It’s twenty-four hours since I wrote a post on NEA President Dennis Van Roekel’s remarks to the NEA Retired Conference.
I reported what I heard.
DVR positioned advancing the fight for collective bargaining on one side of an equation. Quality and the Common Core on the other. He said that the NEA would be focused on quality and Common Core implementation.
I was reprimanded for quoting what DVR said instead of printing what DVR meant in a series of Twitter posts by someone named Melinda Anderson. Anderson claims she is DVR’s speechwriter.
Anderson took me to task by claiming that DVR couldn’t possibly have said what I heard because she had prepared pre-conference messaging. This was pretty offensive language to delegates who may have believed that the RA was a place for open debate without predetermined outcomes or vote manipulation.
Anderson questioned my journalistic ethics for printing what I and other delegates heard and not the pre-packaged spin that she and her cohorts had worked on. However, nobody has yet challenged the truth that I heard what I heard.
Is there a video tape?
Audio?
A prepared text?
Am I too low on the pecking order for DVR to pick up the phone and clarify the message?
Readers have reacted strongly and bitterly to DVR’s seeming retreat from the idea that collective bargaining is the core of what our union does.
More than simply the right to bargain a contract, it also means defending the language of that contract every day. It means training local leaders how to defend it.
But it also does mean expanding collective bargaining rights to charters and to the states that do not yet have it. Like right here in Georgia where the NEA is meeting
Just because there were defeats for collective bargaining rights as a result of Tea Party victories in states in 2010 should not be a call for waving the white flag of surrender in 2013.
In his speech the other day DVR also gave a full-throated defense of Common Core standards. He issued a challenge to anyone that criticized it that they must present an alternative to it or be branded as defenders of the status quo.
I think we should be hearing criticism of the Common Core standards from President Van Roekel.
Why is there no mention of its connection to corporate interests like Pearson?
Why no mention of its burdensome testing component?
DVR offered nothing but uncritical support.
Today at our first Illinois Caucus meeting we were presented with Bylaw Amendment #1.
It calls for increasing the annual NEA membership dues by three dollars which will be allocated to a special fund “to assist NEA affiliates advance great public schools for all students.”
Given DVR’s remarks to the Retired Conference, shouldn’t delegates interpret this as a Common Core Amendment?
An Illinois state union leader told me no.
The leader said it was wrong to interpret this as a promotion of the Common Core and went on to mention local professional development programs that the NEA could not presently afford to fund.
But is that how it will be seen on the floor of the RA?
If you combine Van Roekel’s aggressive defense of the Common Core and the lack of any critique – what should delegates believe?
What would you believe?
Fred Klonsky 
Sounds suspicious to me…they have sold us a bill of goods in the past…don’t trust the man behind the curtain!
HAWKS WIN!!!! Sent from my iPhone
Fred, You have to stop believing your own damn lying eyes and ears and start believing what Anderson and company want you to believe. Of course, you could also take WC Field’s advice now, too.
“Everybody’s got to believe in something. I believe I’ll have another beer.” ― W.C. Fields
Jim Keating
I believe YOU, Fred, & I’m sure everyone else who reads you does, too. In agreement with Glen: if–NO, WHEN you run for NEA President, I want to be on your campaign committee.
Thank you for speaking up and sharing the truth! You are a true Badass Teacher!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/140244172840677/
Please remind NEA of NEA’s friend of education. Dr. Diane Ravitch. ” PBS Blog: Common Core Has Fatal Flawby dianeravOn the PBS blog, economist Robert Lerman of the Urban Institute and American University expresses skepticism about the one-size-fits-all academic nature of the Common Core.Lerman strongly supports youth apprenticeship programs.Lerman is skeptical of Common Core for two reasons: One is that it lacks any evidence. In other words, as I have written repeatedly, Common Core has never been field-tested and we have no idea how it works in real classrooms, and how it will affect the students who are currently struggling.The other is the dubious assumption that college and career skills are the same.As he writes:”…Two issues concern me about the debate. One is the lack of solid evidence about the effects of the curriculum on students. Education research, long a backwater of social science, has become more rigorous in recent years, backed in part by the federal government’sInstitute of Educational Sciences and its funding for rigorous experimental methods to test educational interventions. Yet, here is the same federal government encouraging a massive educational initiative without solid evidence documenting gains for student academic or career outcomes.The second concern is justifying the Common Core on the highly dubious notion that college and career skills are the same. On its face, the idea is absurd. After all, do chefs, policemen, welders, hotel managers, professional baseball players and health technicians all require college skills for their careers? Do college students all require learning occupational skills in a wide array of careers? In making the “same skills” claim, proponents are really saying that college skills are necessary for all careers and not that large numbers of career skills are necessary for college.”Lerman smartly traces back the origins of this astounding claim.It is true, he says, that most employers identify certain skills they seek: “Nearly every study of employer needs over the past 20 years comes up with the same answers. Successful workers communicate effectively orally and in writing and have social and behavioral skills that make them responsible and good at teamwork. They are creative and techno-savvy, have a good command of fractions and basic statistics, and can apply relatively simple math to real-world problems like financial or health literacy.But, he says, the Common Core misinterprets this consensus to mean that all students need the same level of academic preparation. He writes: “Employers never mention polynomial factoring. But what about the higher level math required by the Common Core? Consider algebra II, the study of logarithms, polynomial functions and quadratic equations. Many states want to make algebra II a requirement for graduating high school. Yet, a stunning finding produced by Northeastern University sociologist Michael Handel(cited in a recent Atlantic blog) indicates that only 9 percent of the work force ever use this knowledge, and less than 20 percent of managerial, professional, or technical workers report using any algebra II material.”Trying to squeeze all students, regardless of their interest or wishes, into a common mold, he concludes, is a bad idea.dianerav | June 17, 2013 at 8:00 am
Union meeting is Today July 2 so CALL TODAY.Call the NEA at 202-833-4000. When you get through, press 6 to talk to a person. Tell Pres. Van Roekel this is not acceptable and to resign. All can call. And This is a Call to Action. We are now all thinking of ourselves as Activists. We have to. Rumors are there is money out there to buy off Union leadership to destroy Unions in order to destroy teachers and their interest in students. Stop Privatization. Now.
I have to wonder if a rate hike is in order, knowing that you will lose revenue as teachers are “eval’d” out of the profession.