Last Thursday, October 17, 2013, PEJAM co-hosted a forum with Drinking Liberally - Minneapolis featuring two teachers and a parent, discussing public education and the struggle against the corporate reformers. Steve Timmer, the host of Drinking Liberally, posted the following video of Pia Payne-Shannon, a member of PEJAM and a teacher at Nellie Stone Johnson Elementary in North Minneapolis.
At 10:56, she speaks directly to Teach for America members:
“We don’t need missionaries.We don’t need missionaries.Our kids don’t need saving.They need to be educated in a well-rounded setting, because
the same thing that you want for your kid, is the same thing I want for mine…The
same thing they want for their kids, are the same thing we want for ours.So we need to get away from the
missionary complex.”
I had another opportunity this morning to be part of KFAI's Catalyst program with host Lydia Howell. On the show, Jeff Nygaard, a local media analyst, and I discussed public education in relation to the media. While the conversation covered a number of related topics, I think a key point was raised for education activists. In our day-to-day struggles against charter schools, standardized tests, Teach for America, the Common Core and the rest of the corporate reforms, we need to also challenge the underlying assumptions that drive them.
Michael Brunson, the Recording Secretary of the Chicago Teachers Union, was also a speaker at the last PEJAM Forum that included Glen Ford. In this part of the Forum, Michael spells out what the current struggle for public education is about and what is at stake. He also explains how teachers in Chicago organized and pushed back. This is a model for teachers across the country.
It was announced three years ago that Minneapolis was going
to hire TFA teachers for hard-to-staff positions.Despite many licensed teachers in Minnesota
looking for a job, TFAers without a license were put into classrooms across the
District. A group of TFA Corp members in
Minneapolis have joined the teachers’ union and have simultaneously worked to dismantle core union
rights, mainly seniority and tenure. These hard-earned rights empower teachers to speak up and do
what is best for all students.
What may surprise some people is that you don’t need to just
look to the classrooms to find Teach for America.Recent TFA alumni, most only a few years out
of college, are being hired as district administrators, building leaders, and
we could soon end up with a TFA alum as a Minneapolis School Board member.
Minneapolis is building a teacher evaluation system and
attempting to implement what they call “Focused Instruction” across the District
(other school districts in the country know it as “Managed Instruction").It is essentially the local equivalent of the
National Common Core State Standards.It is,
no doubt, laying the groundwork for implementing the Common Core and a new
testing regime that will be used for the teacher evaluations (more on this in a
later post).
Two people leading the
implementation of these changes in Minneapolis Public Schools are recent TFA alumni.The Executive
Director of Teacher and Learning
graduated from college in 2006 and worked as a TFA teacher for 3 years.He then work for a couple years at McKinsey
and Company (another global corporation that is looking to get its hands on
some of the billions that go into public education) before being hired by MPS
to implement Focused Instruction and the evaluations of experienced, licensed teachers.
While the information
available on the web is sparse, it appears the Director of Instructional
Leadership also spent 2 years in the classroom as a TFA corp member.She then worked another 2 years for TFA, but
it is unclear if she was actually working in a classroom.
They have a combined 5
to 7 years of teaching experience between them. They work directly under our Chief Academic Officer
who has 4 years of classroom experience (Not with TFA).The average teacher in Minneapolis has been in the classroom at least as
long as the three of these individuals combined. TFA alumni will be
overseeing the evaluations that will assess the quality of all Minneapolis teachers and
imposing a one-size-fits-all curriculum with more standardized tests.
We need teachers who
go into the profession with a commitment for the long-term.Professional,
licensed teachers, committed to teaching as a career, need to be
respected, supported, and empowered, not micromanaged.Teaching, working with children, is a career,
not a stepping-stone to law school, a corporate job, school administration, or
a political career. Two years in the classroom with minimal training does not make someone an educational expert.
This Thursday the Public Education Justice Alliance of Minnesota's Forum featuring Myron Orfield will examine the growing number of racially and socially segregated schools in Minnesota. As the corporate education reformers call for more free-market solutions, including charter schools, to close the achievement gap, they continue to undo one of the real reforms proven to close the achievement gap - integrated schools. David Kirp, a public policy professor from UC, Berkeley explained this in an opinion piecein today's New York Times.
Join us this Thursday at 7 pm to hear more about this from Myron Orfield and to discuss ways to bring back integrated schools and communities.
Public Education: A Look at Segregation, Housing and Our Collective
Future
When: Thursday, May 24, 2012 at 7:00 p.m.
Where: University
of Minnesota Law School, Mondale Hall, Room 50
What: The presentation and discussion will focus on public education, housing,
and segregation in the Minneapolis/St Paul met...ro
area.
Orfield will present data from the past twenty years,
looking at the trends and policies that have closed public schools and
further segregated our schools and our city.
