Fighting for Relevant Reform
The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers is holding elections this spring. The following is a highlight of a speech I gave as a candidate for re-election to the Executive Board:
Teacher unions cannot continue to
fight to simply stay relevant, we must fight for what is relevant.
Our union, at the national, state, and local levels, has tried to deal
with the neo-liberal corporate attacks by looking for areas to collaborate, to
compromise, and to get a “seat at the table.”
Fighting to sit at a table set by
education deformers like Bill Gates, Arnie Duncan, and Wendy Kopp is to accept
their premises and to immediately silence any questioning of the need for the
table. To sit at the charter
school table is to accept the argument that competition will make schools
better and ignores the fact that by definition, competition results in both
winners and losers.
Instead of trying to out-reform the
self-appointed “reformers,” we must work with students, parents, and the
community to revitalize our public schools. The Chicago Teachers’ Union, under the leadership of the
Caucus of Rank and File Educators (C.O.R.E.) is already doing this. In New York, teachers in the Grassroots
Education Movement (G.E.M.) are also doing this. Brian Jones, who spoke in Minneapolis in March, is a member
of G.E.M. and helped to create the documentary, An Inconvenient Truth Behind
Waiting for Superman.
The documentary outlines some of
the real reforms we need. They
include, among others:
· More
teaching – Less Testing
· Anti-racist
Educational Policies
· Culturally
Relevant Curriculum
· Qualified
and Experienced Educators in every Classrooom
· Democratic
and Social Justice Unionism
· And
Small Class Size
We need to work with parents to
build the public schools our students need and deserve. To do this, we also need to work to
create the community our students need and we all deserve.
Robert Panning-Miller
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