Larry Ferlazzo, someone I generally enjoy reading, made me wince with a blog entry attacking the parent-petition mechanism for charter conversions.
Using this methodology, a group (generally one that has recently received a large amount of grant money to work in low-income neighborhoods) hires plenty of staff and throws “time” at a community. Often, the group has few connections, if any, to the community that is chosen. By going door-to-door, talking to and visiting with people often enough, the staff can provide the glue to bring individuals together for a short time to get something accomplished on a single issue (and get headlines for the organization).
That's close to the "they're professional organizers pressuring workers" argument against card-check and the Employee Free Choice Act. Don't let 51% of workers' signatures on pledge cards be the mechanism for union recognition, goes the argument, because that makes workers vulnerable to pressure from union organizers, and it's not truly democratic.
This point goes both ways: Well-heeled funders of charter-conversion efforts are being hypocritical if they simultaneously talk about the virtues of petition-based legal mechanisms and then fight card-check for union organizing.
Me? A petition-based trigger for some change in schools is absolutely appropriate, and I'm strongly in favor of card-check. Charter schools are the type of workplace where card check would be extremely valuable to organizers. A U.S. with more charter schools, the vast majority of which are unionized, and a country with card check for all workers is better than a world with no charters and sub-10% union membership in the private labor force.
Sherman,
I always appreciate a good critique because it pushes my thinking, as your posts often do.
I, too, support card check for labor organizing. There are some very important differences, though, between a union organizing workers in a private company and billionaires funding an effort to privatize a public institution.
One, the reasoning behind the card check is the legitimate concern and fear, shown in thousands of instances over the years, that companies will intimidate workers who are organizing and fire them and often blacklist them so they cannot find similar work elsewhere. Yes, there have been as yet unproved charges that one teacher at the Compton school made one critical comment to one student about his parent’s role in the petition drive. But does anyone seriously think that if teachers disagree with something a parent is doing that they are going to take it out on their student? Or let it affect how they interact with that child’s parent on student-related issues? If, in the extraordinarily rare instance that happens, it is hard to imagine that there would not be swift and serious consequences for the guilty teacher. The child will certainly not be expelled from school and blacklisted from entering others.
Two, unions are funded by member dues and are built and sustained over the long term by them, as are local religious congregations, block clubs and ethnic organizations (groups, by the way, whom are often very supportive of union organizing efforts). That is not the case in billionaire groups that parachute into local communities to start charters who then will then transfer staff to go start new charters elsewhere.
Three, just the argument that a parent trigger petition drive is related to the card check issue can buy-into the dangerous belief that schools are like businesses and should be treated as such. Public schools are not businesses, public schools should not be run like businesses, and public schools should not be characterized through the lens of business practices. Going down this kind of road can lead to many other unfortunate comparisons such as schools needing to make more decisions in the name of “efficiency,” as do businesses (see http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2010/07/11/should-efficiency-really-be-the-driving-force-in-hospitals-and-schools/) or that it’s okay for schools — as many charters do already — to discourage students they do not want to serve from attending (http://mizmercer.edublogs.org/2010/08/31/the-business-of-education/) ;
Petition drives organized by charter groups that divide parents from teachers and parents from other parents are not the way to improve our schools. Encouraging schools and parents to emphasize home visits, schools working with families on community problems affecting both them and the school, and face-to-face cooperation are some of the better ways to make that improvement happen.
Larry Ferlazzo