NC: TeachStrong Solves The Mystery of Teaching

Remember TeachStrong? It was launched by the folks at CAP to create some tasty PR about fixing teachers, complete with a not-very-impressive list of Ways To Make Teachers Swell. They rounded up most of the usual Faux-Lefty Reformster Suspects, including virulently anti-teacher and anti-teacher-union groups like DFER, and despite all this, the initiative also suckered in NEA and AFT into joining, a decision so...um, let's say "counter-intuitive" that Randi Weingarten had to write a whole post explaining WTF she was thinking. (Plus, I stand by my theory that this group is about covering Hilary Clinton's education flank).

Well, TeacherStrong is up to things. Specifically, they are going to host a moderated discussion in North Carolina on February 17th (roughly a month before the primary election) to discuss "the importance of modernizing and elevating the teaching profession." They will even follow it up with some local educators (including the 2014 Teacher of the Year, and an association president) who will wax poetic about "the impact that TeachStrong's principles would have on their career and the entire teaching profession." Moderators include a director from Project LIFT, a "pubic-private" turnaround biz, and CAP.

TeachStrong's message that we must work to modernize and elevate the teaching profession is especially relevant in North Carolina. The Charlotte area alone had nearly 1,000 teachers resign before the 2015 school year, and the state has experienced a 20 percent drop in enrollment in teacher preparation programs over the last 3 years. 

Yes, the exodus of teachers from North Carolina and the reluctance of new recruits to join up-- that is a real puzzler, that is. Regular readers of this space know that I have a few theories. North Carolina has been hammering away at its educational foundation with big heavy hammers. Let's see. They tried to do away with tenure and froze wages for years, then cleverly tried to throttle two birds with one heavy fist by trying to make teachers choose between a (possible) raise and job security. Eventually, they created a new insulting salary schedule. Meanwhile, the state's Lt. Governor required them to rewrite a report about their crappy charters schools so that it was instead about how wonderful their charter schools are. They have cut school budgets, fired aids by the thousands, and installed terrible punitive regulations such as Pass-This-Standardized-Test-or-Fail-Third-Grade rules.

In other words, while TeachStrong is concerned about bringing the teaching profession into the future, in North Carolina, it's going to take some work just to bring the teaching profession into the present.

Anything that would advance the cause of teaching and public education in North Carolina would be welcome, but I'm not so sure that TeachStrong is the outfit to do it. This discussion could theoretically involve a head-on hit at the huge bad moves that North Carolina has made in education, or it could end up being pretty words to use while tap-dancing around the landmines that North Carolina has strewn around the public school landscape. But I'm not encouraged that they discuss the drop in the teacher supply as if it's some sort of mysterious inexplicable random act of nature, rather than the fairly predictable outcome of years of anti-teacher, anti-student, anti-education policies in the state. There are plenty of good, caring, dedicated teachers in North Carolina (I know-- I talk to some of them), and they deserve far better than what the state has been dumping upon them. TeachStrong's panel discussion should start with that.



    

TeachStrong Gathers More Anti-Teacher Moss

Just a few weeks ago, TeachStrong burst upon the scene, declaring itself ready to lift up the teaching profession with its nine steps of teacher swellness.

TS represented an odd assortment of groups, apparently led by the Center for American Progress and including such strange bedfellows as NEA and TFA, AFT and EducationPost. What could these groups answer together? How should we train teachers? Do we love public schools? In fact the whole thing had a random, cobbled-together look right up to the point that any observer asked, "Which of you groups would like to back Hillary Clinton for President" at which point a new spirit of unanimity entered the room.

Well, it's only getting weirder. CAP announced that ten more groups have signed on, including DFER and Education Reform Now (two arms of the same nominally-Dem reformy octopus), the Albert Shanker Institute,  and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

DFER is the most surprising entry, as DFER and their head honcho Whitney Tilson have not been subtle in their belief that teachers generally suck more than ever before and that evil, stinky teachers unions are a huge obstacle to making schools great. (You can find both ideas in this slide show and peppered throughout Tilson's blog).

Remember that scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier where Cap is in an elevator, and as it stops at each floor, it fills up with more and more people who are there to kick his ass? I wonder if the wise union leaders who signed us up for TeachStrong are starting to feel like that yet.

I do not know what TeachStrong's actual agenda is, other than pushing a blandly vague education-flavored agenda that it hopes to inject into the election (by way of any particular candidate, do you think?) But whatever it's about, it becomes increasingly obvious that NEA and AFT have no reason and no excuse to be involved. If they can team up with CAP and DFER while prematurely endorsing Clinton, it would seem that there is absolutely nobody that the unions would call out for destructive anti-public ed, anti-teacher, anti-teacher union policies-- as long as those people call themselves Democrats.