LA Dreamin': Opposition Wins Teachers Union Election By Norman Scott Reposted from Education Notes

The victory of a coalition of groups consisting mostly of classroom teachers in the recent election in the United Teachers - Los Angeles (UTLA) union election may prove to have national significance due to the positions the United Action slate staked out - positions that are in many ways counter to the positions taken here in New York City by the Unity Caucus-led UFT. The fact that A.J. Duffy, the incoming President, urged teachers to reject the last contract agreement negotiated by the old (Unity-type) leadership sent a message to the corporate-driven managers of urban school systems that militant opposition to those in control of most urban teacher unions can grow into a major force.

The vote on the contract was favorable by an incredibly close 54% to 45% margin. (In contrast, UFT members voted 95% in favor of the last contract). Duffy said, "The members have spoken. I abide by that." But, he added, district leaders should note how many members voted against the contract, and the dissatisfaction with district practices that number represents. The union, he said, will "go after the district for the bloat and the waste and the bureaucracy they have a penchant for."

The victory in LA was made possible when the various opposition forces formed the United Action slate against the leadership. (Duffy won 60% of the vote.) Committed to bottom-up rank and file organizing starting with the rebuilding of union chapters at the school level, many of which had become weak and ineffective (as is happening to so many chapters in NYC) due to the inability of the defeated leadership to breathe life into them.

The victory of the opposition coalition in LA is worth noting here in New York. Unity Caucus has attacked ICE (Independent Community of Educators) and TJC (Teachers for a Just Contract), the major opposition groups in the UFT, for challenging the policies of UFT leaders, policies that have helped contribute to the worst working conditions for UFT members since the early days of the union.

The test of this coalition's ability to take a militant stand and maintain themselves in power will be to hold themselves together once they actually have to run the union. They will try to avoid the scenario played out in Chicago where Debbie Lynch whose slate defeated the long-time incumbents in 2001 narrowly lost the election in 2004, unable to withstand the withering counterattack by the former caucus in power. On the surface, A.J. Duffy seems to be a different kettle of fish than Lynch, offering up a much more militant strategy of attacking the high-stakes testing craze, making class size reduction a high priority, calling for reductions in bureaucratic meddling, etc. But I'll just let you read DuffyÕs own words, along with those of two of his co-electees.

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Teachers Union's Battle Plan

By A.J. Duffy, Joshua Pechthalt and Julie Washington

Los Angeles Times, March 23, 2005

As newly elected officers of United Teachers Los Angeles, we want the public to know who we are, where we stand and what we will do when we take office July 1. The most important thing is this: We are classroom teachers, not politicians or bureaucrats, and we hope this background will help us in the fight to ensure that all students receive the best education possible.

Unfortunately, the current "reforms" in education - including excessive standardized testing, a one-size-fits-all mandated curriculum and the imposition of sanctions designed to scapegoat teachers for the educational system's problems - actually undermine authentic student achievement, demoralize teachers and push more kids out of school. We have a different starting point.

We believe that every student has unique needs and that the role of public education is to meet those needs. Our top priorities will be to lower class size; reduce the amount of standardized testing so that students will receive more instructional time; and work to convince the Los Angeles Unified School District that teachers, not district bureaucrats, should be the driving force behind curriculum and professional development.

We also will fight for decent salaries and benefits for teachers and other UTLA members. This is critical in retaining good teachers and attracting bright young people from college, as well as the second- and third- career teachers who have so much to offer and whom we desperately need.

Because we believe that a union is only as strong as its membership, our first task is to help UTLA members organize around their many issues and concerns. Then we need to build lasting alliances with parents and other school workers, such as custodians and secretaries. This is essential because it will take a powerful grass-roots coalition for public education to win the funding from Sacramento and Washington needed to make real progress.

We also believe that it is the responsibility of teachers, along with our allies, to fight against the various punitive and divisive proposals that parade as reforms. One example is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to impose a merit pay system on teachers, which rests on the mistaken assumption that teachers either have to be bribed or punished to teach better. We believe that teachers should be encouraged to work collaboratively, not pitted against one another.

Even more damaging to public education are the anti-student, anti-teacher provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind law, which virtually guarantee that every public school in the United States eventually will be deemed a "failure," leading, ultimately, to the privatization of public schools.

Currently, the law is forcing 73 LAUSD schools to restructure, many of them because their special-education students - some of whom are learning-disabled - did not meet the proficiency standards that were established for other students. Other schools have "failed" because the students who are still learning English, many of whom are recent immigrants, did not perform up to the test standards originally created for native English speakers.

Rather than addressing the real needs of such schools, which are mainly in low-income areas of the city and suffer from overcrowding and underfunding, the LAUSD is considering "reconstituting" some of them. Under that system, the entire school staff would be dismissed and forced to reapply individually.

Under our leadership, UTLA will resist these attacks on students and teachers. We will work to educate our own members, parents and the public about how No Child Left Behind forces teachers to narrow the curriculum and "teach to the test," rather than engage our students in deeper, stimulating inquiries and activities.

As union leaders, we will work to protect our members from administrative abuse and harassment. But just as important, we want to help organize a movement that makes schools places where students love to learn and teachers love to teach.

A.J. Duffy is UTLA president-elect, Joshua Pechthalt is UTLA/AFT vice president-elect and Julie Washington is UTLA elementary vice president-elect.

 

Did opposition to high stakes testing play a role?
Some thoughts from a variety of sources in LA

United Action and its allies take office at a critical time for public education and for the labor movement. Standardization of the curriculum has been accompanied by increased harassment of teachers and pressure on students to pass an ever mounting array of standardized tests.

Yet UTLA, as well as the state and national affiliates of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, have done little but lobby for relief from state and federal testing policies.

Our platform called for aggressive action around bread-and-butter issues, for example, in support of teacher pay raises and in protection of health benefits. But, the platform went beyond that, also, very explicitly calling for supporting bilingual education programs, supporting an expanded corporate tax to pay for education and lower class sizes, challenging high-stakes tests and military recruitment, and more specifically challenging Bush's No Child Left Behind mandates.