I know this is old news, but I've been out of town. On Sunday, July 13, I was in the air flying toward the very city where the AFT was kind of taking a stand.
The NEA had taken similar steps earlier by calling for the ouster of Arne Duncan, though outbound president Dennis Van Roekel immediately chalked it up to members just being, you know, cranky or in a bad mood, so they just took it out on Arne Duncan. So, to summarize, NEA members called for Duncan's ouster, Duncan indicated that he wasn't going to pay attention, and the president of NEA said that Duncan really didn't need to take it seriously. So, you know, earth-shattering stuff there.
The AFT resolution was marginally more interesting, although, like the NEA resolution, has ceased to matter to anyone at all in less than a week.
Union politics are a fascinating study for anyone who is intrigued by things that call themselves democratic and yet aren't particularly so. All union members are equal, but some are more equal than others, and not much happens at these conventions that isn't carefully stage managed by the most equal union members of all. The AFT is particularly confusing because 1) there are unions within the union and 2) there are loyalty oaths involved that amount to "agree to be assimilated."
I understand the urge to exert these high levels of control over members. I was a union president of a relatively small local, and the Herding Cats aspect can become stressful really quickly. I can easily imagine being a national leader, looking at the giant masses of people coming together from every corner of every point of view and thinking, "Damn, if we don't take some control, this will just be a hellish mess of gooey anarchy" (and, yes, "Hellish Mess of Gooey Anarchy" would be a great band name). I can even understand the feeling of "We are so close to getting Great Things done and we can't let that get derailed" as well as the feeling of "Boy, do I like having power."
But let all those feelings get control of you, and pretty soon you're acting like a representative group that doesn't have much respect for the people it's supposed to be representing. Or you start saying things like "I'll punch you in the face if you try to take away my Common Core,"a statement that really ought to come from someone other than a teacher/union leader.
So AFT's call for President Obama to put Duncan on an improvement plan comes with an interesting backdrop. According to Stephen Sawchuk at EdWeek, some union leaders didn't want to go all in with the NEA's Throw the Bum Out resolution, viewing it as silly and pointless. Michael Mulgrew, who allegedly made to offer to punch people in the face over CCSS, thought that the NEA resolution was beneath him, which raises some questions about how he draws the Beneath Me line.
The AFT resolution has the virtue of setting an example by calling for due process, and I give it points for ignoring the fiction that Obama is somehow disconnected from his own education policies.
On the other hand, it is ineffectual. And AFT president Randi Weingarten echoed Van Roekel in explaining that it basically just meant that teachers are really hurt and pissed off. As Arthur Goldstein tweeted, "I certainly hope they follow this non-demand with a strongly worded letter. That'll show 'em."
And Weingarten went one worse, with a call for teachers to leap on in there and rewrite the Core to show "them" how it should be. This is just an artfully reworded version of Van Roekel's odious comment to the NEA's 2013 convention-- "If you don't like the Common Core, then what do you want to do instead?" I called for Van Roekel's resignation over that one (an act every bit as effective as the NEA and AFT resolutions) because I think it's an indefensible thing to come from a national union leader.
To accept and embrace the Common Core is to accept and embrace the premise of its creation-- that US schools are in trouble because US teachers are lost and ineffectual. If there's anyone who shouldn't be agreeing with that, it's the folks who represent the millions of teachers that the Core is intended to "fix."
Like the NEA, AFT leadership appears to have decided to see if they can't bleed off all that teacher anger about CCSS and the rest of the corporate high-stakes test-driven status quo by focusing it on Arne Duncan (who, after all, won't be damaged by it a bit) so that the precious cargo of Common Core Swellness will remain unthreatened. "Look at that scary thing over there! Go get it! Go stomp on it! No need to look behind this curtain here."
This blog piece is somewhat pointless. Five days later, the AFT resolution is an unimportant gesture of no real importance. What's sad is that leaders had to know that was the case when they let the thing pass in the first place.
Showing posts with label Dennis van Roekel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dennis van Roekel. Show all posts
Friday, July 18, 2014
Friday, July 4, 2014
Van Roekel, Fordham and Defending the Brand
What a difference a year can make.
A year ago, Dennis van Roekel's message to NEA members was, "Well, if not Common Core, then what in its place?" This year, his message was, "Common who? Hey, look at this toxic testing badness!"
With all the tight aim of a finely-crafted focus-group-tested PR campaign, DVR used the NEARA convention as a launching pad for a campaign to push back hard against The Big Test while also, as Fred Klonsky put it, building a firewall around Common Core.
DVR's keynote seems (full disclosure-- I wasn't in Denver and I am depending on the reports of those who were) a work of exceptionally fine tuning, the kind of careful tap dance that you can't perform without knowing every inch of the dance floor.
He led off with a history of the last several decades of school reform, name-checking the usual rage-inducing suspects (even in a speech, it seems, She Who Must Not Be Named is red meat click bait) without getting lost in details. But somehow a study of the evolution of various ill-fated, teacher-blaming, education-crushing reforms did NOT bring DVR to Common Core. Rather, the evil bad boy of school reform is high stakes testing, first bullying its way into the spotlight and now ruining the entire show.
Look! Look over there, at that Bad Testing!! No no no-- not over here at the CCSS! It's the tests! That's what done it!
DVR outlines four points for getting the accountability train back on track:
1) expand early childhood education to improve school readiness,
2) redirect resources away from testing companies and toward improved conditions of learning and teaching,
3) create high standards for all learners and
4) take ownership of and responsibility for a quality teacher workforce.
1 is harmless. 2 is an interesting pipe dream. 4 is perhaps the most interesting, representing an intention of the union to finally get involved in teacher quality. And 3, of course, reaffirms the NEA's devotion to the Common Core. Not that DVR ever mentioned the Core. Focus-testing apparently made it clear that it was not a guaranteed applause line.
No, the purpose of this initiative is two-fold. Attack the tests. Defend the brand.
It helps that the tests deserve attacking. They're a weak target at this point, and they are the backbone, teeth and testicles of the entire CCSS movement. And they are odious, awful, wretched excuses for anything useful. They are every bit as bad as DVR said they are, and that's part of the campaign's strength-- it's based on truth. It just stops telling the truth once we get to the question of why we have these tests in the first place. Because for some reason, the imperative is to protect the CCSS brand.
Gates proposed moratorium on testing is likely the same thing. At all costs protect the brand.
CCSS is a hot air balloon struggling to avoid crashing back to earth, and testing is the overweight guy who may have been our BFF when we took off, but now we need to get rid of anything that is dragging the CCSS balloon down, so over the side with you, buddy.
Likewise, CCSS foes were chortling yesterday to see Robert Pondisco at the Fordham Institute's blog eviscerating a model teaching example from engageNY's Kate Gerson, who demonstrated an example of why Common Core is often associated with students who would rather have their eyebrows plucked bald one hair at a time. Gerson appears to be channeling the worst teaching techniques of the 1960s, and my heart goes out once again to NY teachers who have to deal with this drivel.
But is Pondisco, shooting holes in the Core? Of course not. The Fordham has been relentless in defending the brand-- from everybody and anybody including She Who Must Not Be Named and Arne Duncan himself. The Fordham applies the same technique over and over again-- they spot something egregious or stupid, and instead of making the amateur hour mistake of trying to protect it because it's Core, they get out their knives, carve it up, and declare, "This is NOT Common Core. This is what you get when some idiot does Common Core wrong." They have mastered a not-easily-mastered skill, because defending yourself from your enemies is easy; defending yourself from your friends is way harder.
Look, I welcome NEA attacking tests. As I've written before, the tests are the very worst, most destructive part of the reformy beast. But if we keep supporting the idea of national standards, we are going to keep getting national standardized tests. Railing against the testing while defending the CCSS is like cutting off dandelions and carefully tending their roots.
This circling of the wagons around the Core is good news for those of us in the resistance. For one thing, Core supporters are way over-estimating how easily CCSS can be cut loose and protected from the effects of things like a testing system that was built right into the Core's dna. For another, the fact that they're willing to try is a measure of how much trouble they're in.
And if, a year after defiantly defending it, DVR is ready to go through his last speech without even mentioning the Common Core, there is hope that my national union might be starting to get the beginning of a clue.
A year ago, Dennis van Roekel's message to NEA members was, "Well, if not Common Core, then what in its place?" This year, his message was, "Common who? Hey, look at this toxic testing badness!"
With all the tight aim of a finely-crafted focus-group-tested PR campaign, DVR used the NEARA convention as a launching pad for a campaign to push back hard against The Big Test while also, as Fred Klonsky put it, building a firewall around Common Core.
DVR's keynote seems (full disclosure-- I wasn't in Denver and I am depending on the reports of those who were) a work of exceptionally fine tuning, the kind of careful tap dance that you can't perform without knowing every inch of the dance floor.
He led off with a history of the last several decades of school reform, name-checking the usual rage-inducing suspects (even in a speech, it seems, She Who Must Not Be Named is red meat click bait) without getting lost in details. But somehow a study of the evolution of various ill-fated, teacher-blaming, education-crushing reforms did NOT bring DVR to Common Core. Rather, the evil bad boy of school reform is high stakes testing, first bullying its way into the spotlight and now ruining the entire show.
Look! Look over there, at that Bad Testing!! No no no-- not over here at the CCSS! It's the tests! That's what done it!
DVR outlines four points for getting the accountability train back on track:
1) expand early childhood education to improve school readiness,
2) redirect resources away from testing companies and toward improved conditions of learning and teaching,
3) create high standards for all learners and
4) take ownership of and responsibility for a quality teacher workforce.
1 is harmless. 2 is an interesting pipe dream. 4 is perhaps the most interesting, representing an intention of the union to finally get involved in teacher quality. And 3, of course, reaffirms the NEA's devotion to the Common Core. Not that DVR ever mentioned the Core. Focus-testing apparently made it clear that it was not a guaranteed applause line.
No, the purpose of this initiative is two-fold. Attack the tests. Defend the brand.
It helps that the tests deserve attacking. They're a weak target at this point, and they are the backbone, teeth and testicles of the entire CCSS movement. And they are odious, awful, wretched excuses for anything useful. They are every bit as bad as DVR said they are, and that's part of the campaign's strength-- it's based on truth. It just stops telling the truth once we get to the question of why we have these tests in the first place. Because for some reason, the imperative is to protect the CCSS brand.
Gates proposed moratorium on testing is likely the same thing. At all costs protect the brand.
CCSS is a hot air balloon struggling to avoid crashing back to earth, and testing is the overweight guy who may have been our BFF when we took off, but now we need to get rid of anything that is dragging the CCSS balloon down, so over the side with you, buddy.
Likewise, CCSS foes were chortling yesterday to see Robert Pondisco at the Fordham Institute's blog eviscerating a model teaching example from engageNY's Kate Gerson, who demonstrated an example of why Common Core is often associated with students who would rather have their eyebrows plucked bald one hair at a time. Gerson appears to be channeling the worst teaching techniques of the 1960s, and my heart goes out once again to NY teachers who have to deal with this drivel.
But is Pondisco, shooting holes in the Core? Of course not. The Fordham has been relentless in defending the brand-- from everybody and anybody including She Who Must Not Be Named and Arne Duncan himself. The Fordham applies the same technique over and over again-- they spot something egregious or stupid, and instead of making the amateur hour mistake of trying to protect it because it's Core, they get out their knives, carve it up, and declare, "This is NOT Common Core. This is what you get when some idiot does Common Core wrong." They have mastered a not-easily-mastered skill, because defending yourself from your enemies is easy; defending yourself from your friends is way harder.
Look, I welcome NEA attacking tests. As I've written before, the tests are the very worst, most destructive part of the reformy beast. But if we keep supporting the idea of national standards, we are going to keep getting national standardized tests. Railing against the testing while defending the CCSS is like cutting off dandelions and carefully tending their roots.
This circling of the wagons around the Core is good news for those of us in the resistance. For one thing, Core supporters are way over-estimating how easily CCSS can be cut loose and protected from the effects of things like a testing system that was built right into the Core's dna. For another, the fact that they're willing to try is a measure of how much trouble they're in.
And if, a year after defiantly defending it, DVR is ready to go through his last speech without even mentioning the Common Core, there is hope that my national union might be starting to get the beginning of a clue.
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