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EDU has produced three videos this year. View them and share them. Teaching or Testing? A Different Vision What Kind of Union? 
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What Kind of Union? from Educators for a Democratic Union on Vimeo. binary trading IQ Option
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CALL your State Senator today!
Oppose the charter school bill! On May 21st, the MA House of Representatives passed House Bill 4091, An Act Relative to Improving Student Achievement. Despite its name, this bill would do nothing for student achievement – it lifts the cap on charter schools in “underperforming” districts in Massachusetts, opening the floodgates for private companies to come in and drain resources from school districts. A very similar bill is coming up in the Senate very soon, with the goal of lifting the cap of charter schools. Please contact your State Senator and ask that he or she vote NO. Outgoing MTA leadership has supported parts of the current bill, and some legislators are using this as a reason to vote for it. It’s important to call and let them know that we believe that most MTA members do NOT support lifting the cap on charter schools. Call your Senator today. Find your Senator at https://malegislature.gov/People/Search, then click on their name to get their phone number. Calls make a difference, especially calls from educators who have stories to tell! KEEP READING HERE! -------------------------------------- |
Gus Morales Back in the Classroom
The case stemmed from the district's decision to non-renew Morales at the end of last school year. The HTA filed a charge with the Department of Labor Relations contending that the non-renewal was retaliatory. The DLR issued a complaint noting that Morales received negative evaluations only after he became active in the HTA and began criticizing certain district policies, such as the decision to post student assessment results on publicly available "data walls."
Morales was assisted by members of MTA's legal, affiliate services and communications divisions. To help other members who have questions about their rights, MTA's Legal Division recently issued guidance on when your speech may be protected and when it may not. Although this memorandum specifically addresses speech related to discussing opting out of testing requirements, it offers guidance on the broader issue of protected speech. |
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We urge you to
support New Bedford High School teachers, students, and parents by
signing a petition opposing a plan to fire half or more of the
school's teachers.
Shortly before Christmas, the superintendent of New Bedford Schools, Pia Durkin, announced that New Bedford High School would be put on a ‘turnaround’ plan. This plan gives all teachers a pink slip, requires that all teachers re-apply for their jobs, and has a fixed-in-advance rule that not more than 50% of current teachers will be rehired. This news is devastating for teachers, students and the community. It creates mass upheaval, uncertainty and mistrust in the name of student achievement. It is a direct attack on collective bargaining and seniority protections. And it is painfully representative of the assault on public education, teachers and their unions, students and communities that is central to the corporate ‘reform’ movement in education. Superintendent Durkin's plan comes as a response to NBHS's designation as a level 4 school and her ‘ambitious plan’ to decrease the number of ‘underperforming’ students in New Bedford by 40% in this her first year as superintendent. Of course, the level 4 designation, along with that of being a ‘underperforming’ student, is based upon student test scores. Test scores that are better at telling us the socio-economic status of the child’s home life than the quality of the child’s classroom experience. |
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While corporate ‘reformers’ are demanding that we attend to the data of student test scores and ‘student growth percentiles,’ claiming their deep concern for children by threatening the people who have committed their lives to young people, there are whole swaths of data they ignore. These including, in the case of New Bedford, a 10.3 percent unemployment rate, 73 percent of students in New Bedford schools coming from low-income families, and 78 percent of the students in district labeled as high needs (compared to 47 percent statewide). While children enter school with unmet material needs and bearing the emotional and cognitive toll this exerts, teachers are under pressure to increase test scores. Not only are they supposed to focus on the test score, but they themselves are subject to the stress of working with severely reduced resources, including a $3 million reduction in school funding between 2011-2012 school year and the 2012-2013 school year.
The focus on test scores as the way we understand the quality of students’ classroom and school experience has to stop. The blaming of teachers for the problems of economic injustice has to stop. This is why Educators for a Democratic Union is here: to name the assault on students, teachers, communities and public education for what it is, and to join in solidarity to claim a public education that values teachers, meets the needs and celebrates the possibilities of each child, and understands that economic and racial justice are central to our communities in and out of schools.
As we organize to support the teachers, students and community of New Bedford, we cannot accept compromises or deals that make things ‘less bad.’ Accepting a ‘less bad’ deal reinforces the myths at the core of corporate education reform: that testing measures the work of teachers, that poverty is not relevant, that resources don’t matter, that worker protections damage student achievement, and that teachers are responsible for the deepening economic crisis in this country. No, we need to refuse these myths and then take actions to change the narrative, change the funding, and open the door to public schools that grow hope, creativity and imagination. We can do this by organizing locals to connect with parents and community organizations to take a stand for economic justice and a progressive income tax; to refuse high stakes testing; and to work with the community to engage the democratic process and together develop the schools we hope for.
This is not easy work and it will take time. But, as a teacher said to me the other day, “It may take us time to organize, but if we don’t do something, it won’t take them any time to destroy it.” The teachers in New Bedford understand that all too well.
The focus on test scores as the way we understand the quality of students’ classroom and school experience has to stop. The blaming of teachers for the problems of economic injustice has to stop. This is why Educators for a Democratic Union is here: to name the assault on students, teachers, communities and public education for what it is, and to join in solidarity to claim a public education that values teachers, meets the needs and celebrates the possibilities of each child, and understands that economic and racial justice are central to our communities in and out of schools.
As we organize to support the teachers, students and community of New Bedford, we cannot accept compromises or deals that make things ‘less bad.’ Accepting a ‘less bad’ deal reinforces the myths at the core of corporate education reform: that testing measures the work of teachers, that poverty is not relevant, that resources don’t matter, that worker protections damage student achievement, and that teachers are responsible for the deepening economic crisis in this country. No, we need to refuse these myths and then take actions to change the narrative, change the funding, and open the door to public schools that grow hope, creativity and imagination. We can do this by organizing locals to connect with parents and community organizations to take a stand for economic justice and a progressive income tax; to refuse high stakes testing; and to work with the community to engage the democratic process and together develop the schools we hope for.
This is not easy work and it will take time. But, as a teacher said to me the other day, “It may take us time to organize, but if we don’t do something, it won’t take them any time to destroy it.” The teachers in New Bedford understand that all too well.
