In case you haven’t been following the saga of the horrific squelching of teacher voice happening today in CA at the New Schools Summit, you can catch up below. Now AFTie One-L basically says that individual teachers can’t really claim to have voice, only their elected leaders? Do they tell this to the membership in the recruiting pitch?
No one can claim to speak for all teachers nor can a teachers’ union leader claim to speak for all teachers’ union leaders (or if they do then the AFTies have some splain’ to do) or even all their own members in many cases. But don’t individuals, especially someone with Brad Jupp’s background as a teachers’ union person, have some standing? And would there be this much complaining if Jupp’s presentation was about, for instance, how awful charter schools are? I think he’d probably have teacher voice then! Onward brother Jupp!
Besides, considering how often the teachers’ unions hold up the views of individual teachers as being representative of the profession overall (and often as a trump card in policy debates), this new posture is truly absurd. Also, I don’t get her apparent contention that foundations investing in public health let their grantees do whatever they want with the money…(we think leeching works…sure! Here’s $500K) I’m sure the AFT doesn’t give grants without some conditions…that’s par for the course. But this is irrelevant to the larger issue here which is that suddenly the new standard is apparently that only teachers’ union leaders can have genuine teacher voice…great news for America’s teachers…
But, while you’re at the AFTies place, check out this post where they bust the Bushies for being in bed with the Scientologists (not that there is anything wrong with it, I don’t want to get sued! I’m all for photons or whatever it is they garner).