Posted on 09/29/2014 7:51:09 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
There’s a big battle brewing in the Jefferson County, Colorado, school system. The manufactured controversy over a proposed curriculum review is generating national New York Times headlines. But the fight is not about what misguided students and biased reporters say it’s about. “Censorship” is a red herring. The real issue is union control.
Here’s the deal: Public school teachers in this Denver-area district walked out of their classrooms this week to protest the implementation of performance-based pay. The JeffCo school board approved the new compensation system last week, which rewards the most highly effective teachers with 4.2 percent raises, effective teachers with 2.4 raises and inferior teachers with nothing. Only 2 percent of teachers received no pay raises.
One fact the grievance-mongering teachers conveniently left out of their politicized pep talks to student sympathizers: The board gave bonuses to 450 teachers who would have otherwise received no raises under the union’s arbitrary step scale. The old system didn’t take performance into any consideration at all.
Despite the hefty rewards for teacher competence and excellence, disgruntled union leaders called for a strike last Friday (or as they prefer to whitewash it, a “sickout“). The Big Labor avengers succeeded in shutting down two schools — and enlisting students to protest with them. But the optics of robbing kids of valuable educational time to protest an $18.2 million salary compensation package did not play well with taxpayers.
Enter the “censorship” fakeout.
At the same board meeting where the new pay system was approved, elected school board members heard a proposal to form a curriculum review committee. Under the state constitution, elected local school boards are responsible for instructional and curriculum matters. It’s their duty. The proposal (read it here) called for the creation of a new, nine-member panel “to review curricular choices for conformity to JeffCo academic standards, accuracy and omissions, and to inform the board of any objectionable materials.”
The panel’s first review items would be the elementary health curriculum and the A.P. U.S. History (APUSH) curriculum, which has undergone a radical revamp over the past few years.
The chief architect of the APUSH revisions is David Coleman, a progressive ideologue who is also one of the prime movers and shakers behind the Common Core standards scheme. Objections to the shoddy, intrusive, costly, top-down, backroom-designed Common Core agenda cross party lines. Rank-and-file teachers across the country have joined a diverse anti-Common Core coalition of parents, administrators, scholars, grassroots activists, privacy advocates and anti-cronyism watchdogs.
The JeffCo school board takes its deliberative role seriously. The proposal is the opposite of censorship. The debate over history standards is part of a wider battle between left-leaning militant teachers’ unions, who explicitly see their primary role as Saul Alinsky-trained political agitators, and those who want to restore academic excellence, rigor and ideological balance in the schools.
While every liberal “-ism” has been incorporated into the school day — from environmentalism and collectivism to social justice activism to mandatory volunteerism, feminism and transgenderism — JeffCo school board members are now being mocked for simply proposing that citizenship, individualism and patriotism have a fundamental place at the schoolteacher’s table.
Somehow, this perfectly reasonable proposal morphed into “JeffCo wants to remove slavery from the history curriculum!” Next thing you know, students were walking out of class two days in a row this week with “We (Heart) Our Teachers” signs. And the liberal Denver Post was running propaganda stories on Twitter mockery of the school board.
“It upsets me greatly to see children being used as pawns and missing educational time,” school board president Ken Witt told me. And “we’re not just going to rubber-stamp” the top-down APUSH changes, he says. But the bigger picture, Witt points out, is that the district’s “union contract expires in August. It will be entirely redrafted.” The agitators’ ultimate goal is “to create turmoil and discredit board before those negotiations.”
And they are trying to do so by any means necessary — including misleading kids, spreading falsehoods in the classroom and instigating walkouts through student-managed organizing websites.
The parting words of former top National Education Association lawyer Bob Chanin a few years ago in explaining the union’s main agenda say it all. After calling conservative opponents “bastards,” he said:
“This is not to say that the concern of NEA and its affiliates with closing achievement gaps, reducing dropout rates, improving teacher quality and the like are unimportant or inappropriate. To the contrary — these are the goals that guide the work we do. But they need not and must not be achieved at the expense of due process, employee rights and collective bargaining. That simply is too high a price to pay.”
Listen up, class. For public employee union leaders, it’s not really about the children or academic excellence or curricular freedom. It’s about their own political self-preservation. Always.
I’d give them an ‘F’ and a ‘U’.....................
Where the heck are the parents. All in favor of this? Teachers walk out - lose their jobs. Plain and simple. Bar the doors and don't let them back in.
Let's let Gov. Walker of Wisconsin go out and address this issue like we did here in Wisconsin! Love my Gov.
I’d take a page out Reagan’s playbook, and give them pink slips.
my governor is McAuliffe. Wanta trade?
I wonder if the kids got extra credit for taking a few days off?
There's more to it than that.
Three conservatives got elected to the school board, which gave them control.
The Superintendent was forced out. Then the conservatives hired a lawyer even tho the district already has a lawyer but the conservatives said they needed their own lawyer. They didn't shop for the second lawyer, they just hired the one of their choice.
Then they hired a new super, but they didn't go thru any interviewing process.
So the parents and taxpayers were complaining about the money and the hiring process.
Then Julie Williams, who is the leader of the conservatives, announced that the history curriculum would be rewritten. That's when the teachers went out followed by the students. Then the College Board came out against the changes.
Apparently Julie Williams is not backing down so this conflict will continue.
This is not unique to this school district, it is going on all over. Every year they have this big battle on the Texas State School board about science, history, social studies, etc.
NO deal on that trade, by the way. The thug unions are trying to defeat Walker by backing Mary Burke - the plagiarist in chief.
verrrrryyyyy interesting. So there ARE good folks on the ground floor doing things. Thanks very much for these details.
On a side note, with all the changes being demanded on team names..... Mr. WWWF came up with changing Denver Broncos to Colorado Weeds. bwaaa.
ok, must insert some humor to keep my sanity.
Somehow it is never called “censorship” when they ban Christian kids from praying and stuff
Under that system, an administrator who doesn’t like a particular teacher’s politics, or looks, or gender, or anything could just load the target’s classes with underperforming students.
I forgot to reference this comment to the earlier statement:
The JeffCo school board approved the new compensation system last week, which rewards the most highly effective teachers with 4.2 percent raises, effective teachers with 2.4 raises and inferior teachers with nothing. Only 2 percent of teachers received no pay raises.
What makes this worse is the fact that this same rebuilding of the schools is going on just south of the district.
Douglas County CO has elected conservatives to the school board, the teachers tossed out the union, the Board instituted a performance based teacher salary system which has, through voluntary transfers and quits, eliminated all but ONE ineffective teacher.
The lousy teachers in Jefferson County have very good reason to be scared.
I will put this on the Rush thread, because El Rushbo needs to do a follow-up on this story.
I don’t subscribe to his website anymore, but if anyone else does, could you link Ms Malkins story to him?
Thank-you.
Well, well. Even MORE interesting. The bad teachers have been protected way too long, IMHO.
Here in Wisconsin where there is that on-going John Doe fake and fraudulent investigation into Gov. Scott Walker’s “irregularities” there is a tidbit of union thug info into that as well. The Milwaukee DA leading this disgusting abuse of his office has a wife - wait for this - who is a big union leader and/teacher! She has been “brought to tears” due to teachers losing all their rights. boo hoo. and THAT fact that the DA’s WIFE is a teacher AND a union leader is why he is on a personal revenge mode to “get” Walker. More than 2 years and they haven’t found anything to nail him with. Sick, just sick. Liberalism IS a disease.
ping
Colorado Ping ( Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from the list.)
Thanks for the ping.
Being that I’m stuck at work all day, would some Colorado FReeper please try to post this Malkin story onto the Denver local news site Facebook pages? I would, but will be underground until after sundown when I finish posting this here, and will get no signal on my phone.
Thank you.
yah me too red badger. break the unions and send them home sniveling like gov. walker did.
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