NEA-RA Chicago Blog 5–Or, This is the End

Yes, you’re right.  I didn’t write a blog yesterday.  There were several reasons for that, not the least of which is I didn’t want to do another rant about why an early endorsement was a bad idea.

I’ve also been trying to figure out how to explain to my members back in Waco that we now have a policy statement that takes a position on tying test scores to teacher evaluations that’s not simply some variation on: “Don’t do it.  That’s bad.”

I vented my spleen on the first a couple of days back.  My opinion hasn’t changed.  Unintelligent, fear-based politics is unintelligent, fear-based politics.  On the second, I’m not going to talk about it here, because I’m still not sure how to explain it.

Get it through your head (especially if you’re ever elected to be part of a body that gets to make decisions related to teacher evaluations).  Test scores do not reflect teaching ability.  This is especially true if the test itself is invalid or does not take into account EVERY POSSIBLE FACTOR GOING INTO A CHILD’S EDUCATION.  As that is impossible, then no standardized test can truly determine how good a teacher is.  And don’t even get me started on questions like, 1) “How much sleep did little Johnny get last night?”; 2) “Did this student have a healthy breakfast?”; and 3) “Did this child’s parents (or sometimes just parent) read to them when they were small (by the way, that’s the number one predictor of whether or not a child will graduate from High School, I’m just saying)?”  As for how to fairly judge a person’s teaching ability, I don’t have one.  But, if anyone would like to pay me millions of dollars a year for about five years or so (plus expenses and well-funded, exotic locations for me and my wife, girlfriend, or whomever I choose to take with me), I’ll be happy to develop one.

I understand that a news agency that’s not very good with facts (I’m looking at you, Fox News) has come out saying that the NEA increased their dues.  That’s true.  They went up $10 per member per year for the next 5 years (not an increasing figure; if your dues were, say, $50 for 2010 – 2011, they’ll be $60 for 2011 – 2012, $60 for 2012 – 2013, $60 for 2013 – 2014, $60 for 2014 – 2015, $60 for 2015 – 2016, and back to $50 for 2016 – 2017; please note that I’m not saying your dues are $50/year, I’m simply using that figure for illustration).  They’ve also said that this $10/year increase will go to fund the Obama campaign.  First off, the NEA has not changed its stance and does not contribute dues to political action.  Secondly, let me make this very clear.  These funds are being turned back to the state affiliates (Texas State Teachers Association, California Teachers Association, Tennessee Education Association, etc.) for their use in combating anti-teacher, anti-public-education legislation.  The funds can be used for expenses, litigation, lobbying expenses, but can’t be used to fund political campaigns.  That would be a violation of NEA rules.  If you work in a district (like Waco) which will receive 24 paychecks next year (two per month), that will be $0.42/paycheck.  If you get paid monthly, that would be $0.84/paycheck.  If you get paid on a different schedule, ……….. get a calculator and do it yourself.  Jeez!

Either way, with the RA done, we head back to Texas tomorrow.  I’m looking forward to the trip home through more of our beautiful national countryside.

Waco TSTA/NEA members (and anyone else who’d like to show), we’re going to the School Board meeting on July 21st to protest the attempt by Superintendent Bonny Cain to disband the Waco ISD Police Department and privatize them by contracting our police and security services out to another agency.  This would be deeply destructive to the morale and security of Waco ISD students and employees.  The meeting will be in the Board Room at 6:00 p.m.

Hope to see you there!

NEA-RA Chicago Blog Post 4–Or, In the Family with Uncle Joe

We heard from Vice President Joe Biden today.  I was actually quite impressed with what he had to say.  It wasn’t as partisan as I feared, but mainly because he drew a serious distinction (with only a couple of stumbles) between the “NEW” Republican Party (Tea Party driven bastardization of the Party of Lincoln) and the “OLD” Republican Party (I’m guessing Party of Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush41; no word on where Bob Dole fits into it, but since he’s old enough to have nominated Lincoln for President in 1860, I guess he gets to be a part of the “OLD” Republican Party).  By the way, as a life-long Republican (see previous blog posts), I reject that part of the VP’s speech.  The Tea Party really represents the last gasps of a party mechanism that spawned the hate-filled rhetoric of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck, the party of those so angered by the election of Bill Clinton that they couldn’t see past the ends of their collective noses, the party that took a great man and a great American hero like John McCain and turned him into a puppet, dancing to their tune just to finally get the presidential nomination he deserved.  It’s too bad he had to neuter himself to get it and cost himself an election in the process.  The truly New Republican Party will be the party that finally throws off the idiot fascists and anarchists masquerading as conservatives and libertarians.  True conservatives understand the value of smart taxation and true libertarians would reject intrusive and unnecessary policies like an opposition to gay marriage or controls on abortion.  These guys miss the ball on all of those issues.  The truly New Republican Party will be what’s left after the 2012 re-election of Barack Obama when the moderates and true believers throw off the Tea Party and take their Party back.

As for the Vice President, I really enjoyed much of what he had to say this morning.  Then we started doing business.  And did we do business.  New Business Item after New Business Item were brought up, we held elections, and then we had more New Business Items (if you’ve only been to a TSTA House of Delegates, you ain’t seen nothin’ compared to NEA-RA).  Most of them were good, some of them were kooky, a couple of them were … well, uncomfortable.  But this is what happens when you get 9,000 public school employees with 9,000 disparate opinions together.  Overall, we did it all with as truly democratic a process as you can imagine, with everyone’s vote and everyone’s voice being important.

Most importantly, it did bring home that the NEA is a family.  We work in different places, we teach different kids, but we are all dedicated to the welfare of the children that represent the future of our society.  I am reminded of a letter to the editor in the Waco Tribune-Herald a couple of months back where my words were twisted and my views discounted by a former Texas State Legislator (a member of the “NEW” Republican Party from the sound of his words), who claimed that members of the NEA didn’t give a damn about kids; we were only interested in furthering our political goals.  My first reaction to reading what he had to say was anger.  How dare he question the dedication of these people, who came here, either sent out of the tight resources of local or state organizations or paying their own way, to fight to represent kids.  If you could show the Doc Andersons, the Marva Becks, the Robb Eisslers, the Sarah Palins, the Michelle Bachmans, or the Rick Perrys of the world the passion that these educators have, maybe they could see what it means to be a teacher, because that is what we all are, whether we drive a school bus or serve lunch or clean classrooms or file discipline paperwork or share our days with a classroom full of kids, we’re all teachers.

No, you’re right, they probably wouldn’t get it at all.

NEA-RA Chicago Blog Post 3–Or, A Long Day, but a Good Day

Well, it was the first official set of sessions in the life of the 90th Representative Assembly.  The Texas Caucus started off the morning, followed by the Republicans.  The talk of the day was an early endorsement of President Barack Obama in the 2012 election.

Here’s where I get in trouble.  See, I don’t really see a current Republican who has any idea of how to fix public education.  Most of the current crop of Republican candidates seem bound and determined to destroy public education.  They figure it costs too much (or maybe they don’t want rich kids going to school with poor kids; after all, it might give those rich kids a desire to actually help their fellow Americans rather than crushing their throats on the way up the wealth ladder).  The other problem is that President Obama and his odious Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have created Race to the Top, which did something no Republican, anti-teacher administration has been able to do, and that’s tie teacher evaluations directly to test scores.  That’s right, an issue that is near and dear to the hearts of every public educator I know is the idea that their kids are more than test scores and that the effectiveness of a teacher has little, if anything, to do with how a kid scores on a standardized test.  But President Obama, that savior of liberalism, that “friend of public education”, turned around and put together a program wherein 50% of a teacher’s annual evaluation is tied to standardized test scores.  With friends like these, who needs enemies?

But I digress.  The big problem I have is not with an Obama endorsement, per se.  It’s with the fact that we’re doing it now, 16 months before Election Day 2012.  And we’re doing it with no strings attached.  It’s like sticking your hand in the mad dog’s cage and getting it bitten, just to give him a treat and stick your hand right back in his cage while he’s still foaming at the mouth.  It also kills any kind of political viability we have as an organization.  Is Barack Obama better for public education than Michelle Bachman, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, or Tim Pawlenty?  Yes.  Is he better than Sarah Palin or Rick Perry (assuming they’re even aware of how to spell public education)?  Hell, yes.  Is he better than Mitt Romney or Jon Hunstman?  To quote the great Scooter, “Not so fast, my friend.”  But, if we hand it over today, this week, this year, why do any of these people even need to consider whether or not teachers even matter in this election.  The second problem is that every argument for endorsing now, right away, yesterday if possible, is directed to the heart.  It was scary sitting in that room.  That was the atmosphere they were trying to create:  one of fear.  Not constructive, let’s make things better, fear; but, doooommmeed fear.  Not a single argument engaged the thinking processes of the brain.  Not a single argument wanted you to think about it for more than a moment before the adrenaline kicked in and, out of being terrified, you would be willing to vote yes.  We’re supposed to be better than that.  We’re educators.  We’re supposed to be the thinkers in this society.  That’s the respect we demand from society.  That’s the respect we demand from our school boards and our communities.  And today (or Monday, rather, that’s when the actual vote takes place) we just frittered it away for no verifiable return.  We handed over any power we may have had.

There’s got to be a smarter way than that.

I’m a fan of politics.  Okay, that’s kind of like saying that Jeff Gordon drives a little fast, but you get the idea.  Politics is one of the three passions I have in my life (my wife and teaching being the other two, and I’m not revealing an order to anybody).  I have listened to the Tea Party engage everybody’s gut and nobody’s brain for the better part of three years now and I have been sickened with every time that they have argued that somebody needed to feel something about an issue rather than think something about an issue.  The guys who wrote the Constitution did everything they could to wring emotion out of the process, because Madison and Hamilton and Franklin were aware that emotions make for bad law.  The only way to make good law is to use those higher thinking capacities.  Today, I saw an NEA that was dedicated not to the head, but to the bowel-squeezing, mouth-drying, eye-watering fears of a group of people who have put politics ahead of what’s best for our profession.  Would we have ended up endorsing Barack Obama as the better candidate in 2012 anyway?  I’m smart enough to say yes.  And I probably even would have agreed to it then.  This was just fear-mongering stupidity.  And if that hurts anybody’s feelings, well that’s too bad.  You used your feelings enough today anyway.  Tomorrow (and for the rest of this assembly), let’s try using our brains and putting together smart policies.  It will really help our members when they have to defend themselves to the stupid, anti-education, anti-teacher fools of the world if they don’t have to defend fear-based decisions made in haste.

I know, “tl; dr” (for those less net-lingo savvy, that means “too long; didn’t read”, basically the idiot admitting that he’s too dumb to understand the big words).  Well, if you don’t want to read it, you don’t have to.  Just don’t ask me questions about it without reading it first.  And don’t assume things about me that you don’t know.  That’s all I ask, a little civility and some basic intelligence.  You know, the things we’ve always demanded from society and gotten up until recently.

So far as the rest of the show goes, well, tomorrow, we shall see.  I’m looking forward to hearing what VP Joe Biden has to say.  He’s not my favorite and I disagree with a bunch of his views, but I’m always entertained and always come away more enlightened when listening to different points of view (okay, sometimes that enlightenment is, “Wow, this guy’s an idiot”; but I’m sure that won’t be the enlightenment tomorrow).  I might disagree with the Vice President, but he is a man I respect and his dedication to his country and to his position are things I admire.

I’ll plan on putting up more tomorrow night.

Until then, keep the faith and keep fighting the good fight.

NEA-RA Chicago Blog Post 2–Or, Frog on a Hot Plate

Wow!  Leave town for a couple of days and see what happens.  Go ahead, I dare you.  Considering that I spent a great deal of time dealing with local Waco issues, I would now like to designate Chicago as “Waco North”.  How the web is great, though, is the fact that I’m still able to keep in touch with people on the ground there, in the moment.

As far as Chicago goes, the biggest shout-out I got is that the food in this town is truly excellent.  Even the double filet-o-fish I got yesterday tasted better than they normally do.  I do have yet to try any Chicago pub grub, but I’m pretty sure that’s coming soon.

And, as far as today goes, the first meeting of the NEA Republican Caucus.  I joined the American Indian/Alaska Native Caucus yesterday (Cherokees of the world HOLLA!) and Maggie and I both signed up for the GLBT Caucus.  I’m also the official contact for the Texas Caucus to the Republican Caucus, Maggie’s on the Materials Committee, and I’m on the Elections Committee, both for the Texas Caucus.  So, cool stuff.

NEA-RA Chicago Blog 1–Or, A Long Train Ride to the Windy City

The train has been an interesting experience.  We just left Joliet, former place of residence of “Joliet” Jake Blues, which is the last station stop before Chicago’s Union Station.

We’re not alone on this train trip.  Some other Texas delegates are on the same trip and I understand we picked up some other state delegates in St. Louis.

BTW, that was my first time (at least that I know of) through St. Louis.  The Gateway Arch was really cool, but seeing Busch Stadium, home of those damned St. Louis Cardinals sickened me a bit.

And if anyone ever tells you that train food isn’t good, they either weren’t on this train or they’re just sour on the whole train experience.  The food has been utterly fantastic, from the cheese omelet for breakfast to the New York Strip last night (thankfully, meals are included in the price of the sleeper accommodations).

I’ll try to blog every day of the Representative Assembly with a few updates about the big decisions made by the NEA.  I don’t know about tomorrow as technically it doesn’t start until Friday.  Tomorrow’s for registering and getting things lined up.

And, we’re about 60 miles from Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half-a-pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.

Hit it!

Life-Long Republican

I’m usually proud to admit this.

I’ve been a Republican since I knew what political parties were.  I mean, there’s a lot to be proud of in the Republican Party.  Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.  So were Bill McKinley, “Teddy” Roosevelt, Bill Taft, “Silent Cal” Coolidge, Dwight Eisenhower, Gerry Ford, and Ronnie Reagan.  Jack Kemp’s a Republican.  So’s Rudy Giuliani.  Robert Taft, Thomas Dewey, Bill Clements, George H.W. Bush, all Republicans.  Probably the one I’m proudest of is my dad.  This man, who taught me to be strong, fair, caring, thoughtful in my decisions, who taught me to think before I spoke or, even more importantly, acted.  My dad, whose patience is legendary even in the face of the utmost stupidity, he’s a Republican, too.

Lately, though…lately, it’s been awfully tough to identify with what has become of the Party I’ve been dedicated to.  The “Christian Right”, the “Tea Party”, the “Social Neocons”, these are the groups that have come to dominate the perception of the modern Republican Party.  This is a Party who thinks it’s more important to make sure that taxes don’t go up even though they can’t find a way to fund their obligations.  This is a Party who thinks that making sure women have ultrasounds before they can get abortions is more important than making sure we have a lavishly-funded public education system.  This is a Party who thinks that millionaire yacht-owners are more important than poor schoolkids.  This is a Party that I’m having more and more trouble finding common ground with.

Teddy Roosevelt would have spat in their faces.  Bill McKinley and Abe Lincoln would have been terribly dismayed at their willingness to risk the future of the greatest country in the world just to make sure that a few multi-millionaires could become bigger multi-millionaires.  William Taft, a Supreme Court Chief Justice in addition to being a President, would have openly wept to see them sacrifice our rights to privacy and freedom on the Altar of the Religious Right.

Now, I’m aware that these ultra-right views don’t represent the majority of people in the Republican Party.  I know that most of this country is neither right-wing or left-wing.  Most of us live somewhere quite in between these two extremes and most of us are willing to prioritize what we need over what we are willing to give up.  These guys aren’t willing to do that.  To them, compromise is a foreign concept.  The realities of lawmaking escape them because they want everything.

They have stopped supporting the majority of the people that make up the big tent that is the Republican philosophy.  They want small government when it comes to taxes, but big government when it comes to enforcing a Christian religious agenda, just to make sure that everyone falls in line.  They want the freedom to express their own views, but want to shut up the ideas of anybody else.  They want fairness and equal time when the other Party’s in charge but are willing to silence the other Party when there’s a Republican majority (okay, that last one’s more the Texas Legislature than the U.S. one, but still…)

Which leads me to ask one question of those who feel like they represent the leadership of the Republican Party.

When the loudmouth far right has run off the moderates and you’re not conservative enough for them anymore, when they break away and formally create a Tea Party to run their own candidates, who’s going to support you then?

Perhaps that’s when you come back to the moderates and the moderate conservatives and find out that they’ve all been scared away.  Because you signed a deal with ……. well, I’ll let you figure that out.

End of the School Year

 

The following is the text of my final message as President of Waco TSTA/NEA for the school year ending in June 2011.

 

… And Now We Come to the End of the Road

It’s amazing to me how quickly time goes. As I look back over the first year of my tenure as your President, I am amazed at how much change we’ve seen over the last year. I am more amazed at how much we still have to do.

This year started for me with a group of fresh, young faces, mostly recent college graduates, who appeared at New Teacher Orientation. This is one of my favorite events of the year, as it takes me back to that day twelve years ago when I first met the people I would share my inaugural teaching experience with. It reminds me of the successes I had as a first year teacher, and of the failures that I had (which were far more numerous, it seems) and that I learned from. New Teacher Orientation is always so full of promise. The joy that our young colleagues feel at the realization of the dream they’ve shared to become teachers is an almost palpable force in the room as they sit through lectures, PowerPoint presentations, and question-and-answer sessions. It reminds you that if you taught your class this way, you’d be called on the carpet for not using best practices to engage student learning, but I digress. Bright eyes and fresh faces are the order of the week and it is almost comical to see the realities of the profession start to sink in to these “rookie” educators. And, as each starts the journey of their career in public education, we see the impatience to finally get in the classroom, to finally get to feel the true joy that is teaching. Thinking back on this year’s NTO is a bittersweet memory.

Convocation and cheers, teacher in-service and meet the teacher night, we met our new colleagues and renewed the friendships that came with our ol…, “veteran”, colleagues, and we were off to the races. The question on every mind related to the search for a Superintendent for Waco Public Schools and there were many school board sessions, many community discussions, much to make of who would lead the district going forward.

Before we knew it, the first semester was wrapping and, as it always seems to fly by, it was the holiday season. We still didn’t know who our new Superintendent would be and we really did not know the problems that were going to come from a quarter that most of us give little, if any, thought to.

We found a new Superintendent, but as we were seeing and hearing about that decision, there was a new sound on the horizon.

The first rumbles were that distant thunder over the mountains. A group of newly-elected legislators were talking about a conservative budget. It was nothing new to political observers. Heck, the last time Texas had a liberal budget was ……. (I’m still trying to remember if Texas has ever had a liberal budget). But this was a group of legislators who had been elected by a new force, a new wing of the political landscape, a wing that had taken as its boogeyman the President and he was the guy they had all been elected to beat. Medicare, Social Security, and Public Education were all concepts that were anathema to these people. You can forget the fact that both parties have championed all three of these causes over the years. They certainly had.

As the Texas legislative session ramped up, moderate Republicans and Democrats of all stripes seemed to be running scared. The Tea Party favorites were carrying a big set of shears and they were aiming to take money out of the hide of every public service you could think of.

Health insurance for kids? Cut it. State contributions to Medicare and Medicaid? Cut them, too. Public education? Yep, here comes the butcher to cut away the fat. Ignore the fact that all of these programs are already as lean as they can get in Texas. Ignore the fact that there is no excess when you’re 44^th in the country in spending-per-pupil. These guys didn’t want to hear that.

Now, I try not to talk about issues outside of education and I just use these to bring out a point, but you have to wonder about the mentality of a group of people who are against public education. Every important thinker in history, from Aristotle and Plato to Franklin and Jefferson to Lincoln to Somerville and Roosevelt (all of them) have celebrated the importance of education, particularly in a democratic republic. Maybe that’s the problem. The people I just listed are folks who thought. Maybe that’s where the disconnect lies.

Regardless, the word came out of the legislature that there were going to be cuts to all sorts of State services and that public education was the biggest dog in the fight. Therefore, public education was also the biggest target. They came for us. It is time to recognize that there were many members of both Houses of the Texas Legislature in both parties who worked to minimize, even to eliminate, these evil cuts. Their dedication to making Texas the best State in the Union for education should not only be noted, it should be celebrated. Unfortunately, their support of public education may have made them bigger targets for those whose ignorance leads them to deride education.

Who are these who deride public education, you ask. These are people who believe what their masters tell them when they say that public education is not necessary. These are people who believe in a utopia of libertarianism in which they will be nothing but servants to the whims of their wealthier neighbors. They simply take up the torch and the pitchfork and march off shouting that the monster must be killed. And they have identified the monster as public education.

Thankfully, we did not simply sit on our hands and do nothing. Thankfully, we made the calls, sent the emails and letters, made the visits, attended the rallies, and garnered support from our communities to fight them off. We have won a victory for public education. But with victory there is always a price. Some of our friends and colleagues, some of those bright, shining faces that greeted us in August will not be in the classrooms next year. They have become casualties in a war against education, a war against enlightenment, a war against the very light that brings a people from slavery to exalted liberty.

For all of our successes, I will carry with me forever the pain of knowing that not everyone who started this journey in our ranks will end it there. For all the euphoria that comes with winning, I will never forget those teachers who will now leave classrooms and children’s lives empty of their particular light.

We must never forget those who fell by the wayside in a war where politics became more important than the lives of children. We must never surrender to the forces of dark ignorance that would snuff out the shining example of public education. We must never stop fighting until every single member of the Texas Legislature and every single occupant of the Executive Offices of the Texas government has an appreciation for public education.

Never give up.

Never surrender.

We are Waco TSTA/NEA. And we are public education.