The NEA Representative Assembly directs the NEA President to communicate aggressively, forcefully, and immediately to President Barack Obama and US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that NEA is appalled with Secretary Duncan's practice -- July 2, 2011
Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.
The largest Teachers Union in the nation voted yesterday to warn US Education Secretary Duncan that the 3. 2 million member National Education Association is not happy with his performance. The vote came at the world’s largest democratic union deliberative meeting of the 9000+ representative body of the NEA during its Annual Representative Assembly (RA) meeting.
The message sent load and clear was that the teachers Union was upset with the current trend of teacher bashing and privatization that Duncan used as the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools before he was appointed by President Obama to be the Secretary of Education and continues today on a national level. The language in the resolution [New Business Item C] using strong and direct language: in 10 out of the 13 points in the resolution the NEA was clear that Secretary Duncan was a failure in his job. There was some harsh language directly attacking Duncan’s failure as the educational leader of the nation.
Disrespecting and failing to honor the professionalism of educators across this country, including but not limited to holding public education roundtables and meetings without inviting state and local representatives of the teachers, education support professionals, and faculty and staff.
When he was Chief Executive Officer of Chicago's public schools, Arne Duncan promoted racial segregation in the city's charter schools. At an April 7, 2008 media event (above) staged at what had been Chicago's Englewood High School, Duncan stood with public officials, charter school operators and promoters, and the segregated all-boys Urban Prep students to announce a new round of RFPs (Requests for Proposals) to start additional charter schools. During Duncan's years as CEO of CPS, the city created nearly 100 charter schools (and "campuses") under Mayor Richard M. Daley's 'Renaissance 2010' program. More than 90 percent of them were completely segregated, most for minority children. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.
Anyone who has followed the career of Arne Duncan knows that he is a non-educator who can never legally be allowed in front any classroom of children in any public school in the nation and that his only education credential or background is that his mother runs an after school program for African American youth on the Southeast side of Chicago. Duncan was appointed by now Retired Mayor Richard Daley to privatize and segregate the Chicago school system into pockets of opportunity for certain neighborhoods in the city.
What is left out of the narrative of the vote against Duncan is the fact that President Obama picked him and the NEA plans on supporting Obama in the next election cycle. Even tough the NEA strongly chastised Duncan it did not goes as far as demand his removal from office.
During the years (2001 - 2008) that Arne Duncan was CEO of Chicago's public schools, he implemented programs that resulted in the firing of hundreds of veteran teachers and the privatization of more than 70 public schools, mostly through controversial charter school programs. Duncan's years saw the most massive privatization of public school assets in the 175-year history of public education in Chicago. One of the smaller examples of that, was Duncan's decision to out source the work of trained physical education and health education teachers to the "Save-A-Life Foundation." Subsequent investigations showed that Save-A-Life was fraudulent, but Duncan made no effort, following the revelations regarding the foundation, to retrieve the public money he had authorized be paid to Save-A-Life.
Below is the full text of the resolution as it was presented to the NEA RA on July 2, 2011:
New Business Item C
ADOPTED AS AMENDED
The NEA Representative Assembly directs the NEA President to communicate aggressively, forcefully, and immediately to President Barack Obama and US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that NEA is appalled with Secretary Duncan's practice of:
1. Weighing in on local hiring decisions of school and school district personnel.
2. Supporting local decisions to fire all school staff indiscriminately, such as his comments regarding the planned firings in Central Falls, RI.
3. Supporting inappropriate use of high-stakes standardized test scores for both student achievement and teacher evaluation, all while acknowledging that the currently available tests are not good.
4. Failing to recognize the shortcomings of offering to support struggling schools or states, but only in exchange for unsustainable state 'reform' policy.
5. Focusing too heavily on competitive grants that by design leave most students behind—particularly those in poor neighborhoods, rural areas, and struggling schools—instead of foundational formula funding designed to help all the students who need the most support.
6. Not adequately addressing the unrealistic Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirements that brand thriving or improving schools as failures.
7. Forcing local school districts to choose from a pre-determined menu of school improvement models that are unproven and have been shown to be ineffective and bear little resemblance to the actual needs of the school that is struggling.
8. Focusing so heavily on charter schools that viable and proven innovative school models (such as magnet schools) have been overlooked, and simultaneously failing to highlight with the same enthusiasm the innovation in our non-charter public schools.
9. Failing to recognize both the danger inherent in overreliance on a single measurement and the need for multiple indicators when addressing and analyzing student achievement and educators' evaluations.
10. Failing to recognize the need for systemic change that helps ALL students and relies on shared responsibility by all stakeholders, rather than competitive grant programs that spur bad, inappropriate, and short-sighted state policy.
11. Failing to recognize the complexities of school districts that do not have the resources to compete for funding, particularly in rural America, and failing to provide targeted and effective support for those schools and school districts.
12. Failing to respect and honor the professionalism of educators across this country, including but not limited to holding public education roundtables and meetings without inviting state and local representatives of the teachers, education support professionals, and faculty and staff; promoting programs that lower the standards for entry into the profession; focusing so singularly on teachers in the schools that the other critical staff members and higher education faculty and staff have been overlooked in the plans for improving student learning throughout their educational careers.
13. Perpetuating the myth that there are proven, top-down prescribed 'silver bullet' solutions and models that actually will address the real problems that face public education today, rather than recognizing that what schools need is a visionary Secretary of Education that sets broad goals and tasks states, local schools districts, schools, educators, and communities with meeting those goals.
Further, the NEA Representative Assembly directs the NEA Executive Committee to develop and implement an aggressive action plan in collaboration with state and local leaders that will address the issues above.
Starting November 2011, the NEA President will provide regular updates to the delegates on the progress of this plan throughout the year.
Cost Implications
Activities to fulfill the requirements of this NBI can be undertaken within the proposed Modified 2011-2012 Strategic Plan and Budget at no additional cost.