Teacher Innovation Leading From Behind Deana Helton Principal Bishop McNally High School.
the agenda behind teacher union
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The agenda behind teacher union-bashing The attacks on teachers and unions are not about educational reform, but turning the teaching profession into a service industry • • o Paul Thomas o guardian.co.uk , Friday 4 February 2011 16.00 GMT o larger | smaller Geoffrey Canada, standing, in a scene from the documentary Waiting for 'Superman'. Photograph: AP Photo/Paramount Pictures Management and labour are hurtling towards an impasse, and a work stoppage looms. Workers are seeking public support by emphasising the importance of benefits for workers, specifically longterm healthcare for conditions caused by the profession that do not appear until later in life. This may sound for many like the possible scenario for a teachers' strike, backed by a powerful teachers' union. But if this were a teachers' strike, in 2011, we could anticipate little support for those teachers – not least because of the propaganda created by Davis Guggenheim's documentary Waiting for "Superman" and the rise of false prophets of education reform (Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Bill Gates and Michelle Rhee). However, above, I am speaking about the possible NFL strike that hangs over this coming Super Bowl weekend: a struggle between billionaires and millionaires, which, indirectly, shines an important light on the rise of teacher and teacher union-bashing in the US. Adam Bessie, on Truthout, identifies how the myth of the bad teacher has evolved: "In this political season of faux anti-establishme nt anger born of very real economic desperation, public educators have become the villain du jour, their reputations collateral damage in the war against 'big government'. In a remarkable sleight of hand, the super rich who imploded the economy, manufacturing the recession which now enrages the public, have successfully misdirected the public's justifiable anger away from them and toward teachers." While few people have begun to demonise and criticise either the billionaire owners or the millionaire players (represented by a union) in the NFL, the education reform landscape is built on a false premise – blaming teachers and unions for school failures – that lacks credibility and masks the overwhelming source of education failures: namely, poverty. Ironically, the new push against teachers' unions, cloaked in discourse about the damage done by "bad" teachers, comes from Democrats. For example, Arne Duncan, speaking on behalf of the Obama administration in Little Rock, Arkansas on 2 5 August 2010, focused on teacher quality:
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