9486 in the collection
AFT Ad in the New York Times
by Rich Gibson
I have in front of me page A13 of the June 10 2009 New York Times, delivered to my place in San Diego.
It's a full page ad sponsored by the United Federation of Teachers, the bellwether and controlling local of the American Federation of Teachers, signed by UFT President Randi Weingarten She is also the president of the AFT.
The crux of the ad is an appeal to the Mayor and City Council of NYC to "shield our schools from hard times." The reason? "This year's test scores showed great improvement for our kids."
How did this "great improvement," happen? "Our teachers, students, and parents have taught New York City a thing or two about hard work."
This is the logic that both the larger National Education Association and the AFT have applied since the emergence of test mania: bribe us and we will do it. We will even work "hard" at it.
Pay us and we will conduct the child abuse: racist, anti-working class high stakes exams that kill curiosity and teach kids not to like to learn---a good match for a soldier or happy Walmart employee.
Merit pay is, in this logic, reasonable and almost inevitable. It's also Obama's project. It will become the task of NEA and AFT leadership to sell it to their rank and file.
They'll also be trying to retain a veneer of militancy while leading a series of retreats: layoffs, pay and benefit cuts, increases in class size. You don't need to pay union dues to surrender. You can throw up your hands and give up alone.
Racism will redouble its role--on the payroll--when merit pay kicks in connected to racially skewed test scores.
The AFT, which helped organized the decay and ruin of urban education in the US (while NEA, the more suburban union stood, aside and watched) may take the lead in pulling together this attack on poor and working class kids and educators, but NEA members will witness the reality of the old union saw, "an injury to one just goes before an injury to all," when merit pay invades their schools too.
Why is this happening? It's happening in part because the all-out assault of the rich on the poor (the corporate state is a full-blown reality now) has to be cloaked in a pretense of national unity. And because the education agenda is a war agenda [pdf file].
While the unions are good place to meet people, to raise key issues and debate the relationship of what is and what might be; the unions are not going to be mainly helpful in the period ahead.
I'd like to suggest that those in the western US get together in Fresno this summer. We need to discuss our standpoints, what we see and what we think should or can be done. Fresno is near the center of California.
Good luck to us, every one.
— Rich Gibson
post to CA Resisters
2009-06-10
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