Why I oppose @NEAToday early endorsement of @HillaryClinton

Without unions, workers will lose many of the protections against abusive employers. Wages for all will be depressed, even as corporate profits soar. The American Dream will be destroyed for millions. And we will have a government of the corporations, by the already powerful, for the wealthy.
              ~ Kenneth Bernstein, teacher, author, education activist

Change your social media profile pic if you agree

Teacher, education activist and blogger, Fred Klonsky, posted this yesterday: 

What has been rumored for several weeks is now pretty much a sure thing. The NEA board of directors are meeting next week and they will go through the motions of taking a vote. But an endorsement of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party primary race is all but assured. (emphasis mine)

What's particularly troubling is that because this is a primary endorsement, many member voices simply will not be heard in this process. Steven Singer writes:

[S]ince this is only an endorsement for the primary election, the matter would not need to go before the Representative Assembly (RA). In effect, the move could sidestep the voices of the RA’s 8,000 delegates representing state and local affiliates, student members, retired members, and other segments of the united education profession. 

The decision would be made by a handful of leaders and the PAC council. Though there are thousands of PAC council votes, they are distributed by the amount of money raised by each state’s members. This means that little states like Delaware – where members donate greatly – have a larger vote relative to their membership than other states. 

The voices of the great majority of members would be silenced. (more on this below)

Even though I want a woman president, and I know I will see that happen in my lifetime, I don't want a president—man or woman—who does not stand for the views and values of public education as supported by the vast majority of hard-working NEA and AFT members in this country. 

The NEA should not endorse this early in the campaign. AFT did it this past summer and got substandial pushback from its members including a Change.org petition calling for a re-call of the endorsement and thousands of angry posts on the association's Facebook page. AFT President Randi Weingarten is good friends with Clinton and sits on the board of Priorities USA, a pro-Hillary super PAC.

Follow the money

If you're reading this post, chances are you've seen this meme floating around social media:

The Tampa Bay Times PolitiFact rated it 'mostly true' stating:

Social media memes say that Clinton’s top 10 donors are mainly "banks, corporations and media," while Bernie Sanders’ top 10 donors are labor unions. This contention fits quite closely with campaign data from the Center for Responsive Politics. However, it’s worth noting that this data refers to cumulative donations as far back as the 1980s, rather than just donations to their current presidential bids. The statement is accurate but needs clarification, so we rate it Mostly True. (emphasis mine)

Donors must disclose their place of employment when making campaign contributions, so it is entirely possible that some of these contributions could be comprised of individual donations from company employees rather than a few large checks from that organization.

According to the most recent report from The Center for Responsive Politics, so far in this election cycle Clinton's campaign has raised over $47.5 million while Sanders has raised almost $16.5 million. This does not include PAC contributions. But while 70% of Sanders' money has come from small, individual contributions, 82% of Clinton's has come from large, individual donors. And that's a big, red flag. Don't forget, President Bill Clinton signed the New Market Tax Credits bill into law that opened the floodgates for hedge fund investment in urban charter schools. And who has lots of money these days and is spending it on education 'reform'? Hedge fund managers, among others. Wall Street money.

Will history repeat itself?

Remember this? Obama vs. Romney in 2012:

NOTE: The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organizations' PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

Look at what that $815K from Microsoft employees has cost us as a nation. I remember sitting on the floor of the 2012 NEA RA and the buzz going around that convention center when, not President Barak Obama, but Vice President Joe Biden addressed the delegation. A lot of people were very angry—but not at Biden. While President Obama did address us via phone, it felt to many of us like he was afraid to face us, and rightly so. While I voted for him twice, the second time I held my nose because he was the lesser of two evils. The Obama-Gates-Duncan education policies have brought US public education to its knees—and I never, ever thought I'd say that about a Democratic president.

President Obama sold public education and our students to the highest bidders: Wall Street, Gates, Pearson, Eli Broad, The Walton Foundation, and everyone else who is profiting in the Gold Rush Education Rush of the 21st Century. We have no proof whatsoever that Clinton—or any of the candidates—will put an end to this madness, so why should we write them a check this early in the game?

See for yourself

Here are the videos of the three Democratic presidential candidates that were shown at the NEA RA in July. Watch for yourself:

Hillary Clinton:



Bernie Sanders:



Martin O'Malley:



There is nothing in Hillary's speech that screams, "We must elect this woman!" Quite frankly, there's nothing in any of the speeches that screams that. And while Sanders' speech isn't as passionate as I've seen him in the past, in Klonsky's post above, he goes on to say this:

In her talks with state union leaders around the country [NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia] has admitted that Bernie Sanders and the NEA are more often in 100% agreement on education issues but that Hillary is more electable. (emphasis mine) 

Do we want to support a candidate that's electable? Of course. No one wants to back a loser. And although my personal position is in support of Sanders, I don't want to see NEA endorse any of them yet. There are too many unknowns. If our national association does not first and foremost support our students, our profession and our public schools, we might just as well line up at the door of the local charter school to apply for a job because pretty soon that's all that will be available. 

We have been playing nice for too long. Public education is being bulldozed into the ground. Democracy is being trampled in the name of 'choice'. Our schools are grossly underfunded; our students over tested; our professionals subjected to McCarthy-era witch hunts; and our neediest, poorest students of color are being segregated in numbers not seen since before the Civil Rights Movement.

Time for action!

It's time our association stood up and carved that canyon in stone. With 'reform'-style politicians on both sides of the aisle screaming for accountability within our ranks, when do we start holding them accountable? You want our money? You want our endoresment? You want our votes? Then prove yourself. Otherwise our association is part of the problem, not part of the solution, and we will be weaker for it.

Anthony Cody writes:

NEA members will be active regardless. If NEA endorses Clinton or any other candidate without an adequate process that actively involves and engages their membership, and without clear answers to the vital questions we have regarding the Department of Education and Democratic party support of corporate reform, then teacher activism will take place outside of the NEA. That will leave the organization weakened, and make the endorsement far less powerful than it could be. An endorsement that is the process of real member participation will then unleash that energy into a grassroots campaign in support of the chosen candidate. A top down endorsement will yield some millions of member dollars, and some union leaders on the podium for photos, but much less in terms of on the ground support. (emphasis mine)

In his open letter to Lily, teacher/blogger Peter Greene posted earlier this morning:

Teachers are tired of having their voices silenced and ignored. We have been silenced and ignored by political leaders, corporate leaders, virtually every big name in the last fifteen years of education reformy fiasco. To ask us to accept the same from our own national union is just too much. The democratic process is under attack in our country; we do not want to see it under attack within our own union. 

It is a mistake on the larger scale as well. The early endorsement is just another attempt to circumvent the democratic process, to say, "Well, it looks like the voters at large might make a choice we don't like, so we are going to take steps to keep that from happening. We can't just be letting the Democratic Party make these choices based on the will of the voter. We need to tip the scale." This does not say, "We have faith in the American voters." It says, "The American voters are boobs, and we need to push them where we want them." 

It won't work. The howls from NEA members will be loud and palpable, and the whole mess will feed the narrative that NEA is NOT the voice of three million teachers, but a group of political operatives who try to harness those voices for their own purposes. 

Democracy is under attack. The voices of ordinary citizens are being ignored and silenced. NEA must not become one more big organization saying, "Some peoples' voices just don't matter." (emphasis mine)

If you agree, and you are a member of an NEA state affiliate, consider changing your social media avatar to the meme above. Then, contact your state affiliate's elected leaders and tell them you do not support this early endorsement; tweet Lily at @Lily_NEA and @NEAToday; share on Facebook and post on the NEA Facebook page; and engage your fellow members to join the chorus of voices rising up to stop this.

Special note

Last week the NJEA PAC Committee took a position of 'no endorsement at this time'. Our members felt there was not a strong enough case for an early endorsement because Clinton has not come out strong against the corporate takeover of public education. Since NJEA is one of the top PAC fundraisers in the NEA, our vote will carry more weight at that meeting next week. 

Data does not a great teacher make

And so the data reporting begins. 

The Star Ledger reported yesterday:

For the first time, New Jersey's Department of Education will publish a centralized database with the aggregate teacher evaluation results for each school across the state. 

The 2013-14 data, to be released next week, will not include performance ratings for specific teachers. But parents will be able to see how many teachers in a school received each of the four possible ratings, according to the state....Before 2013-14, teachers were essentially graded on a thumbs up or thumbs down system, based on a century-old law that required evaluations. Nearly 100 percent of teachers were deemed acceptable....More than 97 percent of New Jersey teachers received positive evaluation scores for 2013-14, the state announced in June (Hmmm... 97% isn't that 'nearly 100%'? Just sayin'.) But unlike previous years, the new system creates more distinction between perforance levels and allows the state to further analyze the data for useful trends. 

For example, teachers in their first or second year were twice as likely to receive a "partially effective" review as more expereinced teachers. 

Meanwhile, experienced teachers were twice as likely to get the highest rating. (emphasis mine)

Ah, ya gotta love the irony. Nothing screams, "We need excellent educators in every classroom!" like underfunding public education, piling enormous amounts of data collection and test prep on top of all the mountains of work classroom teachers already have, blaming, shaming, disrespecting, devaluing, under-paying, slashing and burning, VAM-ing and scaming us into thinking all of this is good 'for the children'. No wonder 40-50% of educators leave the profession within the first 5 years.

Education 'reformers' from coast to coast beat the war drums against seniority and bow to the Holy Grail of data, but will they have the guts to face the data that shows that, as in every other profession, experience matters?

Ask any veteran educator and they will tell you that if they could go back and re-do their first 5 years teaching, they would do things much differently. Experience builds competence; practice makes progress. It's a no brainer—except in 'reformy land'. I hope they have 'some fava beans and a nice chianti' on hand to wash down those words they have to eat. You know... the ones that say we're all just a bunch of lazy oafs, waiting to collect our pensions.

Which brings me to this:

Last week I attended the National Education Association Representative Assembly in Orlando. Translation: 10,000 education professionals sitting in a convention center for 8-10 hours a day over 4 days doing Robert's Rules as we chart the organization's course for the next year. 

Shanna Peeples, a teacher from Texas and the 2015 NEA National Teacher of the Year gave this riveting speech:

Here's what resonated for me (all emphasis mine):

On her first year teaching:

The teacher I was lucky enough to teach next door to during my first disastrous year of teaching showed me a lot about being a professional.

On the NEA: 

I've never been more proud of a membership in my whole life....[T]he NEA welcomed black members four years before the Civil War and elected a woman president ten years before women had the right to vote, I thought, this isn’t a group of people who are afraid. These are people who are willing to be brave and fight for those who have been pushed out, left out and singled out.... I see warriors of kindness, warriors of hope, and warriors whose spines are absolute steel in their resolve to fight for what matters. You are the best kind of warriors because your mission is to save and serve the most vulnerable members of our society: children. You are their voice and their champions.

On education 'reform': 

Our critics love clichés, and simplistic slogans and manipulated data—this is how they attack, and the good news is the utter banality of those attacks.

On retaining excellent educators: 

We have to keep our best teachers teaching by giving them real positions of leadership and real responsibility. Part of the most-cited reasons for teachers leaving the profession is the pressure of so much responsibility with so little say in what happens.

On the over use of data: 

In education, we have an almost dysfunctional relationship with data, as if the raw scores and scale scores will arrange themselves into arrows pointing this way or that way. I like the way Dave Zirin talks about data: “ Statistics are like a bikini. They show so much, but they hide the most important parts.” 

And, as we know, the most important parts of our jobs are students. Each data point is a person, which our critics often forget in their zeal to rate and evaluate. And people are notoriously difficult to standardize. But what we as teachers know, is that our lessons have to affect both the head and the heart. They have to involve students in real work for real outcomes.

On teaching refugee students: 

We decided to use their visual literacy to build a bridge to written words. So, we began with drawings. I used a prompt that first day that I’ve used my entire career: “Draw something you’ll never forget.” Mostly, I get drawings about roller coasters and puppies and maybe one or two about when a beloved grandparent passes away. I was totally unprepared for my refugee students drawings. They drew very detailed scenes of small huts on fire, of beatings, of leaving family members behind a razor-wire fence—and most disturbingly, of small children being bayoneted by soldiers. 

Those same students, with help, created digital narratives of their experiences that used images and music to communicate their experience in an authentic way that has engaged every audience who has seen them. 

Now, a standardized test won’t reveal these skills and experiences, but I propose that this story is still data, but more importantly, that me telling this story gives you more insight into them than reams of scores that label them as “below proficient.”

On her own life experience: 

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who knew that monsters must somehow live inside bottles of whiskey because they could turn otherwise good people into someone who grabbed her by the throat and shoved her against the wall until she nearly quit breathing. Or someone who would take a baseball bat to her mother’s face. Or someone that did other, much darker things when no one who wasn’t drinking whiskey was around. 

The monsters sometimes made bargains with her. They taught her how to drive a car when she was 12 years old so she could get her father home from the bar without another DUI charge. Once, she drove across two states with her mother out cold in the back seat and her mother’s boyfriend so drunk in the front seat that she had to drive with one arm holding him off her. She learned to live with her fists clenched, on guard at all times, because she was the oldest and her siblings were too little to take a punch. 

But she had school. And teachers. Teachers who gave her books and paper and pencils and taught her how to write when she wanted to hit, when she wanted to scream, or quit. Teachers showed her that books could take her anywhere and that she could literally write herself new beginnings. That little girl was lucky enough to have teachers who were her warriors. Who helped her to fight off the despair that came with her to school every day like a stray dog. The little girl learned that teachers are the best kinds of heroes because they showed her how to turn fear into faith. Faith in her ability to think, faith in her ability to create her own path, faith to believe in herself. 

That little girl was me and I teach for her and everyone just like her. Every little boy who knows the kind of fear that addiction brings. Every little girl who knows the kind of fear that poverty brings.

There is no data point in the universe that can pinpoint what makes Shanna Peeples not only an excellent teacher, but the best of the best this year. There is no evaluation system or standardized test that can turn every single teacher into a teacher of the year. Just as the overwhelming majority of children will never go on to become President of the United States, there is no way to put a Shanna Peeples in every single classroom in this country. There is only one of her. But there are many, many excellent teachers changing students' lives for the better every single day. And they need to be honored, respected, valued, uplifted, paid, properly trained, supported and treated as the professionals they are. That's how you attract and retain great teachers.

.@GovChristie He-Man Woman Haters Club

Greetings from Orlando! Home of the NEA RA 2015! 

While many of us were down here preparing for the Representative Assembly, on Tuesday, the Essex Co. Education Association organized a protest rally outside Gov. Christie's POTUS campaign kickoff at Livingston High School. Since then, the 'other' #TellingItLikeItIs campaign has been flooding Twitter and Facebook with memes and stories of life under Emperor Gov. Christie. This one caught my attention:






















While his record on the economy, jobs and the environment is atrocious, Gov. Christie has forged his reputation on verbally abusing voters—especially women. 

"Something may be going down tonight, but it ain't jobs, sweetheart."

Here's the video: 



Straight out of central casting: 

Rude, crude, sexist, dumb oaf, in a bar, beer in hand, surrounded by back-slapping good 'ole boys. Half-time's over, now back to the game. So he grabs a frazzled waitress and pulls her onto his lap. 

"More wings, sweetie. Make 'em hot, like you."

Laughs, guffaws and cat calls from his buddies as the waitress pries herself out of his grip and scurries away, clearly embarrassed.

In some way, shape or form, this happens every day in every city in America. It's one thing when some random jerk does it; it's quite another when the sitting governor of your state does it. But what's more disturbing is when this behavior gets a favorable reaction from the crowd. Writing for The Washington Post, Matt Katz reported:

The comment shocked some pundits who thought it was sexist. But I was in the crowd, and that line got more applause than any other. 

Welcome to the age of pro wrestling politics.

I'm sure it had something to do with Mormon Mitt Romney taking a pass on him for his VPOTUS candidate. But I don't understand why any woman in NJ could vote for Christie for a second term and endorse this behavior.  

But Gov. Christie is an equal opportunity offender. Just look at what he's said about some NJ female elected officials (additional reporting at Blue Jersey):

• Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg deserves to be beaten with a baseball bat.
• (Then) Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver lies.
• Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (then Assemblywoman) is responsible for someone's murder.
• Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle is a jerk.

Something tells me that more than a few therapists around the Garden State would love to get him on their couch for a few sessions. 

If you're a Baby Boomer like me, you no doubt know this classic Little Rascals episode:




Like Spanky, Gov. Christie has issues with women and leads with an iron fist. Like Alfalfa, the GOP does his bidding even though they don't always agree with him, lest the sergeant at arms (Christie's wrath) rain down on them. While Spanky fills Darla's sandwiches with soap, Christie fills women's lives with more struggles. Whether it's vetoing Planned Parenthood funding or equal pay for women or slashing school funding or launching a full-out assault on teachers—the majority of whom are women—Christie has made it clear that if you're a woman without deep pockets and a big checkbook, he really has no use for you.  

As I sit in a convention center with approximately 9,000 other education professionals from all across the country, the majority of whom are women, as we listen to a moving tribute to the victims of the terrorist shooting at the AME Church, as we debate and discuss issues of institutional racism, marriage equality, voting rights and others concerning social justice, as our leaders—all minorities, all women: President Lily Eskelsen (Latina), Vice President Becky Pringle and Secretary Treasurer Princess Moss (African Americans)—give impassioned speeches about personal empowerment, standing up for our students and our profession, I wonder what the 2017 RA would look like should Christie be elected president. And I shudder.

Elections have consequences. Women should never have to suffer the consequences of Gov. Christie's policies again. 

Register to vote and do it!