. At the largest teachers’ strike in two decades, educators are fired up to fight for wraparound services for students, with more school social workers, counselors and psychologists; a holistic educational environment where all students have access to school libraries, world languages, art, music, physical education; and the preservation of the tenure system—because good teachers are made through experience in the classroom.
The corporate media’s initial dispatches on this fight have been disappointing. Instead of reporting on what the Chicago Teachers Union’s vision for education is (explained quite clearly here), they have instead zeroed in on the CTU’s demand for a 20 percent wage increase (which corresponds to a 20 percent increase in their workweek) and the so-called “personal feud” between CTU President Karen Lewis and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Along these same lines, media reports have emphasized the “dire” fiscal situation of the Chicago public schools—failing to note that the Chicago district spent $25 million on strike contingency plans, that the schools could gain $43 million if the city stopped providing slush funds for wealthy developers or that the state recently gave a $528 million tax break to the owners of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
This strike is the product of twenty years of “education reform” practiced on the backs of Chicago’s students and teachers. As the city witnessed the social destruction that accompanied high-stakes testing and mass school closures in neighborhoods already deprived of resources, a small group of teachers started fighting back against the reform agenda. As education historian Diane Ravitch observes, it was the first movement in the nation “where teachers have stood up to DFER [Democrats for Education Reform], Stand for Children [and] other anti-union, pro-privatization, anti-teacher groups.”
Al Ramirez was one of the co-founders of the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE). “I was working on a movie about school closures, and we began posing the question, What do we do about it?” Ramirez’s group started book study groups, hosted public events with education activists and ultimately came to realize that the union was “ineffective at fighting back.” That’s when they began to ask themselves, “What kind of union do we want?”
The answer was a union founded on the principles of member-directed communal action, mutual solidarity and systemic analysis. CORE began having meetings on a consistent basis, including a biweekly potluck at Karen Lewis’s house, as well as doing the kind of organizing against school closures that the old-guard leadership of the CTU simply was not doing. The former CTU president, Marilyn Stewart, failed to appear at meetings where school closure decisions were made.
The policy of school closures for schools considered failing was a policy initially propagated by Mayor Richard Daley and his longtime schools chief and current Education Secretary Arne Duncan. The Renaissance 2010 program, as it was called, closed schools in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, especially where there was nearby competition from charter schools.
The current financial secretary of the CTU, Kristine Mayle, won election in 2010 on the slate led by Lewis. She had gotten involved as a result of a school closure as well—a thread that unites most of the original members of CORE.
“My school was set for closure, and we called our delegate, and she said ‘get your résumé together.’ We wanted to force them to stand up for us, and we realized we were better equipped to do it than they were. CTU back in the day used to be a fighting union, it had become a service model or company union, and we wanted to change that up,” Mayle said. The rejection of the service model by CTU’s new leadership is reflective of a long debate in the labor movement—should unions serve their members, existing as an organization outside of the membership, or should the union be made by the members?
This is partly why the media’s focus on Lewis is so problematic; her leadership is more of an anti-leadership. A central goal of the CTU now is to have members take control of their union and their workplaces. As a result of this strategy, back in June, 90 percent of the membership, including 98 percent of those who actually cast a ballot, voted in favor of authorizing a strike. Under the new leadership, an internal organizing department was created with seven staff members and the union’s House of Delegates was expanded to include at least one delegate from every building.
For too long at the CTU, the folks at CORE felt that union policy was directed by a tiny group of highly paid bureaucrats who had little connection to the actual conditions on the ground. What’s funny is that this directly correlates to the situation at Chicago Public Schools in general. Rahm Emanuel complains about teacher salaries, even though his own salary is $216,000 per year. Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard has never taught a day in a Chicago public school. The Chicago Board of Education president is a banker, and one of its members is the powerful billionaire Hyatt heiress Penny Pritzker.
On the picket line, there is a palpable sense that the teachers who created the fighting-est teachers union in the country are about to do the same to their school system. The city is awash in red, and honks in favor of the strikers are cacophonous. Reuters recently quoted a spokesman for Stand for Children Illinois, a pro-education reform group that is a favorite charity of hedge fund managers, saying, “Teachers need to decide if they’re going to be part of this [reform] process or not.” They have, but it’s going to be on the terms of the 99%.
September 11, 2012
“If you add the scores on standardized tests for five years in a row, can you tell who the best and worst teachers are? No. But that's the theory behind value-added assessment. The idea is that an ‘effective’ teacher raises test scores every year. The computer predicts what the test scores are supposed to be, and the teacher who meets the target is great, while the one who doesn't is ineffective and should be shunned or banished. But study after study shows that value-added assessment is rife with error. VAM is junk science. Bunk science. Just another club with which to knock teachers, wielded by those who could never last five minutes in a classroom.”Obama’s education policies call for tying pay scales to the junk-science VAM results in addition to other merit pay schemes, all of which have a history of decades of failure. Rahmbo wants to implement these policies and in fact unilaterally cancelled the step increases for each year of teaching Chicago teachers have enjoyed for decades, as have NY teachers. There is a national move to eliminate the so-called seniority advantage using the excuse of paying “effective teachers” (based on faulty VAM) with the real intent of lowering the national wage scale for teachers. That would allow privately managed, profit-driven charter schools, also an Obama initiative, to avoid having to pay their teachers the prevailing public school wage scale and maximize their profits.
“His principal concern is for the students and families who are affected by the situation. And we hope that both sides are able to come together to settle this quickly and in the best interest of Chicago’s students.”Sure, both Mitt and Barack are for the children.
“Teachers went into 63rd street police station to use bathroom and got a standing ovation from police.”Wow, teachers as heroes instead of villains. Ooooh, is this a sign that Rambo and his pals Duncan and Obama are in hot water? As things play out, next time we’ll examine the similarities and differences between the union in Chicago and NYC.
Count on Stephanie Simon of Reuters to get the story that eluded every other reporter. She is the one that got the Inside story on Louisiana, TFA, and for-profit investors. Now she has the scoop on Chicago. The strike in Chicago is not about money. It is a national story. It's about the survival of public education. Read her story.
