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| David Welch blames teachers for market failure |
By Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
The war against public education and the teacher’s unions had another victory last week as a California judge declared that teacher seniority rights and tenure are unconstitutional. The ruling is the result of what is known as Vergara vs California, a lawsuit brought and financed by Silicon Valley millionaire David Welch on behalf of nine students. Welch’s compensation for 2013 was a paltry $2 million according to Forbes. At 53, he’s got his sights set on grander things, privatizing education being one of them.
The war against public education and the teacher’s unions had another victory last week as a California judge declared that teacher seniority rights and tenure are unconstitutional. The ruling is the result of what is known as Vergara vs California, a lawsuit brought and financed by Silicon Valley millionaire David Welch on behalf of nine students. Welch’s compensation for 2013 was a paltry $2 million according to Forbes. At 53, he’s got his sights set on grander things, privatizing education being one of them.
The
judge agreed with Welch that present rules regarding teacher dismissal,
seniority and tenure, disproportionately harm minority students in high-poverty
schools by making it too difficult to fire incompetent teachers.
One
has to laugh at statements from judges and Silicon Valley executives about harm
done to working class students, let alone minority students by a dysfunctional
education system. Students and teachers
are “unfairly unnecessarily” affected
by the present system the judge says. He adds that tenure and seniority rights
affect “students fundamental right to
equality of education” and “impose a
disproportionate burden on poor and minority students.” SF Chronicle 6-11-14.
Closing
schools in Oakland CA that served mostly communities of color didn’t help
minorities too much I would say and I’m sure that the Judge didn’t have much to
say about that. In fact, when parents, teachers and the community staged a 17-day sit in at one of the Oakland
schools scheduled for closure, the cops were sent in to drive them out.
Quite naturally, Arne Duncan, Obama’s Education Secretary welcomes this legal victory.
“For students in California
and every other state, equal opportunities for learning must include the equal
opportunity to be taught by a great teacher” Says Duncan who along with Obama and Rahm Immanuel are
directing a scorched earth policy in Chicago when it comes to public education,
also affecting students of color primarily.
And
how do layoffs of their parents affect children? And what about foreclosures
and being driven out of your home by sheriffs on behalf of bankers? Does that
have some bearing on a child’s education?
While
there are undoubtedly bad teachers,
the vast majority of them have dedicated their lives to education of working
class youth. A cursory glance at how
rich people educate their children would reveal a teacher to pupil ratio as low
as one to twelve. In most public schools teachers have as many as 40 kids and
maybe ten language groups, in addition to this, the crisis of capitalism that
damages personal relationship and family life means that all the sickness of
this market induced madness is brought in to the classroom.
David
Welch wants to blame teachers for a crisis in “high poverty” schools and his
solution is being able to fire them easier and destroying other workplace
protections teachers have won over the years. This is nothing new. Autoworkers are to blame for the crisis in
the auto industry, public sector workers for the municipal bankruptcies and deficits. The post office is losing money they say and
our local mailperson is responsible for that.
I
often introduce myself to people as a retired public sector worker, “You know, the person whose pension is
destroying the American way of life.”
If
David Welch or Rolf Treu cared about minorities or any other poor people they’d
be campaigning against the racist justice system in the US that incarcerates
them in staggering numbers. No society
in human history has put so many of its own citizens in prisons as US
capitalism. They would be boasting that the USPS is the most efficient service
in the country guaranteeing mail to every person no matter what their
location. Public services should not be businesses;
profit doesn’t enter in to it. The USPS
they said needed $10 billion. We spend
that in foreign wars in a month. Some investors and other coupon clippers have
earned that much in a year. Investing in
public services including education is simply returning the surplus value
workers create back to us in the form of services; it is a public service, a
right.
Welch,
as a representative of the 1% even though he is a relatively small potato in
their ranks, started the organization StudentsFirst in 2010 to advance his
privatization agenda. Bill Raden wrote
of StudentsFirst, “
“Most websites belonging to
educational privateers such as StudentsFirst, NewSchools Venture Fund or Parent
Revolution present images of children at play or of hand-raising students in
class. Studentsmatter.org is something altogether different. Here a reader will
find no editorials about learning tools, pedagogical developments or issues
facing today’s teachers. Instead, nearly every screen down to its donations
page is devoted to a single subject: Vergara v. California. Far from appearing as a celebration of
“school reform,” Welch’s site seems to represent a lawsuit in search of a
school district.”
It’s
not difficult to understand Welch’s motives here. Raden again:
“The David and
Heidi Welch Foundation, for example, has given to NewSchools Venture Fund, where Welch has
been an “investment partner” and which invests in both charter schools and the
cyber-charter industry, and has
been linked to the $9 billion-per-year textbook and testing behemoth
Pearson. Welch has also supported Michelle Rhee’s education-privatizing
lobby StudentsFirst, most
recently with a $550,000 bequest in 2012”.
This writer has commented many times on the offensive against public sector workers and our unions in the aftermath of the disarming of the UAW accomplished with the help of that union’s International leadership. Without the public sector there are few American workers in unions any more. The public sector is about 35% organized and in all around 12% of US workers are in unions. Without the public sector that drops down to less than 7%.
The National Education Association is the largest union in the country with 3 million members and it is represented in every state. The American Federation of Teachers that is affiliated to the AFL-CIO represents 1. 5 million members. The fact that these organizations, exist is a problem for Welch and the US capitalist class that sees juicy returns in the privatization of education. Despite a business friendly leadership they will not be satisfied until these organizations are destroyed and US workers are thrown back to conditions that existed prior to the civil rights movement and the great labor upsurge of the 1930’s that built the CIO. They worry the heads of organized labor will not be able to hold back the anger within their ranks indefinitely.
The labor hierarchy prostrating themselves before the bosses and their representatives in the Democratic Party have brought union members and the US working class nothing. The bosses are confident that they will not fight, will not mobilize the potential power of organized labor in an offensive of our own, they have proven this time and time again. Rand and file movements from below have been derailed or suppressed and in some cases the hierarchy has collaborated in the termination of troublemakers who threaten the relationship they have built with the bosses based on labor peace; at their members expense of course.
The response to The Vergara v California decision is more of the same.
This is just the beginning of a long legal battle, lawyers for the unions told the media. “I am confident that the court of appeal will reverse this decision” James Finburg, an attorney for both the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers told the San Francisco Chronicle. That sort of confidence can only come from someone whose interests are not at stake.
Relying on the courts and their friends in the Democratic Party is the only strategy that is open to the theoreticians and heads of organized labor. The alternative is to mobilize their members and launch a direct action offensive of workers and our communities against the assault of the 1% on our standard of living and the benefits and social services we have won through decades of sacrifice and struggle. But having the same pro-market worldview as the bosses, the policies of the labor hierarchy are policies aimed at appeasing the capitalist offensive not policies that confront it.
The California Labor Federation has about 2 million workers affiliated to it although most of them wouldn’t know that. The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor has some 800,000 workers affiliated to it. This is potential power whose money and human resource is used to help Democrats in to office. For union members we are in a war on two fronts. One is the obvious, against the employers’ offensive. The other is against the concessionary policies of our own leaders.
Instead of relying on the courts and the Democratic Party workers can only rely on our own strength, our own organizations and our own communities. We must reject the passive and concessionary approach of the present heads of organized labor. We must oppose layoffs and temporary layoffs they refer to as furloughs; we need more teachers.
We must oppose it in the unions by building fighting caucuses that will challenge the present leadership and build a generalized movement that demands what we need not what is acceptable to the Democratic Party and big business. There’s no shortage of money.
No privatization of education
Fully federally funded education at all levels.
Maximum class size of 15 for K through 12
Massive infusion of capital to train teachers at Union scale and benefits to be paid for by ending the 1%'s predatory wars and military ventures in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere and by taxes on the rich
Free child care before and after school
Control of curriculum by students, teachers and those who use education
No corporate influence in education
Cancel all student debt
Here are a couple more pieces on education and there are many more under the Teachers and Education labels on the right.
2 comments:
I heard Randi Weingarten denouncing the decision this week and her arguments wete far from pathetic. They were passionate, incisive and clear that what was at stake was the future of public education.
And what was her strategy for defeating it David?
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