Friday, February 13, 2004
Losing
And the gutting of Milwaukee's working class continues.
Multinational corporation DaimlerChrysler is moving its Dodge Ram frame production line to Mexico in 2005. Those frames are currently made by Tower Automotive, in a plant on Milwaukee's economically depressed north side. The writing was on the wall last year when the unions there ratified a six-year contract and were told the next day, basically, that six years was unlikely to really happen.
Between last November and this coming June, the plant was expected to pink-slip nearly 300; this new news of the plant's closing means nearly 500 more families will be without a good, union job in the household.
In 1997, Milwaukee had more than 170,000 manufacturing jobs; in the off-shoring and automation bonanza over the last six years, though, 20%--35,000--of those jobs have disappeared, in a city of fewer than 600,000 residents. These workers, soon to be joined by the Tower employees, do not have the skillset to fit into the growing medical or technology fields. Even if they did, or if better federal or state job-training programs were in place, they would be competing in an ecomomy saddled by a jobless recovery with few new jobs anywhere.
Earlier this week, Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, said that off-shoring was a normal product of trade (and the Washington Post agrees) and "probably a plus" for the economy over the long haul. Later, he began to back off from those comments, likely under heavy political pressure.
It just plain makes me ill to think of the moms and dads of the students in my classroom as commodities, the jobs of whom are somehow "normal" to trade around the world like truck frames or computer chips or grain. When a computer chip flies around the world, it doesn'ty leave behind crumbling central city infrastructure, a family without access to health care, and a child who can't afford pencils anymore.
It just plain makes me ill to think about how empty the heart of our city--metaphorically and geographically--is becoming, and how hopeless it must seem to the families living near idled factories and forced to subsist on Wal-Mart wages.
This is all I can do--speak out for change when I can and work for change with the generation that, when they come of age, will be facing a city that provides no opportunity, no support system, and no hope.
Please join me.
Multinational corporation DaimlerChrysler is moving its Dodge Ram frame production line to Mexico in 2005. Those frames are currently made by Tower Automotive, in a plant on Milwaukee's economically depressed north side. The writing was on the wall last year when the unions there ratified a six-year contract and were told the next day, basically, that six years was unlikely to really happen.
Between last November and this coming June, the plant was expected to pink-slip nearly 300; this new news of the plant's closing means nearly 500 more families will be without a good, union job in the household.
In 1997, Milwaukee had more than 170,000 manufacturing jobs; in the off-shoring and automation bonanza over the last six years, though, 20%--35,000--of those jobs have disappeared, in a city of fewer than 600,000 residents. These workers, soon to be joined by the Tower employees, do not have the skillset to fit into the growing medical or technology fields. Even if they did, or if better federal or state job-training programs were in place, they would be competing in an ecomomy saddled by a jobless recovery with few new jobs anywhere.
Earlier this week, Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, said that off-shoring was a normal product of trade (and the Washington Post agrees) and "probably a plus" for the economy over the long haul. Later, he began to back off from those comments, likely under heavy political pressure.
It just plain makes me ill to think of the moms and dads of the students in my classroom as commodities, the jobs of whom are somehow "normal" to trade around the world like truck frames or computer chips or grain. When a computer chip flies around the world, it doesn'ty leave behind crumbling central city infrastructure, a family without access to health care, and a child who can't afford pencils anymore.
It just plain makes me ill to think about how empty the heart of our city--metaphorically and geographically--is becoming, and how hopeless it must seem to the families living near idled factories and forced to subsist on Wal-Mart wages.
This is all I can do--speak out for change when I can and work for change with the generation that, when they come of age, will be facing a city that provides no opportunity, no support system, and no hope.
Please join me.
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
This Month's Meeting
TSO is meeting this Thursday, at 5 PM. Unfortunately, the Bean Head Cafe, which is a great teacher-friendly venue, was unable to accomodate us, so we'll be meeting instead at the MTEA, 5130 W. Vliet St., in Milwaukee.
See you there!
See you there!
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Cheating and NCLB
You've probably read about the charges surrounding an MPS elementary school's alleged cheating on state and district standardized tests.
I know that our union is doing everything it can to defend the legal and contractual rights of the teachers involved. I don't have any real information or anything else to share about the specific case. But I know a little something about the high-stakes testing required by the Elementary and Secondary Education Authorization Act of 2001, provisions of which are commonly called "No Child Left Behind." And let me say, as a teacher and as someone who cares about my students, school, district, and public education in general, that I can understand what may have motivated these teachers, if in fact they crossed a line.
I have written extensively about No Child Left Behind for the on-line magazine Open Source Politics (do a site search for NCLB and many great articles will come up), and there is plenty of good other information out there about how detrimental the program, its requirements, and its sanctions can be. In fact, in recent weeks, both Virginia and Utah have taken steps toward giving up federal funds to get out from under the burden. Many local districts have done so as well.
And at the school level, the sanctions are merciless. They begin innocuously enough, as these things often do, with just a label: School in need of improvement. But from there, a school can begin losing students (and therefore staff and teachers) and schools must use Title I funds to provide supplemental education services from a state-approved provider, which could mean a private or religious entity.
Eventually, the district is required to step in and start revamping curriculum or shuffling staff at these schools, because, I guess, nothing says improvement like discontinuity! As a final resort--and finality can come within just four years--the school can be closed, reconstituted, or turned over to the private sector. (Many of us, in fact, see NCLB as nothing more than a complicated ruse to dismantle public education all together.)
We have strong evidence now that the "Houston Miracle," on which much of NCLB was based and which prompted George W. Bush to promote Houston's superintendent to Secretary of Education, was largely a sham. Several different news organizations have uncovered the cheating and scamming that went on in Houston because teachers and administrators feared the sanctions.
Now, no one is suggesting that teachers either in Milwaukee or in Houston did a single thing to abdicate their responsibility to educate their students. But when the stakes get so high, the temptation can become unbearable to do anything to give your students or your school a little edge or a bit of protection from the sanctions.
My fear is that the alleged incident here in Milwaukee is just the tip of what will be a national iceberg. As more and more schools face sanctions, as more and more teachers and administrators face the very real prospect of losing their livelihoods despite doing their damnedest to educate the kids in their charge, more and more allegations of cheating on these high-stakes tests will come to light.
No Child Left Behind is not the primary focus of Teachers Speak Out, but right now there's a story out there that does not necessarily paint Milwaukee teachers in the best light. But the public should know what we know and see what we see: It is simply not true that without threat of sanctions we have no incentive to perform. This is our passion and we are tireless in its pursuit. But with the threat of sanctions, with the sword of NCLB hanging over our heads, we have a great deal of temptation to cross the line.
I know that our union is doing everything it can to defend the legal and contractual rights of the teachers involved. I don't have any real information or anything else to share about the specific case. But I know a little something about the high-stakes testing required by the Elementary and Secondary Education Authorization Act of 2001, provisions of which are commonly called "No Child Left Behind." And let me say, as a teacher and as someone who cares about my students, school, district, and public education in general, that I can understand what may have motivated these teachers, if in fact they crossed a line.
I have written extensively about No Child Left Behind for the on-line magazine Open Source Politics (do a site search for NCLB and many great articles will come up), and there is plenty of good other information out there about how detrimental the program, its requirements, and its sanctions can be. In fact, in recent weeks, both Virginia and Utah have taken steps toward giving up federal funds to get out from under the burden. Many local districts have done so as well.
And at the school level, the sanctions are merciless. They begin innocuously enough, as these things often do, with just a label: School in need of improvement. But from there, a school can begin losing students (and therefore staff and teachers) and schools must use Title I funds to provide supplemental education services from a state-approved provider, which could mean a private or religious entity.
Eventually, the district is required to step in and start revamping curriculum or shuffling staff at these schools, because, I guess, nothing says improvement like discontinuity! As a final resort--and finality can come within just four years--the school can be closed, reconstituted, or turned over to the private sector. (Many of us, in fact, see NCLB as nothing more than a complicated ruse to dismantle public education all together.)
We have strong evidence now that the "Houston Miracle," on which much of NCLB was based and which prompted George W. Bush to promote Houston's superintendent to Secretary of Education, was largely a sham. Several different news organizations have uncovered the cheating and scamming that went on in Houston because teachers and administrators feared the sanctions.
Now, no one is suggesting that teachers either in Milwaukee or in Houston did a single thing to abdicate their responsibility to educate their students. But when the stakes get so high, the temptation can become unbearable to do anything to give your students or your school a little edge or a bit of protection from the sanctions.
My fear is that the alleged incident here in Milwaukee is just the tip of what will be a national iceberg. As more and more schools face sanctions, as more and more teachers and administrators face the very real prospect of losing their livelihoods despite doing their damnedest to educate the kids in their charge, more and more allegations of cheating on these high-stakes tests will come to light.
No Child Left Behind is not the primary focus of Teachers Speak Out, but right now there's a story out there that does not necessarily paint Milwaukee teachers in the best light. But the public should know what we know and see what we see: It is simply not true that without threat of sanctions we have no incentive to perform. This is our passion and we are tireless in its pursuit. But with the threat of sanctions, with the sword of NCLB hanging over our heads, we have a great deal of temptation to cross the line.
