The annual teacher union protest/campaign/disruption – whatever – happens as regular as clockwork around Springtime in BC (Canada). As one local teacher union newsletter puts it:
“As the weather slowly changes, and plants start poking their green leaves up above the dirt, it is time for us to also shake off winter…it’s campaign season again…”
For the last decade the “excuse” — one could say “manufactured excuse” — has been opposition to standardized testing called Foundation Skills Assessment. Read below my essay published in a local education blog in Dec/09.
I expect to shortly amplify this essay by trying to select just 12 reasons our provincial teacher union, the BCTF (Teachers Federation), needs to produce an annual campaign.
Foreshadowing the Next BCTF School Wars Surge
(by Tunya Audain, 091202, comment on Report Card blog by Vancouver Sun education reporter, Janet
Steffenhagen, story: “Christy Clark and the FSA: No propaganda mule” 091201)
Since the 70’s you can count on at least one yearly public onslaught from the teacher unions. Save our Schools,
Class Size, Needs Budgets, Education Audit, etc., etc.
As a PITA (Provincial. Intermediate Teachers Assoc) http://www.pita.ca/newsletters/March09c.pdf
Spring newsletter puts it so quaintly, “As the weather slowly changes, and plants start poking their green leaves
up above the dirt, it is time for us to also shake off winter…it’s campaign season again…”. The newsletter
continues: “The executive has spent in excess of 8 million dollars in the last 5 years…what do you think?
– What do you think about the BCTF campaigns?
– Do you support their tone and think they are effective?
– Should we spend more on campaigns?
– Should we continue them?
– Do you feel that they have their place?”
It doesn’t seem to matter what the campaign must be, as long as it’s provocative and inflammatory. It doesn’t
matter if it’s NDP, Socreds or Liberals in government – campaigns rule!
For the last ten years the rallying cry has been Drop the FSA’s.
The Nov 26 Christy Clark interview with Susan Lambert, vice president BCTF is here:
http://www.christyclark.ca/ (the 1-2pm slot) It’s nothing new. It’s the same arguments against the Foundation
Skills Tests we’ve heard for the last few years: teachers wasting time teaching to the test, considerable harm
done by the Fraser Institute rankings, narrows the curriculum, etc., etc., etc. Parents should exercise their
parental choice and excuse their children from the tests…
But we know, for example, that students who are homeschooled or in independent schools are not spending
undue time on FSA preparation. The sample questions are easy to rehearse, and the functions being tested are
simply THE THREE R’S that are the FOUNDATION students need at the Grade 4 and 7 levels.
If those pesky FSA’s were wiped off the face of the earth today, the BCTF campaigns would continue. Those
100’s of BCTF staff members at $80,000 salaries have to be kept busy. The union locals across BC have to be
galvanized and kept primed – for the current campaign or anything else down the line. It’s the readiness to
spring into action, the testing of new technologies for mobilization, stretching the loyalties of members, the
razzmatazz of campaigns that counts.
With a decline in public confidence in public education and with more parents increasingly supplementing
schooling with tutoring (from 25% in 2005 to 33% in 2007) the system needs to whip up the profile of teachers
in the community. However, the attempts to capture parents and trustees sometimes do more to alienate than
recruit them.
Janet’s story mentions that the lawsuit launched by the BCTF was against Google for hosting a blog which
ridiculed then President Sims. Janet also reports that while the lawsuit (20 pg Statement of Claim) seems to
have disappeared Big Bird and the FSA’s have not.
But the scary part of Christy Clark’s story of 2006 is her reporting – and don’t forget that she was also a
Minister of Education at one time — on the BCTF penchant for trigger-happy litigation. It is frequently
showing its thin skin and highlighting lawyers-as-decision-makers.
Coming back to the Christy Clark show I did look up the 2006 cartoon and issues of the day
http://www.christyclark.ca/2006/10/29/teachers-union-should-learn-how-to-get-along-with-its-
neighbours/#more-15
Christy says in her piece of 2006: “BCTF seems to have forgotten how to settle anything except through
litigation. And this case demonstrates that no disagreement is too small to find its way into its lawyers’
hands….(this) has had a terrible impact on schools. Parents looking for common-sense solutions to classroom
issues can’t get them when complaints routinely get sent to the courts or arbitration…fodder for lawyers.”
On an earlier (Report Card) story we discussed the high costs school boards squander on legal services on the
people’s dollar. Well, the BCTF legal expenses are on the teachers’ dollar ($1500 a year in union fees?) and
indirectly off the people’s dollar as it’s the government (taxpayer) who foots the bill for public school teachers’
pay.
As one poster commented: Teachers in BC ARE involved with the 3R’s, — reading, writing, and writmetic!