Teacher Shortages Should Be No Surprise

Tony Lux at NWI.com:

It is amazing to read about the blue ribbon committees being formed at the Statehouse to determine why there is a teacher shortage. The feigned ignorance and surprise of legislators is incredibly hypocritical.

Blame for the teacher shortage should be placed clearly at the feet of government officials in this state and across the nation who have scapegoated, demeaned and devalued the teaching profession.

...

If schools were failing, then teachers were ineffective. Teachers were not only ineffective, but overpaid as well.

The solutions were multi-faceted. Plans were formulated to evaluate teachers more stringently to get rid of the bad ones. The witch hunt to rid schools of weak teachers cast a pall over the credibility of the teaching profession. Teachers were seen as not just the most important variable, but the only variable that affected student learning. Any reference to the effects of poverty on student learning were dismissed out of hand as an effort to avoid accountability.

What followed was a legislative snowball racing downhill. An oversimplified, flawed system for grading schools on an A-F scale was created. School grades continue to be required despite major flaws in state assessments. State standards were raised to be the highest in the land, resulting in increased hours of testing time and diminishing teaching time. Laws dictated more stringent teacher evaluations tied to school grades and test scores. Laws dictated limiting salary increases so teaching experience and advanced degrees were devalued. New teacher and administrative licensing standards implied that anyone with a degree could be a teacher or administrator, even without training. Charter schools, unfettered by union agreements, were heralded as schools that could do better by hiring teachers at low salaries and cheap benefits.

Complexity index funding targeting the most disadvantaged underachievers was reduced and redirected. The effects of tax caps crippled property tax collections for many school systems, forcing them to use general fund dollars to pay debt rather than staff.

Educators are so demoralized they do not encourage their own children to follow in their footsteps, much less other students.

Today, with decreased funding for public schools, teachers cannot enter the profession with any kind of guarantee that in five to 10 years they will be earning very much more than they are now. 

Still surprised there is a teacher shortage? Really?

New York State hasn't experienced the same teacher shortages that states like Indiana and Nevada have, but the problem will get here too because there's an awful lot of teacher/bashing/scapegoating going on here that makes education a very unsavory career choice for college students of today.

For now, we have a "shortage" of "great" teachers willing to work in schools deemed "struggling" by the state and set to be handed off into receivership.

Indeed, NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia just decried this shortage and called for teachers with "heart" to come work in "struggling" schools.

Here are some Perdido Street School blog readers on the insanity of that:

This false wish for "great teachers" and "teachers who can rise to the challenges inside struggling urban schools" is just another Deform mantra. It is meant to shame teachers who are ALREADY "great" and who HAVE risen to challenges inside struggling urban schools. The dearth of teachers has been deliberately created by Deformers. They have shamed, demoralized and marginalized urban teachers. But they have done this for a very specific purpose. They want TFA's, alternate cetificates, and a general de-professionalization of teaching. So not be fooled by what they "say" they want. Look instead at what they are doing in urban districts. In Buffalo, teachers have recently been referred to as "dregs" and "the lowest form of human capital" by our superintendent/receiver. It doesn't get any clearer than that.

And:

"We're in the process now if looking for teachers who really have that heart ......" What? Are you @#$%ing crazy? If you gave me a 20K bonus to work in one of those receivership schools, I wouldn't take it. Why? Here's why. If you take it, your MOSL SCORES will be SHIT. In NYC where I teach, that's currently 40% or 40 points out of 100. Last school year I received a 17 and an 18 out of 20 for each piece. Obviously that's a total of 35 out of 40 which is very good. These shit schools that teachers with "heart" should go to are pulling 7's and 8's. That's around 15 out of 40. If you score below 65 total, which is very possible at one of these shit schools, you will be labeled "ineffective". You can be the BEST teacher in the world BUT if your at Lehman HS or Clinton HS or Any other, you literally have no chance. If you get 2 ineffectives in a row, a 3020-a process can easily remove you. You will be terminated. Your family, house, future, all destroyed because you were supposed to have "heart". What a @#$%ing JOKE. I HOPE SHE READS THIS IR SOMEONE GETS HER MY MESSAGE. The goal, find a small school to jump into and do your job, get your MOSL scores that these schools produce. If they really want teachers to work at "these" schools, they must eliminate the evaluation procedure because it's not reflective of the truth. Then again, I'm a Physical Education teacher at a really nice small school in the Bronx. My MOSL is based off ELA, nothing to do with me. This is also ridiculous because any schmuck in Bronx Science teaching Gym is riding the data wave. All BULLSHIT.

Indeed, it is all bullshit - teachers know it, the kids they teach know it and this is why, as we move forward into the future, fewer and fewer of those kids will look to follow in the footsteps of their teachers.

And why should they?

The system is rigged against teachers, the media and the political class take daily potshots at teachers, educators have been blamed for everything from the high rate of poverty and inequity in this country to the near economic collapse of the system in 2007/2008 and, as Tony Lux said in his NWI.com piece, the politicians and educrats have worked overtime to strip teachers of economic incentives (i.e., raises) based upon anything other than test scores and so-called objective "data" that really only measures how well a teacher's students' families are.

Add in the stripping of work protections from teachers, the imposition of the EngageNY teaching scripts onto educators and the increased linkage of test scores to teacher evaluations (now up to 50% in New York thanks to our "Student Lobbyist Governor") and you'd have to say any kid who thinks about going into teaching now ought to have his/her head examined.

They Can Keep Teacher Appreciation Week

From Answer Sheet:

Tuesday is National Teacher Day, part of Teacher Appreciation Week, which has taken on special resonance in recent years as many teachers feel increasingly dishonored by policymakers who have put them at the center of controversial reforms.

So what do teachers get during this commemoration? Some companies offer discounts to teachers for various items, and messages of thanks and appreciation to teachers — including from some of the very policymakers who have upset teachers — are posted on social media.

Dunno about you, but I could do without the platitudes and lip service we get during Teacher Appreciatino Week from the very same policymakers and politicians who spend the rest of the year teacher-bashing.

Thoughts?

Do you like the 20% off coupons we get during Teacher Appreciation Week or could you too live without Teacher Appreciation Week?

NY Post Calls For Cuomo To Override Union Contracts In School Districts

Adam Brodksy at the NY Post has some advice for Governor Cuomo - become more like Scott Walker:

This year, Cuomo’s even pushing reforms the union hates: a tougher teacher-evaluation regime, raising the charter-school cap, taking over failing schools. If his agenda passes, opportunities for kids will likely improve.

Yet even this won’t transform education in New York — or give Cuomo a real legacy.

Remember, in districts like the city’s, it isn’t just a few schools failing. It’s most of them.
Cuomo needs a bolder approach. He’ll need to find a way to bypass the union — or limit its power, perhaps in much the way governors like Bruce Rauner of Illinois and Scott Walker of Wisconsin are dealing with unions in their states.

Yes, Cuomo’s a Democrat, and those two are Republicans. No one expects him to “break” a union, end collective bargaining or shutter schools en masse.

But to see big gains, Cuomo will have to move in that direction. Along with bumping the charter cap, how about creating an environment that lures charter operators?

Overriding contracts with legislation? OKing alternatives — vouchers, private-school tax credits, traditional schools with all-new work rules and management — that foster competition among schools?

Cuomo may think this is too much for bluer-than-blue New York. But if he hopes to make himself viable nationally, he has to prove he can lead his base — not just appease it.

Actually Cuomo is pushing for "failing" schools and even "failing" school districts to be taken over by the state and put into receivership where the teachers contracts can be broken and whole swaths of teachers fired.

Cuomo's also pushing for vouchers for private schools via an education tax credit, an increase to the charter cap, and more accountability measures for pubic schools (but not for charter schools.)

Alas, those privatization Cuomo policies aren't enough Scott Walker for the NY Post - they want even more.

Well, they just need to wait a year or two - I'm sure Cuomo will give it them.

Every year he grows more anti-union and anti-pubic school.

Give him a couple more years and he'll complete his transformation into Scott Walker.

In fact, he's more than half way there now.

Cuomo Attacks Teachers Again On Thursday

And so, the assault don't end from Governor Cuomo:

ALBANY — A passionate Gov. Cuomo upped his war with the teacher unions on Thursday, charging that they represent themselves — not the students.

During an appearance before the Daily News Editorial Board, Cuomo said the only way change will come to a broken education system is if the public is better informed.

“If (the public) understood what was happening with education to their children, there would be an outrage in this city,” Cuomo said. “I’m telling you, they would take City Hall down brick by brick.
“It’s only because it’s complicated that people don’t get it.”

Cuomo referred to the teacher unions and the entrenched education establishment as an “industry” that is more interested in protecting the rights of its members than improving the system for the kids it is supposed to be serving.

“Somewhere along the way, I believe we flipped the purpose of this,” Cuomo said. “This was never a teacher employment program and this was never an industry to hire superintendents and teachers.

“This was a program to educate kids.”

And then comes this:

He said he openly disagreed with a teacher union member who said he represents the students.

“No, you don’t,” Cuomo said he told the person. “You represent the teachers. Teacher salaries, teacher pensions, teacher tenure, teacher vacation rights. I respect that. But don’t say you represent the students.”

OK, I got it:

Cuomo - the guy on the hedge fundie, charter school supporter payroll - represents students.

The Cuomo assault on teachers continues unabated, though Cuomo says he doesn't hate teachers:

“I respect teachers,” he said. “My mother was a teacher . . . I want to treat them with more respect than they have now, but it has to be on the performance and the merits.”

Let's see, he spends his days calling teachers selfish, self-interested incompetents and sex criminals and he wants to re-do the profession to make it into an at-will job based on student test scores, but he "respects" teachers.

Uh, huh.

That's the kind of "respect" I can do without.

If he gets his way, people in New York will see this in the end.

We're already seeing fewer young people go into teaching the last few years as the War on Teachers has ratcheted up.

Can't imagine the "respect" Cuomo wants to give us in the form of tenure, evaluation and 3020a reforms is going to change that.

Governor Cuomo Expected To Have "Harsh Words" For Teachers, Schools In Budget Speech Today

From Ken Lovett at the Daily News:

The governor in his combined State of the State/budget address is expected to have harsh words for the public education establishment, which he has argued is only interested in maintaining the status quo.

Public education establishment?

That means teachers, administrators and schools.

We must not let him use euphemisms here when what he means to do is attack teachers, administrators and schools.

Campbell Brown Anti-Tenure Lawyer Uses Obsolete Data To Argue Tenure Must Be Abolished

From the WSJ:

Tenure laws are “not a gift to teachers,” Richard Casagrande, a lawyer for New York State United Teachers, told the court. “These laws empower teachers to teach well.”

...

Jay Lefkowitz, representing nine families organized by Partnership for Educational Justice, said granting tenure after three probationary years was like a “rubber stamp” because so few were denied it, and three years was too short a time to tell who deserved the benefit.

He cited a study finding that from 2004 to 2008, legal proceedings to dismiss an ineffective teacher spanned an average of 830 days and cost an average of $313,000.

“Our statutes create a Rube Goldberg-esque system” where it’s nearly impossible to fire a teacher, he said.

Mr. Casagrande said that data was obsolete because the state revised its laws for evaluating teachers in 2012, and created an expedited process for hearing incompetency cases.

With the changes made to the teacher evaluation law and the expedited process for hearings put into place in 2012, it's difficult to see how the anti-tenure forces win a court case on tenure here.

If Cuomo and Tisch get some of the "reforms" they want on teacher evaluations and (including automatically pulling teachers with two consecutive "ineffective" ratings out of the classroom and an expedited incompetency firing process as a result of two consecutive "ineffective" ratings), it further undermines the anti-tenure court case.

And then there's this:

Lawyers for the city and state asked the justice to dismiss the case, saying it was up to the Legislature to revise tenure laws, the plaintiffs had shown no direct injuries caused by bad teachers, and plaintiffs hadn’t described any remedies.

Further, Janice Birnbaum, a lawyer for New York City, said the plaintiffs hadn’t been joined by representatives of all of the nearly 700 districts statewide that would be affected by a change in tenure laws.

I'm not a lawyer, but from the perspective of a layman looking at the case, it seems a little messy on the anti-tenure side.

Open Letter To Randi Weingarten About Andrew Cuomo And New York's Teacher Evaluation System

Dear AFT President Randi Weingarten,

I wanted to write you an open letter asking what you intend to do now that Governor Andrew Cuomo has signaled that he is not happy with the teacher evaluation results in New York City and will look to impose a much more punitive system that rates more teachers "ineffective."

One thing the governor says is right - there is a huge problem with the way the current evaluation system is constituted.

The changes we have seen as a result of the current system have been numerous - 4-6 annual classroom observations (known colloquially by teachers as "Danielson drive-bys"), ratings tied to student test scores, the use of the Danielson rubric to "assess" so-called "effective" teaching so that every teacher must teach in a standardized way or risk a low rating.

This evaluation system that Cuomo helped put into place here in NYC requires many more hours of a teacher's time and energy, takes away a lot of time that could be spent with students and forces teachers to spend much of that time on compliance work (paperwork "proving" their "effectiveness.")

Teachers aren't the only ones angry about the system - so are well-respected education leaders.

In fact, a group of Lower Hudson Valley superintendents called the state's evaluation system "demoralizing, expensive and ineffective":

The superintendents group contends that the evaluation system has been demoralizing, expensive and ineffective, resulting in the overtesting of students. The system has not made it easier to fire poor teachers, the group says.

This region's school chiefs would like to see legislators convene a group of educators, teachers, lawmakers and state officials to create a system that would help teachers improve instruction and make it easier for districts to fire poor teachers.

"We need to start over," Harrison Superintendent Louis Wool said.

...

A study commissioned by the superintendents found that scoring problems prompted school districts to give teachers high grades for classroom observations so they would not get undeserved poor overall grades. State Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, the Democratic leader in the Senate, said the study deserves serious discussion so teacher evaluations can be made more effective. 

"It is always important to listen to the people that have the expertise and knowledge of the current procedures and standards," she said.

Cuomo, on the other hand, seems to believe a teacher evaluation system should be demoralizing, since he said he wants to use it to "break" teachers:

The governor told the Daily News Editorial Board in October he wants to toughen the evaluation standards in the coming year, calling it a big way to bust the public school “monopoly.”

Just yesterday, Cuomo said this about the current system:

“These results of these evaluations say one thing: not real,” he continued. “It’s not real. You are an evaluation system in name, and you have to go back to the table and try to come up with an evaluation system that is more accurate. The teachers’ union is trying to reduce the number [of teachers] that are deemed ineffective, right? And that’s what this evaluation system did. But it’s clear that an inaccurate evaluation system helps no one, not even the teachers.”

From what I see in the governor's statements, Cuomo will only be happy with an evaluation system that greatly increases the number of teachers deemed "ineffective" every year so that he can accomplish his goal to "break" the public school "monopoly" and privatize much of the public school system.

You were sitting next to him at a Forbes forum last June when he first made his "break the public school monopoly" comments, so I know you know he means this threat and has been thinking about it for a while now.

Rumor has it that he will try and add a quota for the percentage of "ineffective" teacher ratings a district must hand out every year.

Other ways he may "toughen" the rating system is to ratchet up the "effective" and "highly effective" categories so as to make them aspirational but nearly unobtainable, make 40% of the evaluation based on state test scores alone, and/or tweak the VAM used for the test score component so that "effective" or higher is difficult to reach.

What do you and your compatriots at the NYSUT and the UFT plan to do in order to fight Governor Cuomo on his threats to "toughen" the New York State teacher evaluation system in order to "break" the teachers in the public school system?

He's coming for us, he's coming to do harm and now is the time for you and the rest of the teachers union leadership in this state to fight him.

Will you fight him?

I have my doubts.

You claimed in the fall that the "break" the "monopoly" comment he made was simply "campaign rhetoric," there was nothing to worry about.

Do you still think that way?

Earlier this year you backed a putsch at NYSUT that knocked out an increasingly anti-Cuomo NYSUT leadership, you (along with Michael Mulgrew at the UFT) joined a contingent of union leaders that threatened the Working Families Party with financial ruin if they didn't endorse Cuomo last May and you made robocalls for his running mate, Kathy Hochul, when it looked like she could lose her Democratic primary.

All this help and he pays you back by threatening to "break" your members and the public school system they work in.

Doesn't sound like you got much payback from him for the political aid and comfort you have given him.

It surely would be nice if you stopped helping Andrew Cuomo and started helping us - especially now that he has stated publicly repeated times that he intends to destroy us.

So what's it going to be, Randi?

Fight or flight?

I see you all over the TV and newspaper with the UVA/Rolling Stone story, the Garner protests, the Ferguson protests.

All that political work you do for those causes is great, but now I (and my fellow union members) would like you to take some of the energy you put into those causes and put it into the cause of fighting Andrew Cuomo on his threat to "break" us.

Are you in, Randi? 

Or are we, as usual, on our own?

Sincerely,

An Embattled Member of the UFT, AFT and NYSUT
Perdido Street School

13 Rape Allegations (Including One Statutory) Against Bill Cosby, But Whoopi Goldberg Still Defends Him

From the Daily News:

A shrill, backstage brawl at “The View” Wednesday left co-host Rosie Perez in tears while panelists Whoopi Goldberg and Rosie O’Donnell battled over how to cover the latest allegations against Bill Cosby and the racially charged upheaval in Ferguson, Mo., sources said.

O’Donnell believed the show — now overseen by ABC News — needed to delve deeper into both controversial subjects, while Goldberg wanted to steer clear of the topics altogether.

Ultimately, both news stories were discussed at length on the air by the panel.

“There’s terrible frustration and there are problems,” a source close to the show told the Daily News. “Whoopi didn’t want to talk about Cosby and Ferguson, Rosie (O’Donnell) did — how could you not? These are topics that are uncomfortable for everyone, but it’s ‘The View’ and it’s their job to talk about topics that might make some people tense.”

Whoopi was happy to bash "bad teachers" not once but twice over the summer, claiming teacher tenure protects them.

Yet she defends her pal Cosby - now with 13 public rape allegations against him including one with an underage girl of 15 - by trying to ensure "The View" steers clear of the topic.

This comes after she defended him earlier in the week and attacked one of his accusers, saying she had "lots of questions" for her.

Apparently Whoopi doesn't want to address any of those questions publicly on "The View" anymore.

Another teacher-basher exposed as a hypocrite and a phony.

Hey, Whoopi - if you have such concern for the kids, why not let "The View" cover the Cosby story, including the allegation that your friend Bill Cosby repeatedly had sex with an underage girl?

Good God - the show is supposed to cover the news.

The public implosion of the iconic Bill Cosby into sexual predator and statutory rapist certainly is news.

And like I said in an earlier post - you can bet if this was a teacher accused of these crimes, you'd be one of the first throwing stones.

Let's Be Careful Out There

When Mayor Bloomberg was running the NYC school system, his attitude toward teachers was easy to read - he despised them, thought little of teachers as people and even less of teaching as a profession and wanted as many fired as possible.

Every year around March we'd start the budget layoff season in which Bloomberg would threaten thousands of teacher layoffs.

Every year those layoffs would be averted, but the message to teachers was quite clear from the Bloomberg-run DOE:

We don't like you, we don't respect you, we don't care about you, we don't trust you and we are doing everything in our power to screw with you.

Bloomberg hired chancellors who carried out this anti-teacher campaign - Klein despised teachers, Black was brought in to lay some off (one of her specialties as a magazine exec was downsizing), Walcott replaced the woeful Black and picked up where Klein left off.

Now we have Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Farina, two individuals who claim to respect teachers, two individuals who say they want to bring dignity back to the teaching profession, and while those words sound good on the surface, so far many teachers in the system have seen little actual change from the Bloomberg/Walcott Years when it comes to the anti-teacher campaign.

I know I continue to see administrators target teachers, humiliate them in front of students, and do everything in their power to wreck careers and ruin reputations.

Something the chancellor said that showed up in the NY Daily News last weekend makes me think the message coming from the NYCDOE to administrators is to continue with the teacher targeting:

Fariña pledged to announce in the next two weeks a big reduction in the number of teachers getting paid despite not having steady classroom jobs. Earlier this month 114 of the roughly 1,100 teachers — known as the Absent Teacher Reserve — accepted $16,000 buyouts.

Fariña said the numbers would dwindle further as principals are taught best practices for writing up teachers and beginning the arduous termination process.

As I noted in a Sunday post, these paragraphs came right below this one:

She also expressed confidence she could improve teacher retention by restoring the dignity of the job. But it won’t be easy. A recent teachers union survey found that 32,000 teachers walked away from city classrooms in the last 11 years, with about 4,600 going to jobs elsewhere in the state — mainly to city suburbs that offer higher pay and less challenging teaching conditions.

Farina is playing fast and loose with the language here, sending out dual messages at once about the importance of teacher retention and restoring dignity to the teaching profession even as she says she plans to make sure every principal knows exactly how to target teachers and get rid of them.

Now I don't know about you, but I found the statement about making sure "principals are taught best practices for writing up teachers and beginning the arduous termination process" ominous.

It seems to me not much has changed from the Bloomberg/Klein/Walcott Years except for this:

The de Blasio/Farina DOE is less honest and forthcoming in their anti-teacher campaign than the Bloomberg/Klein/Walcott DOE.

With Bloomberg/Klein/Walcott, you knew they were looking to screw with you.

De Blasio and Farina like to talk about "dignity" and "teacher retention," but as Norm Scott always says about people, watch what they do, not what they say.

When I drown out what they say and instead watch what they do, I'm not seeing much of a difference from the previous administration when it comes to the treatment of teachers - all teachers.

So let's be careful out there this year, folks.

And yes, I'm echoing Michael Conrad.

Remember When Frank Bruni Thought "Won't Back Down" Was A Great Movie?

Food writer Frank Bruni has written another teacher-bashing column, a habit of his ever since they gave him op-ed real estate at the NY Times, though to be fair, there are quite a few other teacher-bashers on the Times op-ed page as well, so maybe Frank's just trying to fit in with his more famous compatriots in neo-liberalism.

In any case, NYC Educator dispensed with Frank's argument here and I don't think I can improve on it, so I'm going to let that stand for dealing with Frank's current nonsensical teacher-bashing and remind everyone of a few years back when Bruni, a food writer by trade, got into movie reviews and told us how great the teacher-bashing picture "Won't Back Down" was.

Remember that travesty?

I do - and I like to remind people of it every time Frank Bruni writes some more nonsense about public education, public schools, teachers or Common Core.

I think it's important to remind people just how poor Frank's judgment is when it comes to what he writes about education, schools and teachers (as well as movies):

"Won't Back Down" Getting Savaged By Film Critics (UPDATED)

Frank Bruni loved the parent trigger propaganda piece "Won't Back Down, but movie critics for Salon, NPR and the Associated Press did not.

First, NPR's review:

 All cynicism aside, the movie taps a rich vein of accumulated public frustration at the continued failure of government to provide decent access to public schools for all American children. Aside from religion itself, no subject lends itself more to arm-waving entrenched positions than education. And perhaps a movie aimed at a mainstream audience can't help but distill the discussion into culture-war sound bites.

 For all its strenuous feints at fair play, though, Won't Back Down is something less honorable — a propaganda piece with blame on its mind. Directed with reasonable competence by Daniel Barnz from a speechifying screenplay he co-wrote with Brin Hill, the movie is funded by Walden Media, a company owned by conservative mogul Philip Anschutz, who advocates creationist curricula in schools. Walden also co-produced the controversial pro-charter school documentary Waiting for Superman, so the outfit is not without axes to grind.

...


In fact, it's nuance and reason that fall by the wayside amid the sloganeering rhetoric of Won't Back Down. Like most large institutions with interests to protect, the unions could use some reforms, especially when it comes to shielding bad teachers from scrutiny and discipline.
But if you were to wave a magic wand that replaced unions and bureaucrats with a rainbow coalition of local parents and educators coming together to create the kind of school they want, the result would be chaos, not to mention an end to the tattered remains of our common culture.
"We need to start somewhere," comes a stern, God-like voice in Won't Back Down, waving off all talk about the role of poverty and inequality in under-resourced schools and underachieving pupils. We do indeed. Just not here.

 Next, David Germain of the Associated Press pans the movie:

 Despite earnest performances from Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis as a pair of moms leading the fight, "Won't Back Down" lives down to its bland, us-against-them title with a simple-minded assault on the ills of public schools that lumbers along like a math class droning multiplication tables.

Director and co-writer Daniel Barnz ("Beastly") made his feature debut with 2009's "Phoebe in Wonderland," an intimate story of a troubled girl aided by an unconventional teacher. Here, Barnz gets lost in red tape as "Won't Back Down" gives us the inside dope on the teacher's lounge, the union headquarters, the principal-teacher showdown, the hushed halls of the board of education.

Theaters should install glow-in-the-dark versions of those old clunking classroom clocks so viewers can count the agonizing minutes ticking by as they watch the movie.

 ...

 And it's the children who suffer in "Won't Back Down." Other than some token scenes involving Jamie and Nona's kids, the students are mere extras in a drama that spends most of its time prattling on about how the children are what matter most.

 And finally, saving the best for last, Andrew O'Hehir

So teachers’ unions don’t care about kids. Oh, and luck is a foxy lady. This is what I took away from the inept and bizarre “Won’t Back Down,” a set of right-wing anti-union talking points disguised (with very limited success) as a mainstream motion-picture-type product. Someone needs to launch an investigation into what combination of crimes, dares, alcoholic binges and lapses in judgment got Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal into this movie. Neither of them seems likely to sympathize with its thinly veiled labor-bashing agenda and, way more to the point, I thought they had better taste. Maybe it was that actor-y thing where they saw potential in their characters – a feisty, working-class single mom for Gyllenhaal, a sober middle-class schoolteacher for Davis – liked the idea of working together and didn’t think too much about the big picture.

Perhaps that was a mistake, because the big picture is that the movie is unbelievable crap and the whole project was financed by conservative Christian billionaire Phil Anschutz, also the moneybags behind the documentary “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” which handled a similar agenda in subtler fashion.

...

 “Won’t Back Down” was reportedly inspired by a California law that allows parent-teacher takeovers of failing schools under certain circumstances. Again, that sounds like a fascinating premise, albeit one that’s highly likely to go in unforeseen “Animal Farm” directions. But all we get here is the most blithe and moronic kind of “let’s put on a show” magical thinking, in which ripping up the union contract and wresting control of the school from the bureaucrats becomes an end in itself, and what happens later is shrouded in the mists of an imaginary libertarian paradise. There are attempts at Fox News-style balance here and there, as when someone observes that most charter schools fail to improve outcomes and when a bombastic union exec played by Ned Eisenberg delivers a monologue about the current assault on labor (right before announcing that he couldn’t care less about children).

...

 Most people still understand, I believe, that teachers work extremely hard for little pay and low social status in a thankless, no-win situation. But this is one of those areas where conservatives have been extremely successful in dividing the working class, which is precisely the agenda in “Won’t Back Down.” Breeding hostility to unions in themselves, and occasionally insinuating that unionized teachers are a protected caste of incompetents who get three damn months off every single year, has been an effective tactic in what we might call postmodern Republican populism, especially in recent battles over public employee contracts in Wisconsin and elsewhere. It works something like this: 1) Turn the resentment and frustration of people like Jamie – people with crappy service-sector jobs and few benefits, whose kids are stuck in failing schools – against the declining group of public employees who still have a decent deal. 2) Strip away job security and collective bargaining; hand out beer and ukuleles instead. 3) La la la la, tax cuts, tax cuts, I can’t hear you!

On the plus side for "Won't Back Down", NY Times food critic Frank Bruni loved the movie so much that he decided to devote an entire column to how much teachers unions and unionized teachers suck and how much better we would all be if teachers would just mindlessly accept whatever "reforms" the education reform movement wants to impose on schools.

That Bruni thought enough of "Won't Back Down" that he used it as a springboard for his teacher attack column makes you wonder what he was watching.

Maybe Bruni wasn't watching the same "Won't Back Down" as the critics for NPR, Salon, and the AP?

Maybe he was watching the video to Tom Petty's "Won't Back Down."

Or, more likely, Petty's "Don't Come Around Here No More."

Hey, Frank, stay away from the magic mushrooms when you're writing about education, okay?

UPDATE - 3:01 PM: Critics from Variety, the Arizona Republic, the Hollywood Reporter and the Village Voice also think "Won't Back Down" sucks.

Maggie Anderson in the Voice writes:

The fat, lazy public school teacher who can’t be bothered to stop diddling with her phone or shopping for shoes online while her second-grade class erupts into mayhem in the opening scene of Won’t Back Down isn’t the most despicable entity in this tearjerker. That would be the union that protects her, the same malevolent force in Davis Guggenheim’s horribly argued pro-charter-school documentary from 2010, Waiting for Superman (both films were funded by Walden Media, led by a conservative billionaire).

...

 Viewed solely as maternal melodrama, Won’t Back Down succeeds; its actresses, as they spearhead the takeover and work through “personal demons,” rouse, rage, and rue admirably (though in Davis’s case, marveling at yet another fine performance doesn’t stop you from wishing that her first leading role was in a worthier vehicle). But there’s no prettying up the movie’s vilifying of teachers’ unions, which here resort to dirty tricks and smear campaigns—an easy enough scapegoat for the larger, more intractable economic problems also ignored in Guggenheim’s film and by most politicians of any stripe.

And David Rooney of the Hollywood Reporter writes:

The jury is still out on a solution to the national education system crisis, but the verdict is delivered with a heavy hand and a stacked deck in the formulaic Won’t Back Down. Simplifying complex school-reform hurdles into tidy inspirational clichés while demonizing both teachers’ unions and bureaucracy-entrenched education boards, the movie addresses timely issues but eschews shading in favor of blunt black and white. It’s old-school Lifetime fodder dressed up in Hollywood trappings.

Peter Debruge of Variety writes that the film takes its audience "for dummies" by "grossly oversimplifying the issue at hand" while Barbara VanDenburgh of the Arizona Republic writes that

Oversimplified politics undermine the film at every turn. The shrill preachiness reaches a fever pitch by the film's climax, a schoolboard hearing that takes place under the watchful gazes of a muralized Abraham Lincoln and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and in which the deciding vote is cast by a man named -- what else? -- Mr. King, who monologues against a backdrop of the civil-rights leader to thunderous applause.

The movie doesn't just shriek its point to you through a megaphone -- it beats you over the head with it.

And it doesn't matter which side of the debate you land on; two hours of schmaltz mired in bloodless policy debate just doesn't make for good movie watching. Even if you stripped the film bare of political pretensions, you'd still be left with unabashed, hokey sentimentality where such feel-good adages as "Change the school, you change the neighborhood" are sprinkled on complex problems like so much fairy dust.

There's a real conversation to be had about the sorry state of the public-school system, but all this movie is going to trigger is a lot of screaming.

Looks like there will be no Oscar for the ed reform movement again this year.

They were dying to get an Oscar win for Davis Guggenheim's "Waiting for Superman," but not only did "Superman" not win an Oscar, it wasn't even nominated.

Judging by the reviews of the heavy-handed, badly written "Won't Back Down," the reform movement is going to have to hope the third time is a charm when it comes to winning an Oscar and promoting their message via pop culture.

Wonder what they'll try next?

An animated Disney education reform picture (Donald Duck can be the lazy, nasty, unionized teacher.)

Maybe an updated Boston Public mini-series that promotes privatization, charterization and high stakes testing?

Or maybe they can stop trying to fool people with propaganda and engage on the issues for real.

Improving the education system is not as easy as firing all the teachers, closing all the schools, and turning the entire public school system to charters.

The economic conditions that kids face at home matter when they come to school.

The movie critics get this.

Why can't the education reform community and the politicians?

Why can't President Obama?

That Bruni loved the teacher-bashing movie that all these critics savaged gives you some insight into how poor this dude's judgment is.

Given how bad his judgment is on public education, schools, teachers and movies, I wouldn't take his restaurant reviews at face value either.

That Bruni also was a guest at teacher-baser Campbell Brown's wedding to Dan Senor gives you some insight into why he wrote this teacher-bashing column just after Brown launched her anti-tenure lawsuit in New York State.

Bruni's got an anti-teacher ax to grind, facts (or taste) be damned.

How Many Teachers Voted For Obama In 2012?

I didn't - not after Race to the Top and Arne Duncan and the Rhode Island teacher firings that Obama applauded.

But I bet lots of teachers out there still voted for Obama because they were scared that Mitt Romney might get elected.

Well, here's what Obama and his people are doing now, teachers:

Teachers unions are girding for a tough fight to defend tenure laws against a coming blitz of lawsuits — and an all-out public relations campaign led by former aides to President Barack Obama.

The Incite Agency, founded by former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and former Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt, will lead a national public relations drive to support a series of lawsuits aimed at challenging tenure, seniority and other job protections that teachers unions have defended ferociously. LaBolt and another former Obama aide, Jon Jones — the first digital strategist of the 2008 campaign — will take the lead in the public relations initiative.

And you can bet Obama supports his former aides working to destroy the teaching profession and protections for teachers, because that's exactly what Race to the Top and the rest of the Obama education policies were all about.

In the future, don't let the bogeyman scare you away from NOT voting for an anti-teacher, anti-public education Democrat.

 

I refuse to be bullied into voting for an education reform Democrat no matter who he/she is running against.

 

Take New York, for example.

 

I'm not supporting Cuomo no matter what - not even if a poll the night before the election shows GOP candidate Rob Astorino within striking distance of Sheriff Andy.

 

Cuomo is anti-teacher, anti-traditional public schools and anti-union - so I am anti-Cuomo no matter what.

 

Obama is also anti-teacher, anti-traditional public schools and anti-union - so I am anti-Obama no matter what.

 

Teachers who supported Obama despite his record - well, he's paying you back now as he sends forth Obama administration shills to attack teachers.