Blue Mass Group

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Education lobbist against teacher $ bill

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Here’s a pair of messages from Marc Kenen, the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Charter School Association.

posted 07/16/2010

Early next week The United States Senate will debate an appropriations bill that includes a new $10 billion education jobs fund just passed by the US House of Representatives. This bill would provide funds to states to help prevent thousands of teachers in district public schools across the country from losing their jobs. A good thing.

Unfortunately, the bill aims to pay for this by slashing federal charter school funding by $100 million or 40% of its current level. It will also use funds to pay for the jobs bill from the highly successful Teacher Incentive Fund and Race to the Top program.

The federal charter school program provides start-up funds for new charter schools and supports the dissemination of best practices from charter schools. This bill would cut off start-up funds to new Massachusetts charter schools that would be created by the recent raising of the state charter cap.

Please click on the “Take Action” button on our homepage to send a message today to our Senators to oppose these cuts!

Stay tuned for updates.

Followed by:

posted 07/24/2010

Federal Charter School Funding Cuts Avoided!

Late last night the U.S. Senate voted down a U.S. House of Representative proposal for a $10 billion teacher jobs bill. The House bill, which President Obama had threatened to veto would have been funded partially by cuts in the U.S. Charter School Program, Race to the Top fund and the Teacher Incentive Fund. The action came on a procedural vote with 46 voting in favor of the bill and 60 being needed.

The charter school movement throughout the country mobilized in an unprecedented scale to help defeat the measure.

Massachusetts Senators voted in the following way:

Senator Kerry voted in favor of the bill (to cut charter funding)

Senator Brown voted against the bill (to prevent charter cuts).

Thank you to the thousands of you who emailed them!

Marc

So, let’s get this straight.  In a time of fiscal stress and massive teacher layoffs, the public policy action of choice is to stiff local school districts in order to fund start-up charter schools?

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Comments

  1. or will union rules force the “newest” teachers to be let go while we hold on to dead weight?

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    p>There are islands of hope where the system is trying to improve itself but the unions are trying to stop progress since keeping “all” their member’s employed is far more important than actually educating the kids.

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    p>

    Next month, 241 D.C. teachers will lose their jobs, including 166 who are being sent packing for poor performance. Another 75 failed to obtain proper certification.

    The firings are part of a new evaluation system that takes into account test scores, student growth, and outside input from evaluators.
    Teachers who are rated ineffective will lose their jobs as of Aug. 13, and they won’t be eligible for severance pay.

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    p>That’s what I call “hope”.

    • You are discussing dismissals for cause, not the elimination of teaching positions due to lack of funding.

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      p>When there are layoffs, you lose the least senior teachers – the bright young teachers that districts want to keep.  

  2. Hee.  Can’t believe Bob front-paged this.  

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    p>Here is the fight: Obama versus Obey.  

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    p>How it gets cast as some Massachusetts dude versus Obey – ummmmm, whaaaaa?

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    p>

    July 1 (Bloomberg) — The Obama administration threatened to veto the House version of a war-funding bill because it would rescind $800 million in education funding to help finance $10 billion in state aid to prevent teacher layoffs.

    “The administration is more than willing to work with the Congress to pursue responsible ways to finance education jobs,” a White House statement said.

    “It would be short-sighted to weaken funding for these reforms just as they begin to show promise.”

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    p>Here is the notable right-wing publication, the Village Voice, giving some context, in a column entitled “New York’s House Democrats Do Teachers’ Union Bidding, Face Obama Veto.”  

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    p>

    Its sponsor, retiring House Appropriations Committee Chair David Obey, insisted on cutting $800 million from Race to the Top and other Obama reforms hated by Weingarten’s American Federation of Teachers to offset the cost of the jobs bill.

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    p>Here is the notable right-wing editorial page, the New York Times:

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    p>

    President Obama has rightly threatened to veto the House version of a spending bill that includes damaging and unnecessary cuts to his signature education grant program, known as the Race to the Top.

    The $4.3 billion Race to the Top program has focused the country’s attention on the school reform effort as never before.

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    p>So Obama versus Obey.  Fair fight, make your pick.  But ridiculous to make this about MA charters.  Of course we want the $10 billion to pass – but not if we’re singled out for special cuts!  

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    p>My disclosure – I work at a charter school.  My esteemed fellow educator Pablo disclosure – he works for a school district.  

    • The Obama Administration’s educational policy is f-ing radical, and I don’t care about charter schools on this. Politically, it was stupid to try to take too much money out of charter schools; the charter school lobby and its deep-pocketed supporters are way to powerful.

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      p>Duncan wants states to compete for Chapter I money. That’s a major change in the way things are done: funding not based on need, but on how well states can jump through the Administration’s agenda. That’s freaking sick, man. Even if you agree with the agenda, what happens when an agenda comes up that really sucks?!

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      p>And if anyone hasn’t figured out I’m an over-educated (at public colleges and universities) public high school teacher and a proud union member.  

      • Yeah, it’s been a while.  I found that Backfire column in the Globe quite interesting.  Did you?  Basically showed neurology of why those with strong opinions (examples: me, you) very unlikely to be moved by evidence.  Any evidence.  

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        p>Made me think of BMG.  

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        p>*

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        p>That said, I’m trying to i.d. where you take issue in this particular controversy.  

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        p>Obama decided to give an unprecedented federal $100 billion carte blanche to every state as part of the stimulus.  That was ON TOP OF every other federal education dollar.

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        p>He said he would attach reform requirements to the $100 billion, but quickly backtracked on that.  

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        p>Instead, they attached $4 billion of competitive grant-making to the $100 billion for status quo.  The $4 billion is called Race To the Top.  

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        p>Wow, a whole 4% of this one time federal taxpayer dollar distribution having some conditions attached!  

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        p>I suspect your hombre Karl Marx would NOT call that radical.  I’d tend to agree.  

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        p>The David Obey / teachers union gambit goes like this: “I already pocketed your $100 billion (b, not m) for status quo.  That was last year.  Now give me another $10 billion.  You could take some of it from the 4% you set aside to try to create CHANGE.”  

        • I did a Google and came up with two conservative things throwing unions in with David Obey, but the only reference to a denial is in the Fiscal Times, which I’ve never heard of The Fiscal Times says:

          Meanwhile, Republicans and “school reform” supporters said that Obey’s move was designed to help teachers’ unions, which have an uneasy relationship with “Race to the Top.” Some say this fight is more about targeting the administration’s education agenda, not a line-item in the budget.

          “There is a desire among some in the Democratic Party, under the influence of the unions . . . to back Duncan and Obama off,” said Charles Barone, director of federal policy for Democrats for Education Reform. “You have to have lived under a rock the last year and a half to believe anyone who tells you that’s not part of it.”

          From what I’ve read, and I haven’t been following the issue, this has all the makings of a personal feud between David Obey (who’s not running for re-election) and the Obama Administration. The teacher unions seem like an interested bystander.

        • The $100 billion was to save jobs and prevent negative economic repercussions. If that’s status quo, then so be it. My bottom-line is preventing cuts; I don’t care where the money comes from. Don’t confuse me with Pablo. I don’t really have an issue with charter schools on this. The Obey/Obama thing smells like internecine politics.

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          p>I found Richard Rothstein persuasive on RTT. He argues that competition process is embarrassingly and complicatedly stupid and thus unfair. Of more concern is his conclusion:

          In short, the Race to the Top 500-point rating system presents a patina of scientific objectivity, but in truth masks a subjective and somewhat random process.

          This competition was a trial run for Secretary Duncan
          of a policy approach he hopes to make permanent. The
          Obama administration has proposed that formula-driven
          Title I funding be frozen at its present level, without
          future adjustment for inflation, and that increases in
          federal education spending be devoted entirely to a new collection of competitive grants, some of which have similar requirements to RTT, and some of which, as indicated above, attempt to create incentives for initiatives not included in RTT. Because such a reduction in real Title I funding would further exacerbate state fiscal crises, and because this trial run of a competitive system has proven to have little credibility, the administration should rethink its approach to federal education aid and its relationship to school improvement.

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          p>Personally, I’m not that concerned about charter schools in the funding, though Pablo says more or less what I think. Spoils of war and all that as far as Obama is concerned.

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          p>P.S. I’m actually working on post on Backfire.

    • Pablo is a former school committee member, and a district-level school administrator, who has made far too many cuts over the past ten years.  As a school reformer, I am often frustrated by how slowly things work in the public sector, but wish we also had a level playing field so I could spend more time planning school improvement instead of figuring out how to manage the next round of cuts.

  3. But it’s pretty misleading to claim that the charter school lobbyist was “pushing hard to kill the funding.” That makes him sound like he was against the funds to help prevent cuts of public school teachers — which, as his message states explicitly, he was not.

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    p>I’d add that it’s not particularly surprising that a charter school lobbyist would lobby against massive charter school cuts.

    • He sent out several action alerts and generated over 1000 emails to Brown and Kerry.

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      p>Note that the funding does nothing to impact EXISTING charter schools in Massachusetts, which are funded by a direct assessment (garnishment) against the sending town’s Chapter 70 state aid.  They were lobbying to preserve start-up funds for new charters, when existing schools were suffering significant losses.

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      p>In my world, funding for new charter schools is a “nice to have” compared to meeting your existing obligations to students who are attending your neighborhood public school.  What happens when you tell a parent that services to their child in their neighborhood school are cut due to reduced funding.  No art class?  Class size increased?  Sorry, the money was needed for charter school start-ups.

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