NEA President Dennis Van Roekel spoke to the NEA Retired Conference in Atlanta last July just prior to the NEA RA.
He spoke – not from notes as far as I could tell – and said that as a result of defeats for collective bargaining rights in several states, the NEA would be backing off those issues over the next couple of years and focus more on issues of teacher quality.
I checked around to make sure I heard what I heard.
I reported what I heard here on this blog. Boy did I catch hell.
One NEA consultant attacked me on Twitter and said that I should have reported only what Dennis Van Roekel meant, not what he said.
I thought about this today after I got the new issue of the IEA Advocate.
Writes IEA President Cinda Klickna:
I agree with the challenge from NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. He has called upon educators to work to make sure that every local association not only focuses on contract and grievance issues, but also has a strong group of members who are focused on the professional issues we are facing, such as implementing new evaluation processes, implementing the Common Core State Standards and preparing for the new Partnership for Assessment of Readiness forCollege and Careers (PARCC) tests.
As with many issues, IEA members hold varying views on common core standards.The fact is, the standards are here to stay. Common core, because it is the process of providing the technique of teaching, gives all of us a chance to step into the spotlight. Who better to take charge of this than teachers? This is an opportunity to share ideas, embrace change, to work together for shared success — to lead!
I’m guessing she is referring to the controversy that swirled around after DVR’s talk to the retirees.
Certainly in states like Wisconsin and Michigan, the defense of collective bargaining is the union’s job #1.
But even here in Illinois, isn’t the process of implementing new evaluation procedures – implementing the Common Core and related testing – part of a collective bargaining process? Are we “to lead” without discussions with administration and the board? Are we to lead one way if the board and administration want something different? Don’t we bargain this?
I’m sorry, but everything our Association does is related to collective bargaining, contract and grievance issues. And that would include the improvement of the quality of instruction, professional development and evaluation.
At least we bargain what we can and what the law allows.
As for the rest of Klickna’s claims about common core standards? Evidence please.
Somebody cite examples in Illinois where the implementation of the common core standards has provided the classroom teacher with an opportunity to lead.
I have only heard from classroom teachers who say common core implementation has been a de-professionalizing, top-down experience. The veterans tell me they have seen all this before. And they were always told that the latest thing was not going away. That’s my experience too. I’ve seen more dumb stuff come and go over the years. In the case of each one, I was told it was here to stay.
If you have had a different experience, let me know.
Fred Klonsky 
I hear the same thing as you from my colleagues who are still in the classroom: even though the wording of the CCSS (in middle school math at any rate) sounds good, the actual implementation has meant that teachers must do everything exactly opposite to the apparent posiitive wording of the deeper and more profound learning advocated in the CCSS. Every single lesson is scripted and nothing is left to the teacher to decide — and everything in every course is designed for the pacing of the many standardized multiple-choice and BCR tests that consume nearly a quarter of the school year.
Since I do not have a crystal ball, I do not know if the Common Core is here to stay. I was trained briefly this week in Core Knowledge. The role of the teacher is to read scripted text to the children from a manual. The children in the video in a school in Queens were doing remarkably well. The primary beneficiaries of Common Core are not the children, not the teachers, not the communities, but Bill Gates and Microsoft.
Thank God I’m retired. I really couldn’t go through this again.
Active, non-retired teacher. Like everyone else, I do not know if Common Core is here to stay. I want to know where these scripted lessons and manuals come from. Have you asked? Which states are doing that? It’s not coming from the Common Core itself, and it’s not happening in every state. Common Core is a set of standards. We’ve had teaching standards for a very long time. The standards are not the lesson and they are not the curriculum. The standards are the hangers in the closet upon which lessons and curriculum are hung. If there are districts that are dictating scripted lessons, teachers need to know that they aren’t coming from the standards – these scripts are local decisions. At least know who you’re fighting when you discuss these matters with administration.
Laura,
I read your assertions about the common core standards being nothing new. But, I ask again. Evidence please. It simply is not true that in school districts around the country the common core is being presented only as a set of standards. They are being implemented as a specific technique for teaching, dictating very specific curriculum content and driving high stakes testing and assessment.
AFT and NEA-IEA are not supporting us. The issues important to us are not concerns of theirs. I wish we could join a real union.
Nobody is going to do for us but us. Make our unions real unions.
“Common core, because it is the process of providing the technique of teaching” —- Wtf does this even mean? She’s just moving her mouth and random words are coming out.
And thank you for pointing out that every time DVR opens his mouth, he says something about how teachers are this huge national problem. Randi W. does the same thing, except she’s figured out how to contradict herself in the same speech with more panache.
Of course, both of these characters are in office because of the local memberships, who have a habit of sending people to RA’s without any kind of scrutiny. In the three public districts where I’ve worked, members have been sent to RA’s without any kind of debate about the fundamental issues. It’s more like, “I’m a hard worker, so send me!”
Remember when Randi was taunting the Gates protestors at the AFT national meeting? I’ve looked at that tape a dozen times; those are AFT delegates laughing and dancing in the aisles as Randi barks, “I thought you were leaving!” to the protestors. We keep sending these know-nothing, have-no-opinion people to national meetings, where they graze and vote against raising the dues a dollar, and elect the leadership.
Fred, your former local is really the only exception to the rule I can think of. All those damned orange shirts! You guys were like a lone army of informed people.
Cinda was elected by slightly more than half the delegates to the IEA RA, which numbered around 1,000. About 700 votes or less. Getting to be an RA delegate in most locals in the state is not difficult. Most are not much more than volunteers. Those who are concerned with the direction of the IEA and the NEA have no excuse not to run as RA delegates. I have to run statewide as a retiree. I will mail my nomination form on Tuesday. But local delegates run in their local. And soon. Will I see you downtown Chicago at the RA in March? Run.
I’m in an AFT local now, so no RA for me, although I might try to get into it on a press pass, if someone respectable will hire me for the occasion. That way there will be one person in the press covering the event.
Last RA, when I couldn’t run as a retired delegate because they (uh) lost my transfer papers from active to retired, I tried getting on the floor on a press pass (blogger). Tim Crawford, the guy who runs the show, threw me out.
Mr. Klonsky finally someone has stated the truth. My friend, Richard Arthur, is one of the founders of UTLA the second largest teachers union in the U.S. For 7 years before UTLA he was the only one allowed to negotiate for the previous unions before UTLA. They founded UTLA originally for the good reasons of protection of teachers rights to fair employment without discrimination, for the education of the students and to promote good education. Today, and for a period of time, this is in the trashcan. Today, UTLA allows its teachers to be falsely accused of crimes without proof and against the laws of the state. It gives them bad representation through their lawyers who have a proven bad track record of protecting those they are supposed to represent. They do not state, if they even understand the facts, that they reason their union has lost members through lost employment with LAUSD is that in 2011-12 about 115,000 students did not come to school everyday. If you have 30 students/classroom that is 3,833 teachers who do not have a job. That is 115,000 students lives ruined with a really high cost now of the criminal justice system and other associated agencies at real high costs. Now we also have all the other associated employees and suppliers of goods and services for the 115,000 students and 3,833 teachers. That would make it the 25th largest school district in the U.S. and they are not in school. What do you think that means?
If, except for CTU, teachers unions got a grip again and went back to their roots this would all stop. Has not BTA shown that there are a lot of very angry teachers out there? Teachers once again need to become professionals and the only way to do that is what Klonsky and Ravich and others are talking about and that is taking back control and making it based on how to educate. Our brains are not new in how they operate. How long ago do you think we have had real genetic changes in the size and method of operation of our brain in other words the “Operating System?” I was educated by people who have been doing that at the highest levels for over 800 years. There is something to be said for that. There are basics and there is teaching in a manner which appeals to the youth of that time. This came from a 1940 movie on a teacher by the way. Sure knew what she was talking about.
In the aerospace business when we used to run into those magna cum laude Cal Tech, MIT, Berkeley and such who could not even read their own prints we called them “Educated Idiots.” This is who I consider those basically running the game now. They have the degrees but do not understand a thing or how to apply what they supposedly learned both in school and in ethics.
Fred, thanks for putting it so simply. Recently, I was at the last reunion of the Tuskeegee Airmen in Riverside as Tom Cruise overflew it multiple times in his P-51. It was question and answer for the first African-American allowed to fly a jet fighter for the U.S. in Korea where they were introduced as we were getting wiped out by the MIGS. I asked what was the difference in tactics between shooting down Germans in Europe and Chinese, Russians and North Koreans in Korea. He said “They are just a plane and I shoot them down.”
Just as Fred and the pilot said “Let’s just shoot them down” with their false proclamations and reinstall reason again.
My class of 22 second graders from an affluent suburban district outside Chicago took the AIMSWeb reading test for fluency on Thursday. When I reviewed the results on Friday, I had four students above level for the district, 15 students at level, and three students below level. There were several reports available and I decided to check out the CCSS report because we have just begun to “unpack” the CCSS in my district. Only two of my students were considered to be on level, and the rest were rated as below level! My class went from being pretty good in reading fluently to being a colossal failure in one click of the touch pad!