News for Educational Workers

K-12

A survey of teachers released from MetLife shows that of the nation’s 3.2 million teachers, the majority of them are dissatisfied with their work, marking “the lowest job satisfaction numbers since 1989, with just 44 percent… ‘very satisfied’… down from 59 percent in 2009 and 62 percent in 2008.” In addition, a third of public school teachers would like to find different work. The majority of teachers do not mind measures of student learning as a part of their teaching assessment, but they do resent the reliance on standardized tests to measure student learning (“What Teachers Want,” The Nation, May 14, 2012).

For Teacher Appreciation Week in May 2012, President Obama kicked off the week by announcing that it would henceforth also now be known as National Charter Schools Week (nationofchange.org, May 13, 2012).

According to alternet.org (“Why Are Our Public Schools Up for Sale?”, August 13, 2012), more than 1.6 million students attend charter schools which, whatever their original intent, are now fundamentally restructuring our school system by placing it in private, often for-profit, hands. Teachers and staff work longer and harder, for less pay, and often without union benefits or protection.

“More Bully Politics of Education Reform” (CommonDreams.org, May 28, 2012) describes how, in schools across the country, universal public education is under assault by the politics of education reform. Most of these policy makers have attended advantaged schools (Arne Duncan, Bill Gates), have never taught a day in their lives, have neither background nor degrees in education, and have a weak or non-existent understanding of current knowledge and research on teaching and learning. For example, the Philadelphia schools are considering closing more than 60 schools over the next five years and privatizing those remaining. For details on these plans, see the interview with Daniel Denvir on democracynow.org, May 25, 2012 and the report in The Nation, June 18, 2012.

In their 2012 political platform, the Republican Party of Texas “has come out and blatantly opposed critical thinking in public schools throughout the state.” If you want to read more about the justification for and background of this madness, read truth-out.org, July 7, 2012.

According to The New York Times (April 29, 2012), in two schools in the South Bronx, two blocks apart and similar in almost every way, the most recent progress report grades for the two schools gave one an A and one an F.

Quebec Strikes

Students in Quebec have been on strike for six months over a planned 75 percent tuition hike over the next five years at the public universities. By May 22, an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 were protesting in the streets in direct defiance of the newly created Law 78, which bans any unpermitted gathering of more than 50 people. While mainstream U.S. media have hardly mentioned the Quebec strike, alternative media have covered it extensively (see In These Times, June 2012 and August 2012; The Nation, June 25, 2012; democracynow.org, May 25, 2012). In addition, various websites are providing more inside information on the strike (see truth-out.org’s “Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Quebec’s Student Movement,” June 1, 2012 and “How Students are Painting Montreal Red,” May 28, 2012). CLASSE, one of the student unions leading the Quebec strike, published a statement of principles at http://www.stopthehike.ca/2012/07/share-our-future-the-classe-manifesto.

The Economics of Education

By now, many people know that student loan debt in the United States has hit $1 trillion dollars, but most people do not know how this debt is related to Wall Street and the banking industry. The Occupy Student Debt Campaign hopes to make this connection for the American public (truth-out.org, April 25, 2012).

Articles like “A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College” (The New York Times, May 12, 2012) describe how current college graduates face up to $120,000 in student debt.

Since the early 1990s, the median income of new college graduates has stagnated while the price of attending college has dramatically increased. For a...