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UPDATE,
SUMMER 2001
Congress is moving full steam
ahead with a national "Education" bill. The House of
Representatives overwhelmingly passed their version (HR1) on May 23,
with Senate passage (S1/HR1) following on June 14. The bills will be
merged this summer by a joint House/Senate committee, and the final
result will go back to each body for final passage. Both bills push
"high stakes" testing as the miracle cure for the problems in
our schools, with privatization of schools that fail the testing hurdles
as the final result. Lawmakers must be urged to oppose the mindless,
mechanical use of testing, and the hidden privatization agenda must be
denounced and opposed as well (see: UE News
Feature - Who Cares About Public Education?)
BACKGROUND
With hundreds of billions of tax dollars going to
support our nations network of public schools, it was inevitable that
big business would sooner or later attempt to tap into this pool of
potential profits. To accomplish this, various conservative think-tanks,
media personalities and politicians have turned public-school bashing
into an industry by itself.
To some extent this crusade against our
schools and teachers has succeeded, much like the hysteria against
Social Security. Over the last decade attacks on public education have
unfolded at the state and local level, as politicians moved to privatize
school support services. Occasionally even entire schools have been
handed over to private corporations, with most of these experiments
ending in fiasco.
Conservatives have also promoted the voucher as the
cure-all for the problems of public education, a scheme where parents
would get a taxpayer-funded coupon good for a set amount of money to be
used at either public or private schools. These attacks on our public
school system have also gone hand-in-hand with attacks against school
employees, from teachers to the school support staffs.
CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS
Not satisfied with the slow pace and disconnected local
nature of the conservative attacks on public education, President Bush
and the Republican Congressional majority have decided to make
destruction of our public school system one of their top priorities. The
Bush Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, is a former Houston, Texas,
school administrator who appeared in advertisements for corporations
promoting the privatization of the Houston schools support services.
The
Bush plan to attack education is unfolding with several early details
becoming evident.
It appears that the corporate forces guiding the Bush
plan first want more control, decision-making, and resources transferred
to the states and localities, where conservative forces are the
strongest. Second, high-stakes testing is a mechanism that enables
individual schools and entire school districts to be labeled as
"failing," triggering privatization and vouchers.
This
two-stage attack will make the struggle to defend our public schools
more difficult but all the more necessary. Thats especially true
since Senator Joe Lieberman (D., Conn.) has also decided to lead a group
of Democrats to negotiate some sort of an education deal with Bush.
These early surrender signals from prominent Democrats reminds us that
defending our public schools will demand pressure on lawmakers from both
major parties.
UE POSITION
Our union has renewed the commitment to defending the
public school system, based on historic trade union support for the
concept of free, open, universal public education. In addition, this
position backs the thousands of public education workers who have joined
UE ranks over the past decade.
UE supports a comprehensive rebuilding of
our public school system from the bottom-up, with increased funding for
physical plant, books and equipment, support staff and faculty.
Privatization, voucher schemes, scapegoating of school staff, and a
mindless emphasis on mandatory testing must all be rejected.
TALKING POINTS
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Our public schools were created more than a hundred
years ago after decades of political battles led by working people
and our earliest trade unions and labor parties. Until that time,
only the fortunate children of the well-to-do had the opportunity to
attend school. Those few working class children who managed to enter
school customarily dropped out after the elementary grades and went
to work in the mines, mills and on farms. The early U.S. labor
movement demanded, fought for, and won a publicly financed system of
free and accessible public education. This was an enormous victory
that must be vigorously protected.
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Given the make-up of Congress today, can anyone
really imagine creation of a national system of public education if
it did not already exist? All the more reason to defend it now as
hard as we can.
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Everyone agrees that our public schools need more
attention and resources. But short of radical surgery such as
privatization and vouchers, have school boards been willing to look
for more talented or accountable management? Have they
involved the school faculty, support staff, parents and students in
the solution-finding process? Or have politicians just set out to
scapegoat school staffs, declare the children to be failures, and
set the stage for privatization and vouchers?
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Most school districts elect the school board that
acts as the managing body of the school system. Should we also elect
the school administrator, to make them more accountable? Should
parents elect the school administrator? Our schools need more
democracy, not less. Rather than destroy the schools by handing out
cash vouchers so that parents will shop around for what they hope
will be a better school, they should be empowered to elect those in
charge. Isnt is interesting to note that those calling for more
"accountability" are not calling for more democracy?
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Will all politicians and lawmakers with their
children in private schools voluntarily excuse themselves from the
public school debate and decision-making process? Why not? The
private schools at nearly all levels operate in an environment
totally unlike our public schools. They have a nearly complete
ability to deny entry to a student, they have the ability to raise
their own revenue from any source, and consequently are able to skim
many of the most talented students from the public schools.
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The mandatory and high stakes testing movement is a
very sophisticated tool being used to attack our schools and our
children. Conservative opponents of public education discovered over
the past twenty years that it is difficult to exactly measure most
of what goes on in the classroom. Some schools are working smoothly,
others are in obvious crisis. But having concluded in advance
that the public schools are a failure, the testing schemes had
to be invented so that a majority of public schools could be
condemned and then turned over to the privatizers, or depleted of
students with vouchers.
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Will all lawmakers who support the mandatory and
high stakes testing scheme volunteer to take the 12th grade high
school end-of-year test, publicly releasing the results of test
results? Why not?
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Mandatory and high stakes testing leads to one
result: an entire school curriculum geared towards passing tests.
But the purpose of public education is far more complicated than
memorization for test-passing purposes. Our public schools have been
turning out world-class graduates for more than 150 years so why
are tests suddenly the cure-all?
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How can we expect children who come from homes where
parents work two or even three jobs to do well in school? The
decline of our public schools is going on hand-in-hand with the
destruction of good jobs, and the proliferation of low-wage service
sector jobs. Parents left with good jobs are also working longer and
longer hours, as well as commuting vast distances, further reducing
the time that they are able to spend at home with the family. As a
consequence, more and more children are left to essentially
"raise themselves" with only television and other children
for company. Attention to schoolwork has obviously suffered as a
result.
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Are we surprised that the public schools have a
difficult job to do? What if your employer had to hire every single
person who applied for a job with no exceptions? This is the
situation faced by our public schools. They make room for every
student who enrolls, no matter how many, or how well prepared or
capable of learning. Solving the problems of our schools is lot more
complicated than the voucher hoax, or the mandatory testing scheme.
Both of these merely lead to more tax dollars being diverted into
the pockets of private, profit-making companies.
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