Contracts always expire. Strike plans are always made. Inflation is back at 2%. If you expect teachers to absorb more after a 2 year freeze dream on.

There is always a solution to debt deficit and wages. They call them ’ revenue enhancements’ these days. Firefighters cops all getting big raises from arbitration.

Prof Barry Kay at Laurier U the acknowledged expert on seat projections say at this point it looks like another Liberal minority that needs NDP support.

Just posted to G&M comments —

Social Justice Unionism Is The Agenda

Teacher unions are allied internationally with various militant groups who cheerlead local efforts. BC and Ontario teacher unions consider themselves campaigners for centrally directed egalitarianism. This is what I wrote yesterday about our BC crew.

Global Eyes On Our Teacher Strike?

Is the whole world watching our teacher strike? Well, probably not. However, you can be sure a certain sector of international culture is deeply interested. I have seen our four-decades-long education struggles prominent on global socialist sites. Our teacher union, the BCTF (BC Teachers’ Federation), is seen as a vanguard in “social justice unionism”. Reports from the battle lines are sent out regularly.

Feedback is that “Lots of folks all over the world [are] taking notes from BCTF.”

Fabian socialism is alive and well — into their 130th year — motto: Educate, Agitate, Organize. Their method — incrementalism, gradualism. Their byword mouthed by their mascot, the tortoise — When I Strike, I Strike Hard.

A report just received by Rank & File (Canadian left labor website)— motto: Agitate, Educate, Organize — so similar to Fabianism — is here: The ABCs of the BC Teachers’ Fight http://rankandfile.ca/?p=2560

Even if an arbitrator were to resolve this tumultuous faceoff between union and government there is no guarantee that our toxic “status quo” would ever end — harmful and tiresome for students, parents and taxpayers. No, it would just continue for another 40 years!

What we do need is legislation to change the ball game. This experiment in monopoly mass education is the lifeblood for such obsolete behaviors as we witness today. Activists find fertile ground for their progressive political mission.

We do need to increase the opportunities for choices and alternatives in education. Already BC has quasi-charters — independent schools which operate with partial government funding and which must abide by contracts outside the rules of school boards and union agreements and which promise not to foster sedition.

We do need to move to a system where fully funded public charters are available, as in Alberta. And, we should seriously explore the promising new funding model for personalized education via Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) as found in Arizona.

Dream on Tunya. Zero momentum for charters and vouchers anywhere in Canada.

In 2011 - The Economist - “Do the public exist to serve public-sector workers with their high pay and inflated benefits, they ask, or do public-sector workers exist to serve the public?

Even people on the left are beginning to echo these complaints…..........”

And yet the public sector unions, and the ring leaders of the teachers’ unions….....“The unions have responded by proclaiming war on cost-cutting governments.” Also in the process, has declared war on the very public they claimed to protect and serve. On a Canadian blog -  about school boards and the hiring practices - http://contrarian.ca/tag/nova-scotia-teachers-union/
“The school system is not an employment program for recent education grads.”  And in the Economist article - “Public-sector unions combine support for higher spending with vigorous opposition to more accountability.”
http://www.economist.com/node/17849199

No one could fault anyone into not thinking that the K to 12 education model was set up as a personal employment agency for teachers, for teachers’ unions to advocate for higher spending without accountability and overall reduction in education quality and inflexibility to changes to the public they served.

And so the strike plans are under afoot, while the teachers’ unions railed against globalization, trade agreements and neoliberalism, the sheer irony is that the teachers’ unions rose to become the most powerful public sector unions across Canada due to globalization, free trade agreements and governments with healthy taxpayers’ purses. Who were the losers? That all depends where one lands on the social-economic ladder, but one thing for sure it isn’t teachers who are the losers. In fact, it is the public sector unions, and more so for the teachers’ unions who have help and abetted the global forces by dumbing down education in various ways.

What is such sheer lunacy,  why anyone should fall for the lines of a striking teachers’ union in 2014. “All three countries have seen policies of privatization, standardized testing, attacks on teachers, demonizing of teacher unions, negating collective bargaining, cutting funding, laying off teachers, and reducing benefits and pensions.  All levels have been affected:  elementary, secondary and higher education.”  http://www.trinationalcoalition.org/

The Trinational Coalition For the Defense of Public Education - in their blog - Quality Education is a Constitutional Right - http://trinationalcoalition.ca/2014/04/quality-education-is-a-constitutional-right/

The quality education constitutes one thing - improving democracy. I somehow doubt it, education quality will improved on the basis of improving democracy, nor help any student to learn to read let along add up a few columns of numbers using standard algorithms. Improving democracy is all about improving the access doors for the teachers’ unions to sit along side the politicians.

No one can be faulted to think that the K to 12 education system exists to served the best interests of the educators. Not when the Toronto School District Board, has spend some serious chump change that they can ill-afford. “Canada’s largest school board has opened a Confucius Institute, bringing to Toronto students a controversial global language and cultural outreach effort that is controlled by the Chinese government.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/toronto-confucius-institute-spurs-moral-debate/article18817975/?utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_source=The Globe and Mail&utm_type=text&utm_content=TheGlobeandMail&utm_campaign=116751327

Another way of putting it, when the K to 12 education establishment are wholly committed to globalization that ensures the educator workers will maintain and increase their political and economic capital, it is time to locked out the teachers. Otherwise be prepared for more opposition against standardized testing, and other accountability tools while advocating for 19th century reasons why kids today are poor readers/writers and can’t do math very well, but just well enough to pass the international tests, that don’t matter very much to the student whose parents are paying for tutor lessons on the 3 Rs, that the schools will no longer teach.

To Be Forewarned Is To Be Forearmed

I am of mixed mind when, and when NOT, to send out signals.

Sometimes it becomes counterproductive.  For example, if a parent group starts getting a bit assertive, it doesn’t take long for the principal to divert the group to other missions or to split the group by saying: Not all parents would agree, blah, blah . . . 

Nonetheless, this matter of “social justice teacher unionism” bears watching — close watching because parents are going to be heavily courted.  Already one union is bragging that they’ve got parents to accompany them into the ultra secret affairs of collective bargaining, sitting on their side of the table, of course.

Nancy is right to highlight the Trinational Coalition.  It’s a big player on the international scene.  A BCTF member just came back from their conference and he said he’s loaded with “tactics” to organize teachers, parents and community.

The signals are strong that “rethinking” schools is another angle about changing the purpose of public schooling.  There is literature and books with that code word.

Here are two links to two very current articles urging on the growth of “social justice teacher unionism”.

A New Teacher Union Movement is Rising
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/05/23-7

Answering the wake-up call for teachers’ unions
http://socialistworker.org/2014/05/21/answering-the-wakeup-call

And don’t forget, teacher union involvement in these conferences and get-togethers is easily paid for from their head office.  Also, many educators go to academic conferences where the opportunity is taken for special interest groups to piggy-back their affairs while being paid to attend the larger conference.

And, to further grease the wheels for teachers to get these opportunities, many times these events provide credits, which can be used for professional development purposes and upgrading of pay levels.

So parents, be prepared for much more wooing from the teacher unions and their new thrust.  Just one more reason for parents to seek alternatives away from aggressive community organizers.

Nothing new there. Most teacher training institutions have teacher unionists on their board and the unionists make an annual pitch to the new teachers about how they would be working in slave conditions like the Right to Work states if not for the union.

Teachers are university trained professionals. The going rate for that is $100K minimum.

Oh Dougie can you show us any proof there is no momentum for schoolchoice or charter schools in Canada? You must be privy to some internal work by union pollsters, or are you just creating another strawman to try and frighten us all. I publish a lot of cdned articles everyday and I see absolutely no proof of your assertion(s)

Do not call me Dougie and your evidence would be what exactly. The unions track it very carefully. Show me a serious political party anywhere in Canada that says charters and vouchers are the way to go. The majority in BC want to roll back support that exists for private schools.

Part 1 of 2

Yes, university trained in ideologies but some can’t spell. Others don’t know the phonemic sounds but they are experts in guessing at words. Some are not very good at basic arithmetic, but they aced their exams in fuzzy math strategies where 2 + 6 sometimes does not equal 8. In their world of social justice, somewhere in the world 2 + 6 = 9, except when there is a blue moon. Or this old clip, that passes for one of the crazy math strategies in 2014. In the teachers’ social justice, the kid would get an A, and the kid who simply stated that 5 X 5 = 25 would get a C.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH_F-RncE4Y

A Canadian paper - Social Justice Teacher Activism
A key to union vitality
“Social Justice unionism = procedural democracy + demographic diversity + community connections + anti-oppressive action
https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National Office/2013/11/osos113_SocialJusticeTeacherActivism.pdf

Social justice is the catch-all term for the teachers’ unions. Social justice theories are as wide, crossing the span. In Wikipedia - “Social justice is the ability people have to realize their potential in the society where they live.[1] Classically, “justice” (especially corrective justice or distributive justice) referred to ensuring that individuals both fulfilled their societal roles,[2] and received what was due from society. “Social justice” is generally used to refer to a set of institutions which will enable people to lead a fulfilling life and be active contributors to their community.[3] The goal of social justice is generally the same as human development. The relevant institutions can include education, health care, social security, labour rights, as well as a broader system of public services, progressive taxation and regulation of markets, to ensure fair distribution of wealth, equality of opportunity, and no gross inequality of outcome.”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice

Key words for education - no gross inequality of outcome. It is why one don’t see real smart students skipping a couple of grades. Can’t have kids being held back either, as that would be unfair. Nor have kids being pulled out for extensive phonemic awareness since the majority of the class are not receiving the same education services. So the kids get the watered down version in the inclusive classroom,, unless the kids meet the narrowly defined criteria that no one meets unless they are failing. The social justice practices of educators are inherently unfair to students and their education.

Part 2 of 2

In Wikipedia - “While enjoying some popularity in teacher training programs, teaching for social justice has also provoked criticism. Critics’ arguments are twofold: there is a lack of evidence supporting the philosophy’s effectiveness as either a behavioral or instructional strategy, and secondly, values cannot be explicitly taught, nor should they.[1][2]”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teaching_for_social_justice

Social Justice unionism is just another way to maintain the status-quo, where the K to 12 education establishment retains their authority and political capital without being held to account for the education outcomes of students and individual students. The parents are recruited in the primary grades, because the teachers’ unions lose the parents by the time their children are in high school.
Parents who are active with unions, become aware by high school, how inherently unfair the K to 12 education establishment toward their children’s education and their futures. As a parent, I started off alone, by grade 11 - I was not alone. Parents that I never thought to hear them complain about the K to 12 education, were complaining. Some threatening and using language of lawsuits for matters that should have been looked after in the ‘now’ moment because it was not socially just to take care of a bullying incident. Social justice ideologies does a whole lot of damage to students’ psyches in schools. It is where the only thing a student learns very well, that they are too dumb for school.

It is civil/charter rights that will rise to the forefront, and put an end to inherently unfair practices and policies of the K to 12 education establishments that seeks to maintain their authority and political capital at the expense of the students and their educations. Student outcomes don’t matter to the teachers’ unions. It is in their best interests to increase inequalities of students. In the Canadian paper, like other papers when teachers write about social justice, one will find the opposition to students be put first and not left behind somewhere in the paper. In the Canadian paper, it is the first sentence - “Misleading sound bites about putting students first and refusing to leave children behind
have allowed policy makers, legislators and school district administrators across educational jurisdictions to shape public discourse about teachers’ unions…” It is why when parents are questioning the school on curriculum and pedagogy practices comparing them to their children’s outcomes, the parents are met with push-back by the education officials from the classroom and all the way to the ministry of education. Social justice philosophy of the education, is the kind that calls for more or less equal outcomes. Just enough education to have students passing, but not enough to break the glass ceiling of reaching one’s academic achievement. In the 21st century, the job goes to the parents, and it is left up to them. Obviously, it is according to the social-income-education status of parents, and as such, the parents with limited knowledge banks coupled with lower incomes, their children become the victims of the K to 12 education establishment

I hope you feel better Nancy.

I came across this earlier in the morning. An example of social justice unionism at work in BC. It is unprofessional for educators who are university trained to used such underhanded tactics, that amounts to propaganda of the worst kind.  http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/genevieve-hawtree/bc-teachers-strike-2014_b_5387643.html

Propaganda of the worst kind, where educators uses children for self-serving agendas.  The hyperbole is often used to exaggerate the position of the educator, in the same methods used by 19th century governments to defend the workhouses and debtor’s prison as necessary. In the latter case, for a cheap labour pool, and for the educators, a strike is necessary because the educators supposedly are so hard done by a class of 23 students riddled with deficits and behavioral problems, that there is little room for learning. And to add spice, a well used myth that poses as the truth is raise - “Please, please please understand how important this issue is. I didn’t become a teacher for the paycheque or the glory. I became a teacher because I wanted to help kids do amazing things with their lives.” 

Not at all true, because in the data outcome streams it tells a much different story of the damage left by the K to education establishment and more so by teachers’ unions imposing social justice ideologies upon the students they served, for the self-serving interests of the teachers’ unions.

When push comes to shove, if you asked educators where the individual students stood on the 3 Rs, they have no idea. However, they know all the faults and deficits of their students better than the parents, the health professionals, the police, the social workers, because they have been university trained and are experts in education.

As for the BC teacher, let us hope the parents who recognized their children in the diatribe, speak their mind and read the teacher the riot act. Than start informing oneself on the rights of parents, students as to what one should expect in a 21st century public school within the parameters of the Education Acts. and the very K to 12 education establishment.

As for the educator - Genevieve Hawtree teaches Grade 1 French Immersion in the Central Okanagan School District. A mother of three boys, she lives in Kelowna, B.C. - http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/genevieve-hawtree/

Her blog - http://mmehawtree.blogspot.ca/

Her education and work background - https://www.linkedin.com/pub/genevieve-hawtree/94/171/70a

She also privately tutors according to learning styles. Another educator profiting off the lower reading, writing and numeracy levels of students. The kingdom of neoliberalism within the K to 12 education model, in order to profit at some future time in students’ lives. Some parents call it extortion, but what it really is to locked the access doors to the education offerings and services of a public school to control who will or will not obtained an education on the taxpayers’ dime. Woe to those who have difficulties in the 3 Rs, because they become the first victims starting in grade 1 of the K to 12 education establishment.

1) teachers in BC paid much less than Alberta or Ontario.

2) the lockouts are EMPLOYER initiated so parents are ALREADY blaming trustees and Liberal government.

3) Teachers are demanding class size and composition limits. Parents support them on this.

And so it justifies the unprofessional rant by an educator that borders on prejudice and bias beliefs and personal ideologies of the educator, to reinforce the common outdated beliefs rooted in the 19th century education pedagogy that children are damaged goods? All done to advanced the goals of the teachers’ unions of more education funding, more pay and smaller classrooms without being held to account for the students’ achievement outcomes.

Another video - The Machine: The Truth Behind Teachers Unions - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVyNlJUKgug

I would support that teacher 100% go to her school defend her and win easily.

Funny how the American states with strong unions have by far the highest test scores and the states where union dues are not automatic lag very far behind. All the nations at the top of world results are all HEAVILY unionized.

Hmmmmm

Just a fact check here, Doug:

Of the eleven countries that are ahead of us in PISA Math, only four or five have unionized teachers.

And “nations at the top of the world” doesn’t include Canada anymore.

Notice you restricted to math Tom what happened to reading LOL.

Japan, Korea heavily unionized. Shanghai Macao and Hong Kong not countries. Singapore totally artificial city state enclave.

Oooops your argument just disappeared. .

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_student_performance

Wow look at all the VERY HEAVILY UNIONIZED countries at the top of PISA.

I go to PR China 2-3X a year. They would fall 30 places if the whole country was tested not just the best 3 cities.

My bad - we are actually only in 13th place.  We were in 12th place in the previous round.

The OECD ranks countries by their math performance, I think we are eighth in reading performance, but you should figure it out yourself.  http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf

And more annoying, Ontario lags the Canadian average, we are additionally behind Poland and Belgium.  If we were a country, we’d be tied with Germany for 16th place.

In 2000, Canada was third in math (after Japan and Korea) and second in reading (after Finland).  It has been a great decade for our teachers, but not for our students.

Doug is just too funny tonight. Noticed how the teacher unionists always points to the global stats to defend their case, but never the data streams at the local and provincial levels, the students’ outcomes and the costs to society when students do not reached their full potential.

For example, the teachers’ unions always talks about democracy. Meanwhile, there is a democracy deficit in Canada growing leaps and bounds. Some American parents with the skills, have crunched the numbers. As education funding increases, the democracy deficit widens. I suspect it applies to Canada as well, considering Toronto, the mayor and the TDSB supporting sanitized Chinese culture in exchanged for trained Chinese teachers paid by the Chinese government. Can’t get any better than that, and considering Toronto, and now Canada has become the punch line for the late night talk shows.

Meanwhile, education increases every year and the doors are locked to the education services. On Children of the Code - ” They’ll pay for it in terms of whatever economic costs there are for social programs, but they’re also going to pay for it in terms of political divides that exist. They pay for it in terms of lost opportunities that those low in literacy could have contributed. They lose in all kinds of ways. This is such a big problem. We really need to not be territorial about our solutions.”  http://www.childrenofthecode.org/library/refs/dollarsandsense.htm#HundredsofBillions

Or the Moore judgement - “The failure to consider financial alternatives completely undermined the District’s argument that it was justified in providing no meaningful access to an education for J because it had no choice.  In order to decide that it had no other choice, it had at least to consider what those other choices were.

              The finding of discrimination against the District is therefore restored.”  http://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/12680/index.do

A headline - “The Real Racism in Our Schools—Low Expectations or Delusional Thinking?”  Written by a teacher. Apparently it is now racist to assert that students don’t know their basic arithmetic. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-strauss/minority-students-expectations_b_2979953.html

This is how twisted the social justice unionism and pedagogy has become. Over at Education Next, the phony funding crisis - http://educationnext.org/the-phony-funding-crisis/

New observation - American parents as individuals and in small groups are now using their skills and abilities to cracked open the K to 12 education system. Some are after the hidden fees of the pubic K to 12, that parents must cough up, even though the education acts all state that public K to 12 is free under the legal parameters.Too bad in Canada, the K to 12 education establishment are successfully keeping the public in the dark.

However, there is hope. In my corner of Canada parents are demanding a total breakdown of the expenditures at the local schools.  The schools always say no money for remediation of the 3 Rs, and no money for the SE students. Stuck in the inclusive classroom, where the SE students receives daily lessons on, how dumb they are in school.

As for the American states that has unions. The teachers’ unions have fundamentally opposed the Dyslexia Bills underway in various states. “The state’s main teachers union, the Kansas National Education Association, supports the bill but has called for some changes.
That includes removing the 90-minute requirement and the requirement that schools use multisensory phonetic methods for all dyslexic students.
Mark Desetti, a lobbyist for the KNEA, said different students have different needs.
“This should be a decision left up to the parents and school personnel,” Desetti said.”
http://cjonline.com/news/2013-02-17/advocates-administrators-divided-dyslexia-bill

Which is way too funny. In a more recent cat fight this is what parents are facing to enact legislation for dyslexic children - http://watchdog.org/137514/ms-special-needs/

The unions pretend to be on the side of the parents, until the last moment. You see, teachers’ unions can’t have the dyslexia students receiving the corrective remediation in the 3 Rs, because it would not served the best interests of the unions. After all, students with disabilities are one of the favourite backs that the educators dance on, when they get tired on dancing on the backs of the low-income students.

And the number one reason why teachers’ unions cites the global education stats because the rot is well hidden at the global level. For example in India and China, 60 % of students don’t have a hope in ever attending high school. In Canada, the low literacy and numeracy rates are at an all time high for adults, and the profiteers within the K to post-secondary are making off like bandits in the adult remediation industry. Or better yet, just go and look at the TDSB, the board that no one should copy from.

NO.BODY HAS TIME TO READ THAT NANCY.

I see Doug has just lost the debate.

Nancy declared victory on the union debate.  What does that actually accomplish?

I love my union, as do my peers.  If we ever face a real challenge from the government of the day to somehow dismantle a private institution payed for entirely by it’s membership…........  I will direct any colleague who is wavering in support of unions to this web site and to this blog.  Thank you Nancy for your purported victory in this debate.  Your tireless contributions will in perpetuity bolster teachers to understand why we need unions.

Again - thank you!