Fred Klonsky’s PREA Prez Blog

Pingree Grove is Southwest of Chicago, in the ex-urbs past Joliet.

Last year the Pingree Grove District 300 school board fired their union bus drivers.

This year, they have opened a charter school and have done everything in their power, including possibly breaking the law, to stop the teachers at the charter from organizing a union.

The Daily Herald reports here and the Northwest Herald reports here.

Ed of AFT asks for my insights.

It is significant, I think, that the leadership of the IEA (Executive Director, Jo Anderson and President, Ken Swanson) have taken an organizing view of charters. They have not had the reaction of some in the teacher union movement who have opposed all charters, or who have taken the position to “oppose, but organize.” The IEA has supported good charters as one component of school change. And they have been open to discussions with charters that have recognized the need to work cooperatively with teacher unions.

Anderson, for example, took part in the panel I helped to organize last year that included Green Dot’s Steve Barr and the CTU president, Marilyn Stewart.

The Pingree Grove story reveals something else. Those who support any charter and oppose both of our teacher unions have some explaining to do. If teachers (or bus drivers) didn’t feel the need for a union then the administration and board wouldn’t have to go to such extraordinary measures to keep us out. While there are good charters, even the good ones face tensions between teachers and management and require an organized voice that represents the teachers and other education employees. One doesn’t have to be an anti-charter zealot to recognize that.

Those who have created a career as anti-union polemicists and yet describe themselves as democrats (small “d”) or Democrats (capital “D”) do have to explain why it requires gestapo tactics to keep the union out of Pingree Grove.

Oh, and Ed. I appreciate your link and request. But why aren’t I on your blog roll? You’ve been on mine for a long time.

David Niven and finger bowls.

David Brooks wrote a column on right-winger, William Buckley in today’s NY Times. Buckley died this week at the age of 82.

Brooks, it should be remembered, wrote a recent column defending Ronald Reagan’s racist Southern Strategy when he ran for president. And so it wasn’t surprising that he felt compelled to write about Buckley as if he were a saint.

But I was struck by these comments of Brooks:

I don’t know if I can communicate the grandeur of his life or how overwhelming it was to be admitted into it. Buckley was not only a giant celebrity, he lived in a manner of the haut monde. To enter Buckley’s world was to enter the world of yachts, limousines, finger bowls at dinner, celebrities like David Niven and tales of skiing at Gstaad.

Wow. Celebrities like David Niven, Gstaad and finger bowls at dinner. I thought I was being cool not wiping my nose on my sleeve.

Brooks is quite the schmuck.

March 2nd is Dr. Seuss’ birthday. The NEA celebrates it as Read Across America. But in my room it is Diffendoofer Day. We read the good Doctors last book, Hooray for Diffendoofer Day, completed by Jack Prelutsky and illustrated by Lane Smith. We make huge Cat in the Hat hats.

“All schools for miles and miles around
Must take a special test,
To see who’s learning such and such -
To see which school’s the best.
If our small school does not do well,
Then it will be torn down,
And you will have to go to school
In dreary Flobbertown.”

The Chicago Trib reports:

Dozens of protesters from Chicago public schools slated for closing and consolidation picketed outside Chicago Public Schools headquarters as Board of Education members met inside before a packed audience.

“My school, my hood, my voice,” the protesters chanted, calling the plans ill-conceived and unfair to children.

Andy Carvin, who posts on Learning.now reports that:

A new study published by the American Psychological Association (APA) raises tough questions about the conventional wisdom regarding online predators. The study takes aim at the mainstream media’s coverage of online predation, labeling its portrayal of the phenomenon as “largely inaccurate.”

The narrative of the internet stalker is the basis for most school district policies that block access to the valuable teaching and learning tool.

Obama when he ran for Illinois Senator.

Coming off his failed attempt to characterize Obama as pro-voucher,  Alexander Russo now goes the other way and claims he doesn’t stand up to teacher unions.

What can you say about these characters who think standing up to an organization that represents the interests of professional employees in relation to management is a virtue?

“Oh look. Reagan courageously stood up to the air controllers and smashed their union. What a hero!”

What next? Will Russo be “working on a piece” that attacks Obama for caving in to small children and puppies?

Results are in for the merit pay plan agreed to by the union and the board in Hillsborough near Tampa, Florida.

A St. Petersburg Times investigation shows that almost three-fourths of the nearly 5,000 teachers who received merit pay worked at the county’s more affluent campuses.

Merit pay, aka pay-for-performance, ranks high on the Republican and Republicrat education reform agenda.

But the reliance on high-stakes tests, using a single day’s results, always have made the proposal problematic. The proponents of pay for performance, whether given to individual teachers, as in Hillsborough, or in school based plans as in NY, have argued that this will help get the best teachers into struggling schools by rewarding results. In Hillsborough the rewards have gone to those who teach rich kids.

Attempting to answer the criticism of reliance on single test scores the Florida plan had 60 percent of the bonus based on student test scores, while other criteria would also be considered.

Still, teachers in Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando wanted nothing to do with it. The districts rejected merit pay, giving up millions in bonus money. But Hillsborough agreed and received $10.8-million in state funding for their program.

“We knew the odds were going to be about one in three” of a teacher getting the award, said Jean Clements, president of the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association. “But that’s way better than the lottery.”

There’s a union leader who I hope was misquoted.

Half of this year’s finalists for Teacher of the Year - supposedly the best of the best - did not qualify for merit pay. And only two of those that did are working in low-income schools.

There has been discussion about how the new technology has transformed a read only culture to a read write culture. Larry Lessig has spoken about how particularly youth culture has moved from a consumer culture to a particpatory creative culture.

Of course, I think that this has always been true to a greater or lesser extent.

But if you want to see a movie that argues in the most subversive way for a read write culture, run, don’t walk, to see Jack Black, Mos Def and Danny Glover in Be Kind Rewind. Not only is Jack Black Jack Black, but not since the final scenes of Cinema Paradiso have I been touched by the power of art as shown in a movie.

Oh, and it’s funny.

Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.