Vergara Decision: Key to Destroying Teachers Unions and In Time All Unions

EDUCATION-On Tuesday, Judge Rolf Treu, the sole person to decide the fate of LAUSD teachers, and by extension, teachers throughout California and possibly the nation, proffered his opinion in favor of the plaintiffs in this ostensible "civil rights" case brought by 9 plaintiffs, LA school children, who claim that their inner city teachers were ineffectual at teaching, which deprived them of an equal education to more affluent areas. 

With this contrived and illogical decision by Treu which eliminates the current tenure practice and ends seniority protection in firing (giving Supt. Deasy free reign to fire older teachers to cut his budget costs), litigation is sure to proliferate across the country as the profiteering billionaires like Eli Broad have now found the key to destroying teachers' unions ... and in time, all unions.  This is their real goal.    

The litany of the Broad Academy (which has now trained thousands of Superintendents and administrators who are running districts all over the US) is to close schools "rapidly" and replace them with charters, even those run by foreign political agitators like the Gulen Movement which is run by the Turkish Imam who uses American taxpayer money gleaned from his student tuition's at this 143 American schools, to promote Sharia law and foment Turkish revolution. 

The Silicon Valley tech giant, David Welch, in league with other billionaire charter school owners who view public and universal free education as potential vast business for the free market, rounded up the plaintiffs to file the Vergara lawsuit.  

Eli Broad's mandated job choice who was trained at the Broad Academy in 1996 to be an education CEO and was hired without any other search, LAUSD Superintendent Deasy, who also worked for Gates, was a prime advisor to the legal team and he was a witness for the plaintiffs against his own district. 

Other plaintiff witnesses included Raj Chetty from Harvard, a known supporter of charter schools, who continued the litany of painting teachers, generically, as being ineffective and he manufactured statistics to support his theory of time and income loss to students who have "bad" teachers.  The judge relied mainly on the testimony of these men in asserting his decision. 

The well respected leader of the Chicago Teacher's Union, Karen Lewis, stated that tenure equals due process, and that no teacher should or could be fired without a fair hearing.  She sees the "propaganda machine" to kill tenure as the stepping stone to killing off teachers' unions through professional marketing tricks.  She adds that tenure is vital to fight discrimination, particularly of teachers of color.  

It is apparent that the charter school push has created so much re-segregation of students in ways that led to the 1954 ruling of Brown vs. Board of Education,  a conglomerate of 5 cases leading to true civil rights for children of color.  Lewis states that teachers are the primary advocates for children and should be treated with respect. 

This show of force at the big win for the 1/2 of 1%  but not for children, including Eli Broad, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, the Waltons, Anschutz, Kochs, Bloomberg, and their cohorts, is meant to rub the noses of teachers and public schools in their particular brand of defecation. 

These are the people who have worked assiduously over the past decade to frame all teachers as inept and lazy, and have painted a picture in the minds of Americans that 'teachers are villains' who are destroying students and the country.  

Their long range plan of destroying public schools is now obvious to many who are following the money.  It all leads back to the insiders of this Wall Street brigade, the billionaires and hedge fund managers who wield so much power in government and who now blatantly say public education is the next great investment opportunity.  

Rupert Murdoch published this opinion in the NY Times as an op-ed, and Broad with his sidekick Richard Riordan, have access to the LA Times to promote themselves as the greatest of philanthropists while also promoting their charter schools as an op-ed. It is big business. 

Hedge fund plutocrat Tilson, and others, are teaching classes for their clients on how to invest in public education, and all promote the untested Common Core paid for mainly by Gates and with open ended contracts to the British firm Pearson, as the only valid teaching method in our new education world. 

President Obama and his education henchman Arne Duncan imposed this system with no longitudinal testing, as the new law of the land.  Watch the money as it flows into the pockets of these new age robber barons. 

They are doing this brain washing by financing slanted message movies such as Waiting for Superman, and by promoting non-professionally trained 'educators' such as Broad's protege (who has become a millionaire as leader of Students First)  Michelle Rhee as the "voice of education" (and her husband plans to be Governor of California),  and Wendy Kopp's 5 week wonders from Teach for America as the leading voices of education.  

Concurrently, they revile the insights of legitimate and lifetime honored educators with bone fides from the best university education departments such as Diane Ravitch who trained at Columbia and is a professor at NYU, and Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford. 

Now there is another huge, teacher-bashing, ad in USA Today paid for by the shady PR man, Rick Berman, who touts for some of the same billionaires who promoted and paid the bill for the most powerful legal representation in the nation, with Ted Olson as the lead attorney in this Vergara case.  

Berman fronts for Center for Union Facts, one of many groups he organized, to destroy the union movement in America.  This is the same infamous man who lobbied against the Americans With Disabilities Act, and who earns his millions by shilling for the power brokers, billionaires, and corporations.  His 60 Minutes interview was eye opening. 

The Vergara case is related to so much more than just a few claims of ineffective teachers in inner cities, and many public policy analysts feel that it is part of the ALEC agenda to privatize all education and to finally and forever get rid of unions.  

It is a major case that will probably travel up the court system to be decided by the Supreme Court, and could be a forerunner of the death of free universal American public schools, and the union movement, which many see as the two wedded systems that built a strong American Middle Class.

 

(Ellen Lubic is Director of Joining Forces for Education. She is an educator and a policy maker and can be reached at: [email protected]) 

-cw

 

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 12 Issue 48

Pub: June 12, 2014