On Oct. 13, Baltimore’s teachers voted down overwhelmingly a proposed new contract for the city’s public school system, dealing a major blow to proponents of school “reform” measures that serve as little more than tactics to bust unions and privatize the U.S. public school system.
 Public school teachers are under attack |
The proposed new contract would have drastically changed the way the 6,500 public school teachers in Baltimore are evaluated and paid. District administration wanted to do away with the system of salary step increases, which rewards teachers for their length of service and educational qualifications.
This is a system that was won by educators around the country after decades of collective struggle to gain fair wages for their profession. The rejected contract instead proposed to tie teachers’ salaries and job security to student performance. This concept may sound noble but is actually a no-win situation for public school teachers, especially those in low-income areas, who are constantly impacted by shrinking budgets, larger class sizes, and many other societal factors that affect students and over which the teachers have no control. The contract contained very vague language about what was meant by “student performance” and gave no details about any criteria to be used to actually evaluate a teacher’s classroom effectiveness.
The contract mimics one recently passed by the nearby Washington, D.C., school system, which promised high salaries, over $100,000 for some teachers, but also eliminated the system of tenure and job security. Former District School Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who pushed this system, is notoriously anti-union and fired several hundred experienced teachers, replacing them with new, inexperienced teachers working at entry-level pay.
There has been a wave of attacks against public schools recently in the corporate media, including the new film “Waiting for Superman,” which blames teachers’ unions for the problems in schools. These attacks are presented as well-meaning attempts to “reform” public schools and provide quality education to children, but are actually meant to demonize and weaken unions, the only voice the working class has to fight for fair pay and decent working conditions, and to expedite privatization through the charter school system.
Reformers are right to claim that the public schools are failing children but wrong to blame teachers and unions, who constantly fight for real progress in the classrooms. Public schools and public school teachers and other school staff deserve full funding and full support. Money for schools, not war and bank bailouts!
