Occupy NEA Run By Jerks, Updated

Occupy NEA is a newish Facebook Community Group asking for NEA folks to tell the leadership how to better serve their members.

They are doing this by banning people; they banned Sahila Changebringer and me, in a heartbeat.

They suck. If you "Liked" them you may have made a mistake.

The admin is a guy named Tommy Flanagan, and he's a hypocrite. Please lay it on thick and heavy over there and get this guy to open up his page, or we will try to shut it down.

Jerk.

Update: You can join the Actual Occupy NEA if you would rather.

Friday Cartoon Fun: Look For The Union Label Edition

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York and resulted in the fourth highest loss of life from an industrial accident in U.S. history. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, who either died from the fire or jumped to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent immigrant Jewish and Italian women aged sixteen to twenty-three.[1][2][3] Many of the workers could not escape the burning building because the managers had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits. People jumped from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers [and for which the song below was penned.].

Wikipedia

Look For The Union Label Song

Hey, Academy!

Tonight is the Academy Awards ceremony. The nominees, winners, and most of those attending are all members of a labor union. Their swag baskets are worth a year's salary of most of their fellow labor union members, like teachers, police officers, fire fighters, sanitation workers, hospital workers, and countless others.

If these millionaires gave a shit about America they would shut down the awards in solidarity with their union brothers and sisters and fly to Wisconsin, rent a shitload of heated trailers and hire their personal chefs to make the protest a bit more bearable.

But, they won't.  They'll say something about how the public expects to see their beloved celebrities get their due, or that it's a tradition in America, the world's cinema.

These people have power and they should use it for good.  "With great power comes great responsibility." --Uncle Ben (Peter Parker's uncle)

Please feel free to take this image and use it liberally

Oakland Education Association Scaring Parents For Profit

I am not a teacher basher, or a union basher. I am a teacher and a union member!

But Oakland, California's union, the OEA, has put out a letter to parents regarding a one-day strike that teachers hope will bring about negotiations that were ended when the school board decided to impose a contract on the teachers, as districts are allowed to do under certain circumstances.

The letter, below, starts out fine. It's the last paragraph. Go read it...

Strike Letter to Parents 0410 _1

So, what do you think? They are using fear. They are claiming that the substitutes are ill-prepared, or worse. And it's all implicit, nothing concrete. Just be afraid of the grownups in the school, they might hurt/neglect/abuse/whatever your kid.

There is a thread going on at The Education Report, a local blog by a local reporter. I made some comments there, and folks responded.

I think the letter is outrageous and they should be ashamed of themselves and retract it. What do you all think?

AFL-CIO Calls Out Obama And Duncan On Mass Teacher Firing

Supporting the Students, Teachers, Staff and Community of Central Falls High School in Rhode Island
March 02, 2010
Orlando, Fla.
AFL-CIO Executive Council statement

Students in every high school, no matter its ZIP code, deserve a great education. Obtaining a great education depends upon a number of factors, including having well-prepared and supported teachers; well-trained, dedicated and collaborative administrators; solid curricula and focused instruction; and, for our most disadvantaged students, wraparound services that address the out-of-school factors that should not be allowed to impede teaching and learning.

Central Falls High School is the only high school in Central Falls, R.I., a community of working-class families, many of whom are struggling in the economic downturn facing so many communities. The dedicated and committed teachers and teaching assistants of Central Falls High School are making real progress in improving academic achievement, as noted in a state report issued last April. However, even this progress is not sufficient, and the school's teachers agreed with the superintendent in January that a transformation model should be employed at the school.

Unfortunately, their attempt to engage through their union with the superintendent on the design and details of that model were rebuffed at only their second meeting. The superintendent then unilaterally decided to impose a turnaround model that called for the entire staff to be fired, disrupting teaching and learning at the school, scapegoating teachers and staff and upsetting the whole community instead of working in partnership to employ proven models of reform.

The approach embraced by the Central Falls superintendent—mass teacher firings—has been demonstrated to be a failed model that will not result in the kinds of changes necessary to continue improving instruction and learning. The superintendent refuses to meet with the leadership of the teachers' union, has rejected offers from community and elected leaders to meet and discuss what is best for the students of Central Falls and has refused offers to engage in mediation. At the same time, the superintendent refuses to accept personal responsibility or acknowledge the responsibility of any of the school's administrators for the challenges faced at Central Falls High School.

The students of Central Falls High School, their parents and the surrounding community have demonstrated overwhelming support for the dedicated teachers and staff at their school.

We are appalled at recent comments from President Obama and Education Secretary Duncan condoning the mass firing of the Central Falls High School teachers. These comments are unacceptable, do not reflect the reality on the ground and completely ignore the teachers' significant commitment to working with others to transform this school.

The comments are particularly disappointing in light of the recent state report, which found that the high school's reading and writing proficiency have gone up 22 percent and 14 percent respectively over the past two years. None of these facts is reflected in the comments from the Obama administration.

The affiliated unions of the AFL-CIO condemn the actions of the Central Falls superintendent in unjustly terminating the employment of the dedicated teaching faculty of Central Falls High School. We stand in support of the Central Falls Teachers Union in its fight to improve the teaching and learning in Central Falls schools, preserve the rights of its members and keep the teachers where they belong—in the school, working with the students and making progress on academics.

We call on the Central Falls administration to return to negotiations with the Central Falls Teachers Union and seek, in good faith, a collaborative path to proven reforms that provide students with the opportunity to succeed. We further call on the U.S. Secretary of Education to demonstrate leadership in seeking a resolution to this crisis that supports students and teachers alike and that focuses on creating an environment that allows them to succeed.

This battle is about more than Central Falls High School. It is about working together to lift all boats, transform society and give children the education they deserve. It should not be about pitting teachers against students or school district against school district. This is a cause that unites working families and the labor movement.

h/t Edwize

Do You Like Grapes?

From American Rights At Work, via my cousin:

Dear Friend,

If you've ever bought table grapes for yourself or your family, I think you need to know this...

Right now Giumarra Vineyard Corporation's - the country's leading table grape company - is forcing California farmworkers to endure humiliations and abuse I really didn't think still existed in this country.

They've forced workers to "race" through searing 100 degree heat to see who can pick the most grapes - and then fired the "losers." Their foremen scream at workers to produce more and give them unpaid "time-outs" if they dare to question supervisors. They deny workers water, shade, and breaks. Already two workers have died of heat-related causes in their fields.

These California farmworkers have been trying to fight back by forming a union, but they need help from the public to demand real change from Giumarra.

I just signed a petition to Giumarra demanding better treatment for these workers. Would you join me by signing the petition today?

You can read more and sign the petition by clicking the link below.

Thanks so much for helping me speak out for workers rights. Your help means a great deal to me! action.americanrightsatwork.org

Teacher Unions: Useful? Um, Yes!

Back and Forth and Back on Teacher Unions

by Doug Noon

Before I fill in a missing piece from a wide-ranging discussion about teacher unions, we should review:

Diane Ravitch:

If getting rid of the unions was the solution to the problem of low performance, then why…. do the southern states — where unions are weak or non-existent — continue to perform worse than states with strong unions? And how can we explain the strong union presence in Massachusetts, which is the nation’s highest performing state on NAEP?

Mike Petrilli:

I’ve concluded that no, Diane isn’t right…. [W]hen it comes to union influence on the ground, at the district level, it’s not at all clear that the “strong states” versus “weak states” distinction makes any sense…. As Jay Greene told me, the unions’ goal “is to ensure as little policy variation across states as they can on their core issues.”

Jay Greene:

Many factors influence student achievement, so isolating the effect of teacher unions would require a rigorous social science research design that could identify the influence of unionization independent of other factors.

Rather than point to a state or district, which proves nothing, I would point people to a rigorous study [pdf] by Caroline Hoxby in a leading economics journal. The abstract states: “I find that teachers’ unions increase school inputs but reduce productivity sufficiently to have a negative overall effect on student performance.

Leo Casey:

Greene is up to his old “cherry picking” tricks here, citing the one study which supports his position while ignoring the many which do not. There is a small body of scholarly literature on the subject, and Hoxby’s essay is clearly the minority view; there are more noteworthy studies showing a positive relationship between teacher unionism and educational achievement.

Casey mentions a study by Lala Steelman, Brian Powell and Robert Carini, “Do Teacher Unions Hinder Educational Performance? which examines correlations between the presence of teacher unions and high SAT/ACT scores. Additionally, Casey cites F. Howard Nelson and Michael Rosen, “Are Teacher Unions Hurting American Education? [pdf], which makes a similar argument.

Casey also points to a couple of literature reviews on the topic, one of which comes from the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University, “School Reform Proposals: The Research Evidence,” by Robert Carini [summary pdf], [full report pdf].

Jay Greene:

Caroline Hoxby’s study, upon which I base my claims, employs a vastly superior research design…. But even if Leo insisted upon relying on the literature reviews he cites rather than the higher quality research, he would have to accept some results that aren’t very flattering to teacher unions. Those lit reviews find that unionization raises the cost of education by about 8% to 15%. In addition, they find that unionization tends to hurt the academic achievement of high-achieving and low-achieving students while benefiting more typical students found in the middle of the ability distribution.

Green likes Hoxby’s methodology because he believes that it separates causes from effects. But Greene ignores a criticism of Hoxby mentioned in the Carini paper:

Hoxby found that unionized districts had higher dropout rates than non-unionized districts from 1970 to 1990. Of the five studies examined in this section, Hoxby’s may offer the strongest evidence, although like the others, it too can be challenged on methodological grounds. In particular, Hoxby reported that she analyzed 10,509 school districts, and asserted that her sample constituted 95% of all districts in the United States in 1990. Given that there were 15,552 school districts in 1990, Hoxby’s research only covered 68% of the districts, not the 95% that she reported. It is not clear why nearly one in three districts were lost. More important, the missing districts were likely fiscally dependent districts, the bulk of which are located in strongly unionized Northeastern states. This is a potentially critical omission that may completely change her findings, particularly given the small gap in dropout rates that she found.

And even more significantly:

Further, Stone has argued that Hoxby’s finding that unionism led to higher drop-out rates is not necessarily inconsistent with research documenting favorable union effects. The argument is that, with a focus on high school dropouts, Hoxby essentially limited the scope of her study to lower-achieving students. In any case, three other studies discussed previously have reported that unionism did not increase dropout rates.

Nowhere do I see delusional people harder at work than I do when I read the contorted ravings of education policy wonks discussing harebrained ideas for how to fix schools. Choose your swamp. Then wade around in it. This is the beauty of the internet. Green reports about the achievement gap, which is attributed to the standardization of instructional settings that comes from unionization. But he ignores the obvious fact that this is precisely what the standards movement is all about, and which teachers recognize as exacerbating the problem.

The anti-union pro-corporate education reformers don’t have any actual solutions. Instead, they resort to changing the subject by criticizing unions for tying the hands of administrators. They don’t acknowledge the fact that administrators haven’t the slightest clue about how to stimulate academic progress for disadvantaged students without resorting to heavy-handed “motivational” approaches devoid of any educational merit.

Teacher unions haven’t been vocal enough in opposing these so-called reforms. But we can look to the teachers in Los Angeles for an example of teacher solidarity and activism. This is important because corporations are getting more militant and punitive in their efforts to prevent workers from unionizing. The “reformers” know that if the unions don’t slow them down, nobody will.

h/t Borderland

KIPP Brooklyn Unionize

Charters have a dualism about them. On one hand they have the power to do things differently (and possibly better, or not) and they also have a reputation for being very selective (which can be good or bad). As we now see, KIPP teachers are unionizing. They say it is for the students, and I don't doubt it, but really its because they fear for their jobs like the rest of the teaching world!

KIPP Teachers Organize

Filed under: Charter School by Leo Casey @ 1:43 pm

In a ground-breaking development, the teachers of KIPP AMP Charter School in Brooklyn today informed their co-principals that they were organizing themselves into a union and seeking official recognition from the state Public Employees Relations Board.

A super-majority of the KIPP AMP teaching faculty has signed authorization cards with the United Federation of Teachers, well in excess of the threshold needed for official recognition under state labor law for public employees.

In a letter delivered to co-principals Jeff Li and Melissa Perry this morning, the teachers said that they had decided to unionize in order to secure teacher voice and respect for the work of teachers in their school. We want “to ensure that the [KIPP] motto of ‘team and family’ is realized in the form of mutual respect and validation for the work that is done [by teachers] each day,” they wrote.

The letter stressed that the decision to organize was directly connected to the teachers’ commitment to their students. “[A] strong and committed staff,” the teachers wrote, “is the first step to student achievement.” Unionization, the teachers believe, will help create the conditions for recruiting and retaining such a staff.

“We organized to make sure teachers had a voice, and could speak their minds on educational matters without fearing for their job,” says KIPP AMP teacher Luisa Bonifacio.

“For us,” KIPP AMP teacher Emily Fernandez explains, “unionization is ultimately all about student achievement, and the ability of teachers to best serve students at this crucial middle school time in their education.”

KIPP AMP teachers believe that the high staff turnover at the school has harmed their efforts to build a positive and consistent school culture for their students. “There is a need to make the teacher position more sustainable,” says Bonifacio, “so that teachers don’t burn out, but are able to make a long-term commitment to the students and the school.”

KIPP AMP teacher Leila Chakravarty makes a powerful case that organizing a union is necessary to “build a sustainable community in our school” and address the problem of teacher turnover. “Because as KIPP teachers we are so invested in our kids and form such close bonds with them, because we are always available to our students by telephone and email and spend ten hours every day with them, it is so vital and important that they feel they can count on us, and we will continue to be there. When they become close to a teacher who is gone in three months because she has burnt out, it undermines the trust we are working so hard to build.”

The teachers at KIPP AMP have received strong support for their organizing efforts from the parents and families at the school.

At the same time as the KIPP AMP teachers informed their principal of their decision to organize, UFT President Randi Weingarten reached out to KIPP co-founder and New York City Superintendent Dave Levin, informing him of the developments at the school and of the UFT’s intention to enter into collective bargaining at another New York City KIPP school, KIPP Infinity Charter School, where the teaching staff are members of the UFT.

Weingarten told Levin that the KIPP teachers and the UFT want to work cooperatively with KIPP to ensure that its New York City schools provide the very best education for their students and families. She asked KIPP to recognize the unionization of the KIPP AMP teachers immediately so that this work could begin without delay.

“KIPP teachers want what all good teachers want — the respect, the support and the tools necessary to do the best possible job of educating their students,” Weingarten said. “Organizing into a union of educational professionals will give them the collective voice and support to make that happen.”

“We know that teacher turnover is a major concern across the charter school movement,” Weingarten noted. “The unionization of KIPP’s New York City schools provides a unique opportunity to create a model of sustainable teacher recruitment, development and retention.”

Since the original KIPP Academy Charter School is a conversion charter school with UFT representation, educators at three of the four KIPP schools in New York City will now be members of the UFT.

Thursday Cartoon Fun: Union Busting Edition

Unions: Good For The Economy, Good For Christmas!

For you union busters out there:

The economy as a whole requires a large number of people making decent wages and thus having disposable income to spend, while individually companies would like to lower their own labor costs by paying their workers as little as possible. In a sense, companies that pay good wages subsidize those that don't, at least until a tipping point is reached and the pool of well-paid workers is no longer large enough to support poorly paid production. Individual self-interest leads to collective ruin, and it is important to note that both cycles are self-reinforcing, as the worse things get, the more people wish to hoard and the more companies look to cut costs. This is probably why anarchy never really caught on as a political option.

The Economic Case for Unions, (and how they help us all)

By BJ

In economics, you are taught to look at the labor market as though it was no different from any other market, in which the forces of supply and demand determine the price and quantity. In a perfect world, competition would result in everyone earning their marginal product of labor, a fancy way of saying you’d get paid what you’re worth.

Nearly every conservative rant against unions or raising the minimum wage begins with that assumption. This would be a good example of that. Living wage legislation is “little more than another welfare program”, and accepting unionization akin to drinking kool-aid at Jonestown. After all, if you allow for competition, everyone gets paid what they are actually worth and minimum wage laws and unions interfere with that, right?

Of course, the world is far from perfect, and a large part of the reason it isn’t is that one of the underlying assumptions of a competitive economic system that results in an equitable and fair distribution of resources is that the parties to every contract are equals.

An employer-employee relationship is not one of equals, particularly when you are job-hunting. Rare are the times where the power is tilted the individual employee’s way. A year or two ago in Fort McMurray would be an example, where both the cost of living, isolation, and surplus of very high-paying tar sands jobs meant that companies like Wal-Mart found themselves forced to limit their hours of operation and possibly be forced to shut down due to a lack of people willing to work for their incredibly low prices. Of course, with the collapse in oil prices, that may not be the case much longer. More typically these days, one of the stories at memeorandum a couple of days ago noted that for 8,000 positions in the Obama administration, there are 300,000 applicants. In environments like that, what kind of bargaining power do you think the average worker has compared to their employer?

The more common reality of the employer-employee relationship can be seen in today’s news with the announcement that one of the most notoriously anti-union corporations on the planet, Wal-Mart, is settling a whole host of class-action lawsuits brought against it by its employees for multiple violations of nearly every labor law and all of the even minimal obligations our anti-union conservative friend above said that employers do owe their employees.

An employee making minimum wage or little better is in no position to bargain effectively with a multi-billion-dollar multinational corporation like Wal-Mart, and, as is the case in most inherently unequal relationships, abuse tends to follow. As much as our conservative friend bemoans the mostly fictitious lack of accountability for union employees who do slovenly work and violate regulations, the fact that it is nearly impossible for individual workers to hold their employers accountable for violations should lead to the same conclusion, committing of these violations with increasing frequency, as today’s Wal-Mart decision shows.

(And before someone blathers on about how this decision shows that Wal-Mart has been held accountable and thus individual employees do have some recourse, please note that the above cases were all class-action lawsuits, brought collectively against the corporation, and even then with considerable outside assistance. And I’m willing to bet that very few of those employees who brought up the abuse cases against Wal-Mart still work there. One employee versus the corporation equals bug-squashing time. Plus, let us not forget that most of those labor laws exist in the first place due to the battling of striking workers from back in the days when such things were illegal and worthy of having the police and National Guard called out to bust up and occasionally kill said strikers. Or, “another form of welfare” forced upon us all by the damned socialists.)

Anyway, back to main point, collective bargaining is born to offset the power of large employers versus tiny employees in labor negotiations. One employee can do very little to affect a large corporation, but all of them combined can at least force a Mexican stand-off by shutting down its operations. Unions put the relationship between employer and employee on a more level footing, and are therefore the proper economic answer to corporations in moving towards a more equitable and efficient distribution of resources.

Read Jonathon Cohn’s article on the auto union’s evolution and note the conditions on the factory floors before the unions were recognized. Not too surprisingly, employees lived in fear of their supervisor’s capriciousness, particularly when times were rough and jobs were tight. And it required government legislation before the unionization efforts were finally recognized and the start of halfway sane labor laws began to take shape.

Cohn’s article also notes that the UAW was behind nearly all of the progressive “welfare-state” reforms of the intervening decades up to the 1970’s, which I figure explains a great deal of the Republican anger towards them. That legacy is a large part of what the non-unionized work force owes them. Most of the labor laws Wal-Mart is paying off former employees for violating wouldn’t even exist without the unions efforts.

The second part of what non-unionized employees owe the unions is the competition they provide. Or perhaps that should be worded, the fear of competition they provide. From Cogitamus, this story from the LA Times:

But what the foreign car companies want is to level -- which is to say, wipe out -- the union. They currently discourage their workforce from organizing by paying wages comparable to the Big Three's UAW contracts. In fact, Toyota's per-hour wages are actually above UAW wages.

However, an internal Toyota report, leaked to the Detroit Free Press last year, reveals that the company wants to slash $300 million out of its rising labor costs by 2011. The report indicated that Toyota no longer wants to "tie [itself] so closely to the U.S. auto industry." Instead, the company intends to benchmark the prevailing manufacturing wage in the state in which a plant is located. The Free Press reported that in Kentucky, where the company is headquartered, this wage is $12.64 an hour, according to federal labor statistics, less than half Toyota's $30-an-hour wage. If the companies, with the support of their senators, can wipe out or greatly weaken the UAW, they will be free to implement their plan.

To which Sir Charles adds:

In other words, non-union workers benefit by the very existence of the threat to unionize. Companies frequently pay wages that are only slightly below the union scale to keep workers from organizing. In the construction industry, it is not unusual for employers to pay a higher take home wage than union workers get while providing much more modest (or no) benefits. Such a strategy works particularly well with young men, who are by definition immortal, and immigrant labor, which often wants to maximize money that can be sent home to waiting families.

Eliminate the union "threat" and there is no reason for an employer to be so generous. What people seem to fail to comprehend is that any concession made in a unionized environment can be met and exceeded in a nanosecond, completely unilaterally by the non-union sector. . . .

Mark my words -- if the UAW were to cease to be a viable entity because of what the Republicans are doing, the wages of the workers at the foreign-owned auto plants in the U.S. will be cut in half within a short time -- exactly the wrong recipe for an economy that is seeking to recover.

The anti-union forces like to add the legacy costs of the Big Three to the current workforces compensation to make their case that union employees are overpaid. As noted above, the reality is that they are no better paid than their competitors, because if they were, resentment and envy would likely start turning to thoughts of opportunity, and all the anti-union propaganda and corporate-friendly legislation in the world wouldn't have kept the foreign auto plants non-unionized for long. Their good wages are a testement to the union's power.

Yesterday, Fester noted the “Bugger Thy Neighbour” philosophy driving individuals these days, where it is collectively in our best interests for people with disposable income to spend it, but individually prudent to hoard your own money for the plausible bad times ahead. Over at The Beav’ is the corporate version of said philosophy. The economy as a whole requires a large number of people making decent wages and thus having disposable income to spend, while individually companies would like to lower their own labor costs by paying their workers as little as possible. In a sense, companies that pay good wages subsidize those that don't, at least until a tipping point is reached and the pool of well-paid workers is no longer large enough to support poorly paid production. Individual self-interest leads to collective ruin, and it is important to note that both cycles are self-reinforcing, as the worse things get, the more people wish to hoard and the more companies look to cut costs. This is probably why anarchy never really caught on as a political option.

Governments can't, or at least in my opinion shouldn't, be able to force people to spend or invest their wealth, though they do fiddle with interest rates and tax codes to make certain options more attractive. On the other hand, minimum wage laws and allowing the formation of unions, (as it allows the formation of corporations), are well within government's mandate, and should allow for some collective action and more sound economic bargaining to soften the impact of the coming downturn.

Merit Pay For Teachers? Not Going To Work!

Merit pay for teachers is not a fix:

"In the 1980s, school districts dabbled with programs that offered teachers cash inducements, such as bonuses or raises, for doing their jobs well.

But those merit-pay programs were mostly short-lived, hotly debated, and understudied. Even after all this time, no one knows definitively whether children learn more when teachers are paid extra for boosting their students' achievement."

Go read the entire piece.

Commence Union Busting

From Think Progress. Michelle Rhee must be happy!

Bush strips collective bargaining rights from federal employees

Yesterday, President Bush issued an executive order “that denies collective bargaining rights to about 8,600 federal employees who work in law enforcement, intelligence and other agencies responsible for national security.” 900 of the employees affected were already represented by collective bargaining units. Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said that employees “had their collective bargaining rights stripped away for no justifiable reason.” For more on Bush’s last-minute regulations, orders, and proposed rule changes, check out ThinkProgress’ updated report: “Bush’s Backward Sprint To The Finish.”

Michelle Rhee: Worse Than A Union Assassin

Rhee affects us all! Read how she wants to privatize the schools! We are on our way!

Union Chief Seeks Contract Talks With Rhee

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 17, 2008; 1:54 PM

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said today she has asked for a meeting with D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee in an effort to reach agreement on a contract between the District and the Washington Teachers' Union (WTU).

"I've reached out to the chancellor," said Weingarten, who heads the 1.4 million-member parent organization that includes the WTU.

The AFT has been providing behind-the-scenes support to WTU President George Parker for many months. But Weingarten's statement, which came during a question-and-answer session following a morning speech at the National Press Club, is the first acknowledgement of her direct involvement in the year-long talks, which are being closely watched by educators and labor leaders nationwide.

Negotiations have stalled over Rhee's two-tiered proposal to provide huge raises and performance bonuses to teachers who agree to give up their tenure for a year, risking dismissal. Teachers unwilling to risk tenure would receive smaller, but still significant, bonuses and raises.

Weingarten said she was not sure a date was set but that a meeting seemed likely soon.

"George Parker and I are anxious to meet with the chancellor. I hope that will happen. There's been a lot of buzzing back and forth trying to find a date," she said.

Dena Iverson, Rhee's spokeswoman, said late this morning that she could not immediately confirm whether a meeting was scheduled.

Weingarten's comments came following her first major policy speech since her election to the AFT presidency this summer. Weingarten, who remains president of the United Federation of Teachers, the New York City teachers union, appealed to elected officials to protect schools from deep budget cuts as a result of the financial crisis. She also said that without close collaboration with teachers, school reform would be difficult.

"Without the buy-in of teachers, student success is unlikely," Weingarten said. "With teachers' buy-in, student success is unstoppable."

She said the union was prepared to find common ground with school officials on controversial issues such as performance pay and tenure -- the job security system regarded by many critics of public education as a safe harbor for ineffective teachers.

Weingarten said the AFT had called on local unions to make the process of winning tenure more rigorous, through programs that featured peer assistance and a system of "master teachers" who could help novice teachers improve and "counsel unsuccessful colleagues out of the profession."

She also cautioned school administrators, policymakers and opinion leaders to reconsider their demonization of teachers unions as the main impediment to school reform.

"Think of a teacher who is staying up past midnight to prepare her lesson plan . . . a teacher who is paying for equipment out of his own pocket so his students can conduct science experiments. . . . These are the people the AFT represents. Make no mistake about it -- when you attack us, you attack them."

Weingarten did not mention Rhee by name in her prepared comments. But during a brief interview after her speech, she criticized Rhee's consideration of measures that would release the District from legal obligation to bargain with WTU. These include seeking revival of the city's ability to open non-union charter schools, and legislation that would declare a post-Katrina-style "state of emergency" that would effectively allow Rhee and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) to create a new, union-free school system.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that Fenty and Rhee are considering pursuit of the measures.[emphasis mine]

"I completely disagree," Weingarten said. "It's totally at odds with what I talked about today."

Update: D2 route has some interesting stuff about Rhee, and DC, and WaPo, and Kaplan, and other interesting stuff.

If you care about education, and not Rheeform, you need to educate yourself. Read blogs. Read teacher blogs. Read my blog!