Stand for Children CEO, Jonah Edelman, is so full of himself for "outfoxing" Illinois teachers' unions with the help of millions from Bill Gates and the Billionaire Boys Club that he just can't stop himself. Later, he offers an apology like a kid caught in the cookie jar. It's not enough.
Yesterday CleanSlate wrote about How Teachers Are Screwed in Michigan. Today I'd like to share a bit about how teachers are screwed in Illinois -- with video. This is the behind the scenes conniving that threatens our public schools and the teaching profession -- prime hubris in action.
This is going to be a long diary. I have a lot to say. I think you'll find it worth your while if you stick around. It's about Stand for Children, a chameleon organization, one that fooled parents and educators alike for many years and is now showing it's true identity. We thought it was a grassroots organization. Now we know how wrong we were. Parents Across America blogger, Susan Barrett, explains here.
Being a SFC member has meant fighting for the needs of children and better public schools for all students in this state. However, things have started changing here in Oregon, and I worry that SFC is headed down the path that disaffected parents, like me, identify as the corporate reform movement.
Substance News describes SFC in this way:
a front group for the wealthiest people in the USA, the same people who are pushing the privatization agenda to wreck public schools, vilify teachers, and privatize the public's wealth, adding to the personal wealth of men like James Crown (and his family), Kenneth Griffin (and his entities), and Chicago's infamous Pritzker tribe of billionaires.
First the video, then the apology, and finally a word on how Jonah Edelman views the education of his own children. Jump with me below to learn more about the despicable behavior of Mr. Jonah Edelman.
I must run, but I'll be back for comments this afternoon.
Also posted at Great Schools for America.
From Mrs. Jennifer Marshall comes the "juicy part" of a presentation by Jonah Edelman at the Aspen Institute's Ideas Festival.
I happened on a video that I knew needed to be shared with everyone. I copied and edited it down to the most important 15 min where Jonah Edelman Co-founder of Stand for Children talks in detail about how they came to Illinois with the express purpose to take down the teachers unions. He revels in the fact that the general public was unsuspecting of the tactics being used against the teachers of Illinois and if they had known it would have been unpalatable. He talks about how he worked to divide and conquer the teachers' and how the Illinois teachers association president went to work for Arne Duncan at the U.S. Dept of Ed. shortly after the talks were settled. Share with everyone!
So, I'm sharing. Script follows.
… when Bruce Rauner [apparently Chicago venture capitalist Bruce V. Rauner] . . .asked, after seeing that we passed legislation in several states including Colorado, that we look at Illinois, I was skeptical. After interviewing 55 different folks in the landscape --the Speaker of the House, Senate President, minority leadership, education advocates . . . I was very surprised to see that there was a tremendous political opening that I think Bruce wasn't even aware of. The Illinois Federation of Teachers, still inexplicably, went to war with Speaker Madigan [Michael J. Madigan, D-Chicago, Speaker of the Illinois House], who Jim cited as a very, very powerful figure -- speaker for 27 years with the exception of of a couple years . . . over an incremental pension reform. And Jim [apparently James Schine Crown, Chicago financier and member of Aspen Institute Board of Trustees, who is at the speakers' table with Edelman] and many others are diehard advocates for pension reform in Illinois, and the pension reform that happened in 2010 is not the reform that's needed in Illinois, but it was a first step, only affecting future employees.
The union could have -- well, probably should have -- thanked Madigan for not going further. Instead, they decided that the $2 million they had been giving him reliably for election campaigns -- they would take that away . . . that they would refuse to endorse any Democrat who voted for that legislation, even those that had been loyal supporters for years. They went to the AFL-CIO trying to get them to do the same.
So, a major breach . . . You're starting to see that in other states where Democrats who are still in control are having to address these terrible fiscal issues, and in so doing, there’s often conflicts that are arising.
. . . We decided to get involved in midterm elections, which many advised us against doing. . . My position was we had to be involved to show our capabilities, to build some clout. . . While there were a lot of folks, I think, who thought the Republicans were going to take over in Illinois, our analysis was that Madigan would still be speaker. . . That wasn't what I think a lot of our colleagues wanted to hear. . .
So our analysis was he's still going to be in power, and as such the raw politics were that we should tilt toward him, and so we interviewed 36 candidates in targeted races. . . I’m being quite blunt here. The individual candidates were essentially a vehicle to execute a political objective, which was to tilt toward Madigan. The press never picked up on it. We endorsed nine individuals -- and six of them were Democrats, three Republicans -- and tilted our money toward Madigan, who was expecting because of Bruce Rauner's leadership . . . that all our money was going to go to Republicans. That was really an show of – indication to him that we could be a new partner to take the place of the Illinois Federation of Teachers. That was the point. Luckily, it never got covered that way. That wouldn't have worked well in Illinois -- Madigan is not particularly well liked. And it did work.
After the election, Advance Illinois and Stand [for Children] had drifted a very bold proposal called Performance Counts. It tied tenure and layoffs to performance; it let principals hire who they choose; it streamlined dismissal of ineffective tenured teachers substantially -- from two-plus years and $200 thousand-plus in legal fees on average to three to four months with very little likelihood of legal recourse. And most importantly, called for the reform of collective bargaining throughout the state, essentially proposing that school boards would be able to decide any disputed issue and impasse -- so a very, very bold proposal for Illinois and one that six months earlier would have been unthinkable, undiscussable.
After the election we went back to Madigan, and I confirmed -- reviewed the proposal that we had already discussed and I confirmed the support. He said he was supportive. The next day he created an Education Reform Commission and his political director called to ask for our suggestions who should be on it. And so in Aurora, Ill., in December, out of nowhere, there were hearings on our proposal. In addition, we hired 11 lobbyists, including four of the absolute best insiders, and seven of the best minority lobbyists -- preventing the unions from hiring them. We enlisted a state public affairs firm. We had tens of thousands of supporters. . . We raised $3 million for our political action committee. That's more money than either of the unions have in their political action committees.
And so essentially what we did in a very short period of time was shift the balance of power. And I can tell you there was a palpable sense of concern, if not shock, on the part of the teachers unions in Illinois that Speaker Madigan had changed allegiance and that we had clear political capability to potentially jam this proposal down their throats the same way pension reform had been jammed down their throats six months earlier. In fact, the pension reform was called Senate Bill 1946, and the unions started talking to each other about "we're not going to let ourselves be 1946'd again," using it as a verb.
And so in what's called lame duck session in January -- called lame duck session because some lame ducks are allowed to take a last vote for politically difficult topics -- proposals -- we made an attempt to do just that, and we weren't able to move our proposal, and my analysis . . . was that it went a little too far for Illinois. But as you'll see in just a second, it was an effective starting point because we started extreme and gave ourselves some room to come back. Sen. Kimberly Lightford [D-Westchester], who's been a reliable supporter of unions and in the middle of education policymaking, intervened. She has a lot of clout in the Senate . . . and she forced groups to the table. The unions were thrilled to come to the table and discuss things that, again, nine months earlier they would not have been willing to discuss.
And so over the course of three months, with Advance Illinois taking the negotiating lead . . . and Advance and Stand working in lockstep -- and that unity's so important, that partnership . . .they essentially gave away every single provision related to teacher effectiveness that we had proposed.
Everything we fought for in Colorado down to the last half hour in the legislative session, they gave us at the negotiating table [in Illinois]. Not irrationally, not idealistically -- it wasn’t a change of heart. It's because they feared that we were able to potentially execute our collective bargaining proposal . . . And unions are very logical. They're concerned most about their dues and their membership, and then next up collective bargaining and pensions are somewhere right around there, and then teacher effectiveness issues, tenure, layoffs, compensation -- that's tertiary for them, so if you show them the capability to actually enact collective bargaining reforms they're logically going to give on everything short of that to pull back the barricades.
And so this was the strategy led by the IEA. The Illinois Education Association . . . has a history of pragmatism and they led on this negotiation. They really kind of brought the other unions along. Jo Anderson, the former head of the Illinois Education Association, now works with Arne Duncan in the Department of Education, and his son Josh is the head of Teach for America in Chicago, and the new [IEA] director, Audrey Soglin, is very pragmatic. I doubt this tape will ever get to her, but I would say that I'm interested in talking about whether or not she at the end of the day was happy to get these issues resolved. I don't think she liked defending a seniority-based system.
So in the intervening time, Rahm Emanuel was elected mayor . . . and he strongly supports our proposal. Jim [apparently Crown] . . . talked about the talking point that we made up and he [Emanuel] repeated about a thousand times, probably, on the campaign trail about the Houston kids going to school four years more than the Chicago kids. That was another shoe that dropped, and it really put a lot of pressure on the unions, particularly on the Chicago Teachers Union because they didn't support it.
So here's what ends up happening at the end of the day. April 12 we're down to the last topic of collective bargaining. It's been saved for last -- it's the hardest topic. We fully expected that our collaborative problem-solving of three months would end and we would have an impasse and go to war, and we were prepared -- we had money raised for radio ads and our lobbyists were ready. Well, to our surprise and with Rahm Emanuel's involvement behind the scenes, we were able to split the IEA from the Chicago Teachers Union.
And in January, just after we hadn't gotten our proposal through in the lame duck session, I'd worked with a labor lawyer named Jim Franczek who's absolutely brilliant . . . and his partner of counsel Stephanie Donovan on fallbacks. And Jim and the other supporters had approved fallbacks from our initial proposal, essentially isolating Chicago and calling for binding arbitration or or a fact-finding process that wasn't binding but would have a high threshold for unions to approve. We came with a fallback of binding arbitration when we saw that the IEA was willing to do a deal and just focused on Chicago. They, interestingly, pressured the Chicago Teachers Union to take the deal. Karen Lewis, the head of the Chicago Teachers Union, who's a diehard militant, was focused on maintaining her sense of her members' right to strike. Her sense was that binding arbitration was giving away the right to strike.
But our next proposal -- next best, which was a very high threshold for strikes, for whatever reason -- tactical miscalculation on her part -- was palatable. Rahm pushed it; Kimberly Lightford pushed it; we'd done our homework -- we knew that the highest threshold of any bargaining unit that had voted one way or the other on a collective bargaining agreement on a contract vote was 48.3%. The threshold that we were arguing for was three-quarters, so in effect they couldn't have the ability to strike even though the right was maintained. And so in the endgame, the Chicago Teachers Union took that deal, misunderstanding, probably not knowing the statistics about voting history -- and the length of day and year was no longer bargainable in Chicago. And we insisted that we decide all the fine print about the process -- she was happy to let us do that.
With the unions then on board, the IEA and the IFT were relieved to have a deal. They came out strongly in support of this agreement, which was this wholesale transformational change, and with that support there was no reason for any politician to oppose it. So the Senate backed it 59-0, and then the Chicago Teachers Union leader started getting pushback from her membership for a deal that really probably wasn't from their perspective strategic. She backed off for a little while but the die had been cast -- she had publicly been supportive -- so we did some face-saving technical fixes in a separate bill -- but the House approved it 112-1. And a liberal Democratic governor who was elected by public sector unions -- that's not even debatable -- in fact signed it and took credit for it. So we talk about a process that ends up achieving transformational change -- it's going to allow the new mayor and the new CEO [of Chicago schools] to lengthen the day and year as much as they want. The unions cannot strike in Chicago. They will never be able to muster the 75% threshold necessary to strike. And the whole framework for discussing impact -- you know, what compensation is necessary -- is set up through the fine print that we approved to ensure that the fact-finding recommendations, which are nonbinding, will favor what we would consider to be common sense.
. . . We’re talking about an opportunity now for transformational change across Illinois in that principals will have the power to dismiss ineffective teachers, that they'll be able to hire who they want, that they'll no longer be forced to accept teachers they don't want in their buildings, and that when layoffs happen, they'll be able to let people go based on performance, not just seniority -- and in Chicago they'll be able to lengthen their day and year which has been just a horrible inequity for decades.
And all this with the narrative of union leadership because it was a fait accompli and the unions decided the smart way that they would pursue a win-win we gave them the space to win. We've been happy to dole out plenty of credit and now it makes it hard for folks leading unions in other states to say these types of reforms are terrible because their colleagues in Illinois just said these are great. So our hope and our expectation is to use this as a catalyst to very quickly make similar changes in other very entrenched states.
Realizing the video he thought no one would ever see had been made public, he scrambles to make nice with teachers. The apology is posted as a comment at Fred Klonsky's blog. When you've been that nasty, you have a lot of apologizing to do. Comments at the blog are worth a look, too.
Fred Klonsky blog readers:
After watching the fourteen minute excerpt and then viewing the whole video of the hour-long session, I want to very sincerely apologize.
My shorthand explanation in the excerpt of what brought about the passage of Senate Bill 7 had a slant and tone that doesn’t reflect the more complex and reality of what went into this legislation, nor does it reflect my heart and point of view in several ways:
–It left children mostly out of the equation when helping children succeed is my mission in life, as I know it is yours,
–It was very unfair to colleagues leading Illinois teachers’ unions, and,
–It could cause viewers to wrongly conclude that I’m against unions (Note: I said later in the session – not in the “juicy part” — that I do not view teachers’ unions as the problem. If that were true, I said, schools in states whose unions are less powerful would be among the nation’s best rather than some of the nation’s lowest performing.)
Stand for Children and I share a common commitment with teachers and teachers’ union leaders to ensuring the most qualified individuals choose the teaching profession, that teachers have the preparation, tools, support, and school climate they need to do their best work, that teachers should be compensated at a level that reflects the high skill and intense effort required by the teaching profession, and that evaluations of teachers need to become more meaningful and useful. We share a common commitment to ensuring adequate resources for schools and early childhood education. And we share a common commitment to ensure school districts and schools have effective administrators that create healthy work cultures within which teachers are respected and can be creative and innovative.
You wouldn’t know that from excerpt and that’s my fault.
There are quite a few things that I want to take myself very strongly to task for and which I’ll learn from and improve upon in the future, but first
I want to emphasize how Senate Bill 7 will impact students and teachers.
–After the improved teacher evaluation framework stipulated by the Performance Evaluation Reform Act of 2010 is developed through a collaboration of the state board of education, teachers’ unions, management groups, and advocates, Senate Bill 7 will make performance rather than seniority the basis for granting tenure and it will make performance the primary criterion for layoff decisions (with seniority being a tiebreaker in situations of comparable performance ratings). In addition, based on advocacy by teachers’ union leaders during our negotiations, with which I wholeheartedly agreed, tenure will be granted on an accelerated basis to teachers with three excellent ratings in a row and teachers with tenure who switch districts will be able to earn tenure in their new district within two years.
–The dismissal process for teachers with tenure with poor performance or conduct maintains due process while being substantially streamlined and improved to ensure that consistently ineffective teachers or teachers with poor conduct are not teaching children in Illinois. Before the dismissal process can proceed, based on advocacy by teachers’ unions, with which I again wholeheartedly agreed, a second evaluator must corroborate that dismissal is warranted. This will ensure fairness and should cut down on conflict and cost in the subsequent dismissal process.
–There will be more transparency in the contract negotiation process statewide, which will hopefully lead to fewer divisive conflicts and better, more student-centered decisions, and Chicago Public Schools’ will be able to lengthen its school day and school year in order to give teachers more time to help students learn and to plan and collaborate.
For committed, capable teachers throughout Illinois, all of these changes are incredibly good things, and it made complete sense therefore for teachers’ unions, who were at the table shaping Senate Bill 7, to back Senate Bill 7. Also, by virtue of negotiating in good faith for four months, Illinois teachers unions, management groups, and advocates achieved a much better law than Stand and Advance Illinois’ original Performance Counts proposal.
This leads to my self-critique, which is fairly harsh and extensive.
First, in a session I approached from the perspective of being brass tacks and blunt about politics, I deeply regret that I had an “us vs. them” tone. That tone contradicts my deeply held view that key aspects of the current education system are the problem, not teachers’ unions, and that the us vs. them far too often prevents real dialogue that results in better solutions like Senate Bill 7. As I said throughout the session (but not during the excerpt), my colleagues at Stand and I are always looking for opportunities for win-win rather than win-lose scenarios. That’s why I’m disappointed in myself for the way I framed the Senate Bill 7 story – a framing that does not reflect the good-faith and substantive negotiations that drove this process on all sides.
Second, I was wrong to state that the teachers’ unions “gave” on teacher effectiveness provisions when the reality is that, indeed, there were long, productive negotiations that led to a better outcome than would have occurred without them.
Third, I was wrong to make assumptions or comments about the unions’ political strategy. In future presentations, whether on video or not, I will refrain from supposing why a particular party made a particular decision. Having watched the video, reflected on it a lot in the past couple of days, and discussed it with my wife and colleagues, that was not only presumptuous but, in this particular case, wrong and ungenerous. I know from conversations with Audrey Soglin, Jim Reed, and Dan Montgomery that Illinois’ union leaders are deeply committed to teaching and learning, that they have exhibited that consistently in the past, and that they exhibited that commitment in spades throughout the negotiations on a series of Senate Bill 7 provisions that will improve teaching and learning. I want to apologize specifically to Audrey Soglin, Ken Swanson, Mitch Roth, Jim Reed, Dan Montgomery, Karen Lewis, and the other capable union leaders who represented their membership and negotiated creatively and seriously to help craft a bill that addressed tough issues in a fair and thoughtful way.
Fourth, the way I talked about the endgame wasn’t fair. I said we decided the fine print regarding the way the dispute resolution process will work in Chicago going forward but the specifics are that we submitted our proposal late at night on April 12th, Senator Lightford was receptive to it, got feedback from all sides over the next 24 hours, and made several changes based that feedback. The end product was similar to our proposal only because all sides judged it to be acceptable.
Fifth, and finally, I deeply regret what I perceived in watching myself as an arrogance in my tone. This underlies the other critiques and is the most difficult thing to admit, but it’s also the most important thing to hold myself accountable for if I’m to be worthy of the leadership role I’m fortunate to have. I was raised to be humble and respectful and reared on stories of my grandfather and grandmother’s service within the African-American community in their small South Carolina town, service which my mother always reminded my brothers and me is “the rent we pay for living.” Based on that upbringing, I view my role and the opportunity it provides for positive impact on children’s lives as a blessing and a privilege. Also, I am constantly aware and readily admit that I don’t have all the answers. I seek counsel from outstanding educators about what works in their experience, read as much as possible about what’s happening in all corners of the country and world that appears to be working, and have shifted my perspective on many issues as a result. Humility and respectfulness are hallmarks of effective leaders and I will ensure going forward that my tone always reflects the humility and respectfulness with which I seek to live my life.
Last thing – a word of apology to my wonderful colleagues at Stand, whose hearts, motivations, and approaches to the work in no way resemble the flaws I apologized for above. I fully understand your judging me harshly but I hope you’ll meet and engage them with openness.
Jonah Edelman
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So, how does Jonah Edelman view the education of his own children?
Jonah Edeleman's twins attend a precious little charter school in Portland. The school was started by three moms who wanted to give their kids a great education putting cutting edge theory into practice, so they started a charter school. It is not a corporate charter school, but a small lab school -- the kind charter law was originally designed to create. As such, under Oregon law, the school receives only about half of the per pupil expenditure given to traditional public school students. Teachers are woefully underpaid and facilities are lacking. Imagine the school that poor Oliver Twist might attend.
The school has no gym, no auditorium, no cafeteria, and no common areas. No music teacher. No art teacher. It uses an outdated park playground for physical education -- not the best option in rainy Portland. Yet, the school is immensely successful due to the frugality of the school administrator and the dedication and creativity of parents and especially staff. (This small charter school would like nothing better than to be absorbed back into the public school system as a regular school, maintain its autonomy, and serve as a model for other schools in the district. Autonomy is key. When charter school laws were first passed, that's what educators had in mind. NOT the corporate takeover of our public schools.)
So, when parents and staff went to Salem to petition the legislature for more funding for their small charter school, did Jonah Edelman join them? Did Stand for Children advocate for them? NO! Jonah Edelman didn't advocate for Oregon charter school funding. As a matter of fact, neither did Stand For Children. They specifically walked a careful political line by saying they would support charter funding equity, but not until districts felt they could "afford" it (which would be a cold day in hell...); thereby keeping OEA and OSBA support for their education package, and still appearing to be in support of charters.
If outstanding charter schools and teachers are supposed to benefit from his brand of "education reform," why isn't Jonah Edelman concerned about equity and the well-being of the school his own children attend? Why isn't he working to reward the efforts of the staff that do so much with so little? Why isn't he advocating for better facilities? He doesn't care about quality schools with nice facilities and well compensated teachers -- even for his own children. Underpaid teachers and lousy facilities seem to be fine with him. A longer day, a longer school year, and no bargaining rights for teachers are the goal. I fear that Oregon teachers will soon suffer the wrath of Mr. Edelman as Illinois has. Our charter school is not his model. Illinois' corporate charter schools are.