Fighting for Social Justice and Authentic School Reform

Fighting for Social Justice and

Authentic School Reform

By Nina Lawlit

EDU wants our union to bring members into the struggle for larger social and political issues and to work with allies in our communities to make things right for students, families and educators. A quality education for all students is a social justice issue. Diane Ravitch and others have made powerful critiques of the business-driven reform model for education that is dominating the conversation today. Business-driven reforms don’t work for schools; we want authentic change for education. In dialoguing and allying with families we can work to fully fund our schools and to transform them, deepening our relationships with our students, developing rich, well rounded curriculum and rediscovering the excitement of learning as opposed to the daily boredom of teaching and learning to the test.

On Sept. 3rd Amy Goodman hosted a good discussion of these issues on her radio show, Democracy Now!. It featured Karen Lewis, the new president of the Chicago Teachers Union, and Lois Weiner, an education professor at New Jersey City University. Karen Lewis talked about the problems of applying the business model to education. In the business model you select and discriminate; in public schools we do not discriminate, we take all students, and what we need are more resources and support for everybody there. And why, she continued, should we follow the business model? It brought us to “financial ruin and the brink of Armageddon in 2008,” unless of course, you’re a banker or a CEO Our unions are not, as the so-called reformers claim, against accountability. But, Lewis explained, high stakes testing is not a way to ensure accountability. Our urban neighborhoods have been under- resourced and devalued for decades. That’s what needs to be changed and our schools cannot do it by themselves.

CORE, a caucus of the Chicago Teachers Union, spent the last two years organizing alongside community members. The teachers and community started working together because they all saw the devastation caused by underfunding, and business-driven reforms. CORE was able to change the way the Chicago Board of Education was operating. They forced them to show up at community meetings and saved six schools saved from closure. Now CORE has been voted into the leadership of the Chicago teachers’ union – it’s inspiring.

When educators and community allies work together we build the capacity for social change. We want our union to lead the fight for authentic school reform and take on social and political issues. We hope we can link with the many teachers and community members who fight for social justice, but don’t see the union as a powerful leader in this struggle. We want to use the power of our union to fight for quality education for all students and for social justice for all educators, families and students. This means defending immigrant rights and fighting for public services and jobs that our communities need. There is a renaissance of social activism in educators’ unions in many parts of the country now. It’s exciting to think about our own activism within this main current for change