Budget Cuts to Kick in as NCLB Sanctions Trigger

[Rich Gibson <rgibson@pipeline.com>]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-schools21feb21,0,3850513.story

As the impact of the empire's wars comes home in the form of $100 a 
barrel gas, stagflation, and a massive debt crisis,  and school 
cutbacks, the sanctions set up by NCLB will ratchet up the 
consequences for school workers, kids, and communities. While it is 
common for politicians to hype coming school cutbacks in order to set 
the stage for regressive taxes (as those supported now by the 
California AFT), it is reasonable to foresee the collision of booming 
class size (and the absence of books, supplies, aides, etc) and the 
NCLB's preposterous demands for rising test scores.

It is surely possible that government will turn a blind eye to the 
NCLB sanctions, or a selective eye, when it becomes clear that far 
too many schools are under the gun, including schools in wealthier 
areas, but it is equally possible that teachers will be targeted for 
layoff based on kids' test scores, simply by closing schools and 
churning the work force. And, we know in New York City, the AFT 
already agreed to pay-for-test-scores plans.

The upshot of that over time will be a more divided, and less 
powerful, work force. Teachers in rich areas will do ok, teachers in 
poor areas will not. And, as the AFT and NEA both refuse to recognize 
that an injury to one only goes before and injury to all, school and 
government bosses will simply slice away until teacher health 
benefits are evaporated.

What can be done? Well, surely it is now easy to see a connection 
between imperialist war and the blowback on the empire's workers, 
including its school workers who, for the most part, sold their 
consciences to NCLB and collaborated actively with the child abuse that it is.

And it is equally easy to see the role that the union leadership 
played in supporting the wars, and the NCLB. Perhaps now, as the 
effects of war and the regimentation of knowledge hit people's 
pocketbooks, action will be more possible.

However, no one can suggest that the union leadership, mired in the 
racism, hierarchy, and opportunism that structures the unions, is 
going to play a progressive role. The best thing the union leaders 
could do would be to initiate targeted, rolling, strikes during test 
season, and set up freedom schools to serve the kids who could 
actually learn something important in a freedom school. That, of 
course, will not happen. The unions could demand that no 
administrator's salary exceed, say, the top teacher pay---and demand 
cuts accordingly. But they will not do that. Nor will the unions 
adopt a plan that their early founder, Dorothy Healy, described as 
"tax the rich, tax inheritance, tax profits." Late in life Healy said 
she did all she could but did not take class war seriously enough. 
Almost a hundred years later, we should learn from her.

One thing that can be done is to simply nullify the test scores by 
boycotting, opting out of the tests. Calcare is calling for those opt 
outs which are hardly premature, but long overdue. One thing people 
can do to build awareness is to go to school board meetings, in 
groups, and speak openly in support of the legal and reasonable right 
to opt kids out of these tests. Walk away. As in the military, nearly 
nothing is being done to awols.

all the best,

r