Flerpi
The sad part about you and how you view the education world is that you want to be part of something that you know nothing about. You say you are a parent and that you give money to your school and when on many occasions I asked you to give up some of your time and work in a school not in your neighborhood and not with your children. You have ignored this suggestion but insist on making comment after comment in an area where you have no experience. It seems to me that you would want to know something about what you constantly comment on with all the free time you have from the work that you do.
It would give you so much more creditability if instead of finding fault with so much that goes on here if you would take some of you time to explore a subject that you want to be expert on. Them maybe someone here would respect your thoughts and not call you a troll.
il flerpolo
Here are some numbers I was able to find for the UFT, the AFT, and the NEA. These figures don’t include the considerable sums spent by the unions’ Political Action Committees. But they give a general idea of the how things might stack up in a contest of who’s doing the most “buying off.”
UFT (2010 disclosures):
Political Activities and Lobbying: $2,621,057
Contributions, Gifts, and Grants: $777,479
Fun Fact: $800,000 in legal fees to Strook & Strook to fund the UFT’s lawsuits against the DOE.
AFT (2011 LM-2):
Political Activities and Lobbying: $31,148,624
Contributions, Gifts, and Grants: $2,816,727
Fun Fact: $493,000 paid to Randi Weingarten
NEA (2010 LM-2):
Political Activities and Lobbying: $29,712,732
Contributions, Gifts, and Grants: $91,352,936
Pogue
Those numbers ARE fascinating, but I started not paying attention to numbers so much after Bloomberg’s school data was fantastic before his third term election and incredibly dismal afterwards. It’s just hard paying attention to so much data.
Charter schools are statistically better. More students are graduating, yet need more college remedial classes. Test scores are up. Test scores are down. More students pass credit recovery classes than they do their regular classes.
Numbers are thrown around so much these days that it makes one’s head spin.
In these educationally-troubled times, I tend to pay more attention and give more credence to word-of-mouth information from people inside the schools and parents of the students in those schools, than I do from those who simply sit in front of a computer and spout all this confusing data.
P.S. How do you get some of your comment text to be a shade lighter than the rest?
il flerpolo
Pogue: These are dollar figures from the unions’ own summaries of their activities, which they report annually in a filing called an “LM-2.” They’re pretty straightfoward.
The shading is just an effect of HTML tagging (in this instance, the “block quote” tag).
Pogue
Thanks for the info, but I’d like to see the other side, regarding the privatizers pumping money into changing public education policy also. Once you do that, then we are really only looking at two sides clashing, which to me is a wash. Thus, again, I’ll state that I’ll side and pay more attention to the children, parents of the public school children, and the teachers/staff that are are a part and witness to what is really going on inside schools than I will those that judge from behind a computer.
il flerpolo
I’d like to see those numbers, too. They’d be interesting. It probably should go without saying that you’re welcome to do some research of your own. And as a reminder, I’m a parent of public school children, although I do spend a fair amount of time behind a computer. I think what you meant to say is that you’ll “side [with] and pay more attention to . . . parents” who agree with you.
Pogue
No, I didn’t mean that. But, I think what you meant to say was that you would only be researching the pro-privatization, anti-union side of the issues. Yes?
il flerpolo
1. Some posters were expressing outrage that DFER had spent $200,000 to “buy off” politicians.
2. I “assure[d]” them that that sum paled in comparison to what teachers unions routinely spent.
3. You sternly instructed: “Don’t assure, bring the facts.”
4. I brought the facts.
5. You now suggest that I’ve failed in my diligence by not performing several hours of additional research to rebut the facts I brought. I’ll do this research at some point, because I’m interested in what I’ll find. But I certainly won’t do it for you, since (as you say below) you’ve already concluded that the spending issue is “a wash” and shows only that “we are really only looking at two sides clashing.”
I’m not at all sure that the actual numbers would show “a wash.” Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t. We’ll see. Until then, I wonder what principles, if any, apply. If it’s wrong for “hedge fundies” to spend money to influence policy, is it ok for unions to do so? If it’s ok in both cases — as you say, just a matter of “two sides clashing” — then I’d hope that we could agree that it is not a legitimate argument to attack policies on the basis that their supporters spend money to promote them. I’d also hope we could agree that if a person or institution accepts funding from one of the central players in the “clash” over education policy, there is a fair inference that they are not entirely independent. At a minimum, funding sources should be disclosed.
Contrary to what you seem to assume, I’m not a rabid charter supporter. I’m not a rabid charter opponent, either. I have no personal reason to support charters (my own children go to a non-charter public school), just as I have no personal reason to care about your salary, job satisfaction, retirement, or solidarity. For the most part, I care about these things only to the extent that they overlap with my own interests and my children’s interests. Only a mindless union-basher would claim that there is no overlap. Only a union hack would claim there’s complete overlap. Parents like me have to do their own thinking.
Pogue
Problem is, this administration and other budget-cutting/middle-class destroying administrations don’t want to hear from parents, you included, nor want to hear from teachers on how to make the education, the whole education of a child, not just testing, better.
You and I are just two commenters on a blog. You a parent, me a teacher, and the way things are going in education, the current “powers that be” could care less about our thoughts and solutions.
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