Diane Ravitch: It's Time for a Change in Wisconsin

Diane Ravitch, Education Historian

Our nation’s premier education historian, Diane Ravitch, graciously agreed to the posting of her latest essay on my blog. Ravitch is author of the best-selling book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic Books).

If you are concerned about the future of public education in Wisconsin, vote to recall Governor Scott Walker. Since his election in 2010, he has proven himself to be a steadfast enemy of the public schools.

In the world according to Governor Walker, the best way to reform public education is to demoralize its teachers, attack the teachers’ union and hand over more taxpayer dollars to privately managed charters and voucher schools.

He is wrong on every count. In his role as governor, he has a constitutional duty to preserve, protect and strengthen the state’s democratic institutions. He has violated that trust by his ongoing efforts to undermine public education, which is a cornerstone of our democracy.

Teachers Cannot Be Bystanders to Walker’s Bullying

Anti-bullying Efforts

I have had my share of regretful experiences in my life. One of my high school era regrets was an incident where I stood as a petrified bystander while a bully punched my unsuspecting, younger brother in the head from behind. My guilt still festers deep inside.

Over a year ago, Governor Walker and his Republican/Tea/Libertarian Party cronies coldcocked unsuspecting Wisconsin teachers and public workers from behind with his union-busting initiatives. This blow to the heads, hearts, and pocketbooks of tens of thousands of public servants admittedly knocked us to the grass. From the grassroots, however, a million of us have pulled ourselves up to stand against Walker’s divisive ways and petition for his recall.

From MLK's Playbook: Stand Against Anti-Public Educatorism

Pulled from the playbook of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and in the spirit of Joe McCarthy, some anonymous bigots disseminated an anti-public education propaganda pamphlet throughout Janesville, Wisconsin a week ago.

This fanatical flyer is layered with hatemongering. According to the pernicious pamphleteers, Rock County public educators are responsible for the “sexualization of minor children, anti-morality and anti-God messaging, false indoctrination, stripping of parents’ rights, and holding children hostage.”   

In addition, the discriminatory document is laced with overtly anti-gay and anti-union messages as well as covertly anti-women messages.  In true KKK-fashion, the flyer’s authors did not sign their names and have not shown their faces. Thankfully, this klan did not burn a cross, but the klueless krew dishonestly and unjustly associated the flyer with local private and Christian schools.

This anti-public education flyer, titled Indoctrination versus Education, also conjures up our state’s most embarrassing history—when Wisconsin’s Republican Senator Joe McCarthy led the national witch-hunt for American communists during the Second Red Scare. A half a century ago, Wisconsinites thought their national disgrace died with McCarthy, but some 21^st century "patriots" have apparently summoned the ghost of the paranoid GOPer. In true red-scare fashion, the paranoid patriots cry out to Rock County taxpayers to “Stop the Marxist/Globalist Agenda in Wisconsin’s Schools.” The anticommunist flyer comes complete with a McCarthy-like, “enemies-from-within” blacklist of 29 entitled and traitorous public school administrators and educators—who allegedly bilk local taxpayers with their salaries and benefits.

   

None of this anti-public educatorism comes as a surprise to me. A review of history shows social and economic unrest often fosters the climate for scapegoating. Cognitive dissonance kicks in for the conflicted. America’s larger socioeconomic ills, the recent free-market induced recession, and the local GM plant closing have sent the paranoid patriots in search of a fall guy for their troubles. With overt racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism off the table—public school educators are apparently the acceptable target of the freaked-out pamphleteers’ vitriol.

Public educators are unapologetically a unique breed of professionals. Our collaborative mindedness, support for our unions, and disinterest in unproven, competitive business measures  contrast with the MBA-thinkers of the private sector. Further conflicting, public educators sometimes openly clash with politicalprenuers in shielding students from the volatility of free-market forces.  Unfortunately, like other scapegoats in history, nonconformist ways make public school teachers promising prey for those hunting for fall guys and gals.

Just this past week, Diane Ravitch brilliantly outlined the national history that has stirred up the state of discrimination crippling public education. Mix in Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s dichotomous creation and Rock County’s intolerant subculture and you have the perfect recipe for anti-public educatorism in our community.

   

Consider how just two decades ago, a KKK rally took place in Janesville. Remember just half a decade ago, attempts were made to shut down the Gay-Straight Alliance’s annual Day of Silence at the local high schools. Recognize that just three years ago, President Obama’s Back-to-School speech led to  “veiled threats”  in our local school district by more unidentified dissenters. Thankfully, most of Janesville rejects this discriminatory subculture, but one only needs to read the Janesville Gazette’s anonymous “sound off” or check out its readers’ online comments below any public education-related article to see the hatemongering simmering beneath.

Some of this recent public school hatemongering could easily be cooled by Gov. Walker. I have called on his office to do so, but have not yet heard back. Certainly, our Governor does not want his office or Wisconsin associated with the bigotry promoted by the anti-public education pamphleteers. However, the paradox is that the anti-public education McCarthyites clearly stand with Walker. They seemingly feel comfortable associating themselves with the Governor. Almost the entire third page of the pamphlet is a promotion of Walker’s ways. It is only right for the Governor to publicly disassociate with the paranoid patriots responsible for this filthy flyer.

The proper playbook for responding to discrimination has already been written by Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) and other activists from the civil rights era. Silent disapproval might stall a conflict, but it does not resolve it. MLK appropriately said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”  Left a void, bigots will fill it. Public education friends must leave no void for the words and actions of anti-public education bigots. Silence in the face of bigotry will surely make public educators this season's sacrificial lamb. 

As a parting thought, I am reminded how Janesville’s 1992 troubles with the KKK were transformed into great things by the thousands who stood against the bigots of the day.  Local civil rights activists, including my sister-in-law, formed a Human Rights Task Force and subsequently a counter demonstration was organized that dwarfed the KKK rally.

The racial tensions ignited by the bigots led to Beloit and Janesville school districts collaborating on tolerance initiatives. Most impressively, city leaders led a fund drive that resulted in over 2,500 donors contributing to the building of a state-of-the-art playground on the very location of the 1992 KKK rally. The anti-racist park is appropriately and symbolically called Peace Park and one of Janesville’s treasures made possible by those who stood against bigotry.

   

The suffering ends when the resurrection begins. Let’s stand together against anti-public educationism. Let's resurrect something beautiful in its place. Let's build well-funded, quality public school systems treasured by all who stand against bigotry.

Corporations, Governments, Public Schools, Unions are People

With the Republican/Tea Party presidential campaigns pandering to conservatives in Wisconsin this week, it is a tough time to try to shake loose from the entanglements of Governor Scott Walker’s dichotomous design. Nonetheless, the beautiful spring weather continues to soften my soul. Light and dark converge, once again, landing me in the twilight zone.

To the chagrin of my progressive friends—who continue to dog the dark-side’s presidential frontrunner for his most famous campaign comment--I concur with Mitt Romney’s remark that “corporations are people.”  However, as another Steve logically explains, if corporations are people, then “governments are people, too.” In the same vein, public schools are people, too.

When you put a face to them, hating corporations is hard.  While the dodging of taxes by many corporations has a dark-side quality, these organizations are comprised often of our neighbors, friends, and relatives. 

Recently, a good friend of mine’s workplace was occupied. While I support the Occupy movement’s exposure of the growing income inequality in America, my relationship with my friend personalized this occupy incident. Associating my friend’s corporation with the dark side is tough, when I am forced to think of her wonderful qualities. Like most my friends, she is an all-around great person, charitable, social-minded, and progressive. The corporation for which she works is notably large and powerful; however, her progressive-minded presence and interconnectedness with other like-minded workers at her workplace makes this corporation less scary to those of us on the outside.

While the previous two paragraphs might sound like I am prepping for a Romney rally this week, I would surely be hauled off by the Republican/Tea Party supporters if I applied this same organizations-are-people logic to governments, public schools, and public workers unions.

For those of us who have spent our lives in schools, we understand public schools are people. We embrace public schools as Professional Learning Communities of developing learners, sincere social workers, compassionate counselors, caring parents, dedicated professional educators, invaluable support staff, and well-meaning administrators.

Public schools are social constructs as aptly described by my local superintendent. "We aren't a factory model where we're dealing with things…We're not only dealing with people, but also people's most precious commodity—their children,” said Dr. Karen Schulte, in the face of a potential school closing made possible by a Walker-worsened school budget deficit.

The public educators sanctioned to guard these precious little people are your neighbors, friends, and relatives. Wisconsin public educators are willing members of vital teachers unions. These unions are people, too.

The Republican/Tea Party friends politicking in Wisconsin this week will continue to espouse the Walker myth of unions as scary institutions controlled by heartless bosses. Sadly, they will ignore that the public supports public workers and their right to collectively bargain. Wisconsin parents know that teachers unions are comprised of dedicated educators, like recently-recognized Hall of Fame teacher, Deb Tackmann from Eau Claire,  who deeply care for their children. Public school supporters know education is personal.

For Wisconsin to truly move forward, we must recognize the humanity of corporations, governments, public schools, and unions. We cannot build a state by dividing it. We must see the interconnectedness of all organizations and the people who make up these establishments (as a fellow educator fittingly explains). 

Our capitalist system must have a soul. We must value public schools and their educators, who nurture and develop job creators and the people who will service the job creator’s creations. We must not balance state budgets solely on the backs of public workers, which is proven to hurt us all.  We must also recognize the value of the corporations where our friends, relatives, and neighbors work.

Corporations, governments, public schools, unions are people. We, the People, in order to form a more perfect union, must embrace this egalitarian worldview.

Collective Bargaining is Vital to Public Education

Before February 11, 2011, I rarely discussed with my Wisconsin non-union friends and neighbors the merits or demerits of union rights. However, as noted in last week’s post, Governor Walker’s dichotomous creation leaves no room, short of his recall, for safeguarding public educators’ union rights. Securing the recall of defective governorship in Wisconsin requires public educators to garner support for their unions from non-union workers.

Admittedly, defending teachers’ collective bargaining rights is a challenge when the vast majority of private sector workers are currently not union members. I do not claim to know what is best for non-union laborers in their own lines of work. However, I unapologetically believe that protecting teacher union rights is vital to the long-term future of quality public education.

A year ago, I made this very point to my local school board members in urging local opposition to Walker’s union-busting repair bill. In response, one commissioner wrote,

We are going to have to agree to disagree on your statement – “...protecting teacher union rights is vital to the long-term future of quality public education.” I understand your fears of losing that document that makes you feel safe. What I don't understand is how that document is vital to a good education. We have excellent teachers in this district that would do a great job teaching and molding our children whether those teachers have a union contract or not.

This commissioner raises the essential question in the call to recall Walker and his union-busting supporters. Public educators must help Wisconsinites understand why our unions are vital to quality public education. We must teach.

Essential Question: How is the protection of union rights vital to the long-term future of quality public education?

Historical Background:

Walker’s pitch to demolish collective bargaining smacks of radical regressivism rather than moving Wisconsin forward, as he contends.

A study of history reveals that the development of teachers unions in Wisconsin gave rise to professionalism in education and, consequently, improved the quality of public schools. Before union growth, sexism was rampant in public schools, pay inequity was common for female and elementary teachers, health insurance for most educators was non-existent or inadequate, and many Wisconsin teachers qualified for food stamps (see WEAC history). Teachers unions fought against these injustices to improve the work conditions and the standard of living of professional educators. The growth of teacher professionalism, made possible by educators unions, empowered Wisconsin’s teachers to greatly improve Wisconsin’s schools.

The aforementioned board commissioner’s recognition that our school district has excellent teachers, in the least, is acknowledgement that unionization does not impede teacher development. More optimistically, the professional development of educators, made possible by unions, gave rise to excellent educators enfranchised by collective bargaining through the decades. 

The commissioner might be correct that excellent teachers can keep the public education boat afloat for some time after collective bargaining, but the eroding of teacher morale and the Walker- induced mass exodus of our most experienced educators shows the detrimental, if not terminal effects of teacher disenfranchisement.   

Educators Unions Provide Constancy

Like a revolving door, students, parents, administrators, superintendents, board members, venture philanthropists, and venture politicians gyrate through our public school systems. Often, each layer and new generation capriciously propose new and old unproven ideas for achieving their latest ideals.

In the private sector world, board members are usually paid and united behind a common mission to improve profits. In contrast, the complicated world of public education has unpaid board members with varying loyalties and sometimes personal and political agendas that trump the mission of public education. School boards, also quite often attract well-meaning individuals not schooled in public school matters and business leaders who hope to inject their business worldview into our uniquely educational world.

Most often, it is professional educators, aided by their unions, who keep the merry-go-round of school reforms and leadership from careening the entire public school system out of control or into the control of entrepreneurs and politicalprenuers of many sorts. It is professional educators and their unions that provide steadiness, perspective, and common mission to an otherwise erratic organization that sees a constant turnover of board members, superintendents, administrators, parents, and students.

Our students need stability. Teachers and their unions deliver this.

Unions Protect the Professional Educator’s Voice:

Shamelessly, I contend the educator’s perspective is the most important in the complicated conversation of public education. Most parents and certainly politicians cannot match the experience and expertise of professional educators in managing the learning and development of students.

Unions protect the voice of the experts. Governor Walker likes to distort this point and fabricate that teachers unions provide unreasonable protections (even to the exploitation of a promising teacher). “[Teacher tenure] is not the same in K-12 education, even though critics confuse the public by saying so,” historian Diane Ravitch recently wrote. “Teachers in K-12 schools do not have a lifetime guarantee; what they have is a guarantee of due process if someone wants to fire them. The right to a hearing, the right to be presented with evidence against them.”

These union-fought-for protections allow for dissenting teachers’ perspectives to be spoken, written, aired, or published. This is what democracy looks like. Without union protections, many teachers’ valuable perspectives will be silenced. Without collective bargaining, public schools and its students will lose again in Walker’s Wisconsin.   

We must keep making our case: Protecting teacher union rights is vital to the long-term future of quality public education.