Real School Reform

I promised to offer alternatives to CTA’s historic pattern of defeatism and accommodation (discussed in the previous post).  So today I’ll list a few fairly general things I think CTA and its parent organization, the National Education Association (NEA), should do to pull out of this long downward spiral of political retreat and increasing weakness. [...]

California’s Democratic legislature and Republican governor have just agreed to a budget dealing new, devastating blows to poor and working people and another gift to corporations and the rich.  It delivers $9 billion in cuts to kindergarten-through-university public education, and eliminates billions more in services to the families of low-income students. All proposals to mitigate [...]

My posts on the National Education Association’s 2009 Representative Assembly have focused so far on a new business item I introduced calling for a national strike for full funding a corporate expense. I should note, though, that aside from the brief time it took to squash that motion, a few other things happened during the [...]

I’m as willing to compromise as the next “wild-eyed” radical.  (”Wild-eyed” is what anti-teachers union blogger Mike Antonucci called several motions Oakland delegates brought to this year’s NEA Representative Assembly in San Diego.)
So after the California delegation voted on July 3 to oppose my proposal for a two-day nationwide strike for fully funded public schools I considered [...]

As last reported, the idea of a nationwide teachers walkout for full school funding at corporate expense was greeted by passionate cheers on July 2. That was at an NEA forum attended by several hundred delegates just one day before the organization’s four-day Representative Assembly opened in San Diego. And it was after the famous, [...]

Getting fifty signatures to qualify New Business Item 11 for a vote by the NEA Representative Assembly was slow going at first. (The text of NBI 11, calling for a  48-hour nationwide strike  for full funding of public education at corporate expense, is in the previous post.)
When I passed the form for the NBI down [...]

We’re about to begin the third day of the NEA’s Representative Assembly(RA) And meetings for each of the state caucuses began earlier on July 1, so it’s a little late to be putting up Post #1.  I’ve been very busy getting support for a motion —   here called a New Business Item — qualified [...]

While Real School Reform will take a broad, national view, it will do so with a distinctly local perspective. “Local” means Oakland, California, where I’ve taught high school social studies since 1990 and have been a union activist for most of that time.
So shortly I’ll begin posting as a delegate from the National Education Association’s [...]