Today in Labor History—January 20

January 20, 1872 – Filipino soldiers and workers staged a bloody revolt against Spanish rule. (From the Daily Bleed)

January 20, 1920 – American Civil Liberties Union was founded. (From the Daily Bleed)

January 20, 1934 – Nazis abolished collective bargaining and union elections. (From the Daily Bleed)

January 20, 1946 – 750,000 US steel workers struck as part of a post war strike wave that encompassed well over a million workers. (From the Daily Bleed. See also, Modern School Labor History Timeline, Daily Kos, New York Times, Marxists.org)

January 20, 1986 - Bruce Springsteen's "My Hometown" topped the music charts on this date in 1986. The song, a eulogy for dying industrial cities, includes the lines: "Now Main Street's whitewashed windows and vacant stores / Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more / They're closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks / Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back to your hometown / Your hometown / Your hometown / Your hometown . . ." (From Workday Minnesota)

Court Overturn’s LAUSD’s Seniority Exemption

United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) has won a small victory in its fight to preserve seniority rights at Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD), according to the 4LAKids Blog.

In February, 2010, in Reed vs. California, lawyers argued that low performing, low income schools were unfairly impacted by layoffs since they tend to have higher percentages of younger teachers who lack seniority and that this violated students’ constitutional right to educational equity. Judges ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor, paving the way for LAUSD to exempt 45 schools from seniority rules, even though this violated state law and teachers’ contracts.

UTLA sued to overturn the ruling and the California 2nd District Court of Appeal has now invalidated LAUSD's exemption. In the 2 to 1 decision, the justices said that UTLA has the right to a trial where they can argue the merits of their case. The ACLU, which supported the Reed lawsuit, is planning on appealing the case to the state supreme court. Until the Supreme Court takes action on the case, the 2^nd District Court’s ruling will stand.  

The recent ruling did not address the ACLU’s or Reed’s argument that seniority violated students’ constitutional rights, focusing instead on the fact that the Reed ruling violated existing state law on seniority rights during layoffs.

The argument that students’ constitutional rights are violated by seniority is absurd on several levels. First, the reason those schools are low performing is because they have high percentages of lower income students. Their teachers are not the cause of their poverty or their low test scores and even the best teachers cannot make every poor student successful in school. Educational equity is impossible without economic equity and if the ACLU and parent backers of the Reed lawsuit really care about educational equity for poor children, they should be looking for strategies that reduce economic inequity, not attacking teachers’ unions and labor protections for working people.

Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that the best teachers should be able to help some lower income students succeed academically and that they would be more effective than the worst teachers. However, there is no reason to assume that younger, less experienced teachers are necessarily more effective than their more senior colleagues. On the contrary, experienced teachers ought to be more effective, on average. Thus, protecting their jobs during layoffs is in children’s interests.

While it is true that lower income schools have larger numbers of inexperienced teachers, it is not necessarily true that protecting their jobs is the best way to maintain continuity for their students. Obviously, high teacher turnover is disruptive to academic programs and can be stressful for children. However, younger teachers have a much higher attrition rate than experienced teachers, even when layoffs aren’t occurring. Thus, lower income schools suffer higher turnover rates and personnel disruptions than affluent schools, regardless of seniority rules. The solution to this problem is not to undermine teachers’ binding contracts or to do away with seniority protections, but to provide more support for beginning teachers, so they are better able to cope with the challenges and frustrations of the teaching profession.

Abolishing or curtailing seniority does nothing to change the teacher demographics at low performing schools, especially if the protected novice teachers still leave the profession within 3-5 years. Rather, reformers ought to look at why these schools tend to have such high levels of novice teachers and seek remedies to these problems. Many experienced teachers, for example, have worked in such schools, but got burned out from all the extra demands placed on them by administrators and politicians to fix problems that were out of their control. Others saw the writing on the wall and decided to transfer to more affluent schools before their evaluations, tenure or pay started to be negatively affected by low student test scores. Some simply got emotionally drained from years of working with so many students who were hungry, sick, depressed or lacking in the prerequisite skills necessary for the classes they were in.

The Apartheid-like nature of most urban school districts ensures that there will be affluent schools with a majority of students who do well on standardized exams and who are socially and academically ready for the classes in which they are placed and others within the same district with a majority of lower income students, with lower graduation rates and test scores. This, along with inadequate funding and the persistence of the wealth gap are the real educational equity issues.

California School Pressures Parents to Buy IPads

The American Civil Liberties Union (ALCU) is challenging an elementary school’s drive to put technology into the hands of every student, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported this week. Tierra Bonita Elementary School, in Poway, California has initiated a technology program requiring every fourth and fifth grader to have an iPad or similar tablet-style computer. Students were given the choice of using their own device, buying one from the district for $379 (plus $79 warranty and $25 case), or renting or borrowing one from the district.

The problem with their program, according to the ACLU, is that they warned parents the program would be halted if more than 10% of families had to borrow a device. Furthermore, the principal told parents “We are just 15 commitments away from being the first school in Poway to equip all students in 4th and 5th grade next year with a digital device. If you have not turned in a response, we need you.”

The ACLU is arguing that the email and survey “go far beyond assessing interest” by placing “significant pressure on families to either provide or pay for a digital device. This pressure is dangerously close if not tantamount to directly charging an illegal fee...”

While one could easily come up with numerous pedagogically sound ways to use personal tablets in the classroom and for homework assignments, the real driving force behind the “laptops for every child” movement is lobbying by the tech and textbook companies which stand to profit handsomely from it (see here and here).

It is also a boondoggle for school districts. Sure, they could put all their textbooks on one laptop instead of issuing many books to each student. However, they (or their students) would still be responsible for upkeep and maintenance, which could quickly become prohibitively expensive if students treat their tablets as carelessly as many treat their paper textbooks.

As a high school science teacher, when I think about what my students really need to succeed, personal laptops or tablets are pretty low on the list. Those who are struggling most in my classes are the ones who lack the prerequisite skills to succeed in a college preparatory level science class. They lack these skills not because they lack computers, but because they lack proficiency in reading, math, English language and study skills. What difference does it make whether they are having trouble reading from a textbook or an ebook?

While the ACLU is probably taking the correct stand on this, the case is symptomatic of a much bigger problem in education: We continue to gut K-12 funding and then waste what little is left on lame solutions to nonexistent or exaggerated problems. How can anyone think it makes sense to fire and furlough teachers, balloon class sizes, eviscerate support services and then try to compensate for these losses and also shrink the achievement gap by purchasing laptops or tablets for every student?

California Judge Rules in Favor of Seniority

The current wave of Ed Deform is breathtaking for the diversity and quantity of ill-conceived and destructive demands being made by its proponents. Despite the fact that these reforms contribute to the demoralization of teachers and potential flight from the profession at a time of teacher shortages, while also deteriorating safety and learning conditions for students, it seems like legislators and the courts are perfectly content to support and promote the madness.

However, in a breath of fresh air, administrative law judges recently ruled that San Francisco Unified and Sacramento City Unified did not have the authority to ignore state seniority laws in their attempts to keep veteran teachers at low-performing schools. While state law allows for few exceptions to seniority-based layoffs, administrative law judges recently ruled that San Francisco Unified had not made a compelling case for ignoring seniority, while Sacramento City had done so only partially, according to Thoughts on Public Education, (TOPED).

Unfortunately for veteran Sacramento teachers, the rulings of administrative law judges are not binding and the Sac City school board voted unanimously to ignore the judge and exempt all teachers at all seven of the district’s “Priority Schools.” The consequence will be that many inexperienced teachers will have jobs next year, while many experienced veterans will not. The SFUSD board decided not to contest Administrative Law Judge Melissa Crowell’s decision,   according to TOPED.

Fensterwald wrote that state law emphatically requires teacher layoffs to be based on seniority, but allows for two exceptions. The first is pretty obvious: a newer teacher with specific expertise cannot be bumped by a more senior colleague who lacks that expertise. For example, a 5-year veteran English teacher cannot replace a physics teacher with only 2 years of experience (unless that English teacher also has a physic credential).

The other exception, which allows districts to ignore seniority in order to protect students’ right to equal educational opportunity, is more open to interpretation and abuse. Districts like LAUSD have successfully argued (with the aid of the ACLU) that seniority causes low performing, low income schools to lose a disproportionate percentage of their teachers during layoffs.

There are numerous problems with this argument that have unfortunately been ignored or discounted by judges. First, layoffs hurt students at all schools, regardless of students’ socioeconomic backgrounds and their schools’ test scores. This is because layoffs lead to increases in class sizes and teacher workloads district-wide. This in turn decreases their ability to assign and grade meaningful assignments, monitor student safety, facilitate extracurricular activities and provide one-on-one attention. It also leads to declining course offerings.

It is also important to understand why low performing schools tend to have higher percentages of novice teachers in the first place and to critique the fairness of this for lower income students. The fact is that lower performing schools typically have a disproportionate percentage of lower income students. They also are among the most difficult schools to work in because of higher rates of absences and discipline problems and, more significantly, the burdensome punishments imposed by NCLB as a result of their lower test scores. In short, teachers at lower income schools are expected to work a lot harder and longer for the same pay as their colleagues at more affluent schools.

If we want to talk about equal educational opportunity and bias within the educational system, we need to end the Apartheid-like system that allows some schools to have as many as 80-90% of their students on free or reduced-cost lunch, while others in the same city or district may have fewer than 5%. Likewise, as long as we continue to allow a significantly more challenging workload for teachers at certain schools, those schools will continue to see an exodus of their more experienced teachers and a higher percentage of novice teachers.

Layoffs should also be recognized as an artifact of the class war being waged by the rich against the rest of us, in which the wealthy contribute less and less in taxes and rob the state of revenue for education. In other words, if the rich were paying more in taxes—possibly only what they were paying prior to the Reagan era—there would be no need for layoffs.

However, this dynamic hurts students’ educational opportunities in far deeper ways than increased class sizes and losses of popular teachers. The declining tax base also results in shrinking public health, nutritional and other services that benefit low income families, thus exacerbating many of the effects of poverty like higher rates of learning disabilities, cognitive impairment and absenteeism.

Florida Wasted $10,000’s Trying to Bust Poor People

Florida passed a law requiring those seeking welfare to first pass a drug test. The rationale was ostensibly to protect taxpayers from the horror of feeding the drug habits of low life scum who used welfare for drugs instead of feeding their babies. Proponents argued it would save the state money. Less people would apply (out of fear of getting busted), saving the state tens of thousands of dollars, while those who did apply but were caught would be rejected from the program and save the state tens of thousands of dollars more.

New research indicates that the program actually cost the government far more than it saved. Only 2.6% of applicants failed the test, mostly for marijuana use. Data obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union showed that the state spent over $118,000 for the tests, or $46,000 more than it would have spent on benefits for the few people who were disqualified, according to Democracy Now. Furthermore, the program dissuaded very few people, if any, from applying for welfare, with no change in the total number of people applying for welfare.

ACLU to Support Parents Who Opt Out of Standardized Tests

Opting out of standardized exams is legal in many states and a great way to push for their abolition. However, many parents rightly fear retribution against their children by teachers or administrators worried that too many resisters will nullify their test scores.

The ACLU apparently wants to support parents whose children have been penalized or threatened for opting out of testing. They want to hear peoples’ personal stories and have them join in on the ACLU complaint.

For more on this, go to Grumpy Things blog.