09.24.2009 Young Communist League Weekly Update

Este es un mensaje bilingue. This is a bilingual message.

"Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin." -Vladimir Lenin

Mass Action: Tell your Representative and Senators to support the DREAM Act

Thousands of students across the country are participating in the National Back to School DREAM Act Day of Action urging their Representative and Senators to support the DREAM Act that would allow thousands of immigrant students the ability to attend college. The United States Student Association (USSA) has a script you can use to email your Rep and Senators with (link to word "script" http://www.usstudents.org/our-work/legislative/dream-act-take-action . You can also find our more information and the importance of the DREAM Act here (link to word here http://www.dreamactivist.org/ ).

In the News: Obama opposition based on racism, Jimmy Carter says

Obama opposition based on racism, Jimmy Carter says
by Pepe Lozano

Former president Jimmy Carter, 84, believes much of the opposition directed at Barack Obama since his election stems from deep-seated roots of racism and a fear that an African American is at the head of the U.S. government. To read the full article, check the People's Weekly World Website (link to word "website" http://www.pww.org/article/view/17011 )

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. How much of the opposition to Obama's healthcare plan and other legislation do you think is fueled by racism? Obama himself has stated that he was "black before the election" as a response to the conservative opposition. Do you think that Obama would be able to say that the conservative opposition is fueled by racism?

2. Do Democrats and progressives gain/lose anything by focusing on racism over the the issues such as the role of the federal government and the need for the public option?

3. What happened to Van Jones? Why did he resign from office? What factors were at play?

Eastern Regional Collective

The Eastern Regional Collective first met on September 19^th, 2009 in Boston, MA. This collective is comprised of leaders and members of the YCL from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, Philadelphia, and New Jersey. This collective focuses on the triad of Culture, Education and Mobilization, with the emphasis on Cultural Work. They plan to hold Regional Marxism Schools, Music/Live Art Showcases, and to work together to build locally. At their first meeting, they demonstrated their advanced understanding of the current political climate, and displayed a high level of organizing skills.

WATCH OUT FOR THEIR BLOG: ycleast.blogspot.com, and if you want to get involved, email them @ ycl.east@gmail.com

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Este es un mensaje bilingüe. Este es un mensaje bilingüe.

"La política comienza donde están las masas, no donde hay miles, pero donde hay millones, que es donde la política seria empezar". -Vladimir Lenin

Acción: Dígale a su Representante y los Senadores a apoyar la Ley DREAM

Miles de estudiantes de todo el país participan en la Vuelta a la Escuela Nacional de DREAM Act Día de Acción insta a su representante y los senadores a apoyar la Ley DREAM que permitiría a miles de estudiantes inmigrantes la posibilidad de asistir a la universidad. La Asociación de Estudiantes de Estados Unidos (USSA) tiene una secuencia de comandos que puede utilizar para enviar su representante y con los senadores (enlace con la palabra "script" http://www.usstudents.org/our-work/legislative/dream-act-take- acción. También puede encontrar nuestros más información y la importancia de la Ley DREAM aquí (enlace a la palabra aquí http://www.dreamactivist.org/).

En las noticias: La oposición de Obama basada en el racismo, Jimmy Carter, dice

La oposición de Obama basada en el racismo, Jimmy Carter, dice
por Pepe Lozano

El ex presidente Jimmy Carter, de 84 años, cree que gran parte de la oposición dirigida a Barack Obama desde su elección se deriva de las raíces profundas del racismo y el temor de que un afroamericano está a la cabeza del gobierno de EE.UU.. Para leer el artículo completo, consulte el People's Weekly World Web (enlace con la palabra "sitio web" http://www.pww.org/article/view/17011)

Preguntas de discusión:

1. ¿Qué parte de la oposición al plan de salud de Obama y otra legislación crees que es alimentado por el racismo? El propio Obama ha declarado que era "negro antes de la elección", como una respuesta a la oposición conservadora. ¿Cree que Obama sería capaz de decir que la oposición conservadora está alimentada por el racismo?

2. Los demócratas y los progresistas de ganar-perder nada por la lucha contra el racismo en el de las cuestiones como el papel del gobierno federal y la necesidad de la opción pública?



3. ¿Qué pasó con Van Jones? ¿Por qué ha cesado en su cargo? ¿Qué factores estaban en juego?

Colectivo Regional del Este

El Colectivo de la Región Oriental reunió por primera vez el 19 de septiembre de 2009 en Boston, MA. Este colectivo está compuesto por líderes y miembros de la YCL de Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Nueva York, Maryland, Filadelfia y Nueva Jersey. Este colectivo se centra en la tríada de Cultura, Educación y Movilización, con el énfasis en la obra cultural. Que planean celebrar el marxismo Regional de Escuelas, Música / Live Art vitrinas, y de trabajar juntos para construir a nivel local. En su primera reunión, que han demostrado su comprensión avanzada de la actual clima político, y muestra un alto nivel de capacidades de organización.

¡OJO CON SU BLOG: ycleast.blogspot.com, y si quieres participar, them@ycl.east correo electrónico @ gmail.com

Why is Pat Buchanan Defending Hitler?

Link

MSNBC conservative commentator and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan has a history of insensitivity to issues surrounding the Holocaust. Yet again, with the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II, Buchanan posted a telling column on his own website and on Townhall that seems to blame Poland for World War II.

In a piece titled "Just how crazy is Pat Buchanan," Ethan Porter writes on his blog, "Mr. Obama's Neighborhood," that Buchanan's latest comments reflect "revisionism that comes perilously close to denial:"

Despite his current position, as a friendly sparring partner with Rachel Maddow and in-house winger on MSNBC, the guy has been a very-thinly veiled fascist sympathizer for decades. And in his column this week, he all but removes that veil.

Available here, the column is titled "Did Hitler Want War?" Buchanan believes the answer to be no. He pins the blame for World War II on Poland, and Britain's guarantee of protection to it. As evidence, Buchanan points to a string of inexplicably dumb decisions made by Hitler-so dumb that, to Buchanan, they negate the myths about the war and the man thought by nearly all sentient beings to be its instigator.

You might think that Buchanan would have stopped using this sort of unrepentant rhetoric as his career moved from a Republican firebrand to a commentator on one of the nation's top cable news channels - but you'd be wrong.

Buchanan has the sort of history that has earned him an entire page on the Anti-Defamation League's (ADL) website. The ADL goes so far as to describe Buchanan as one who "publicly espouses racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-immigrant views." The site features a sampling of more than 2,000 of Buchanan's own words, but maybe more telling are the thoughts of the late conservative intellectual William Buckley, who was included in a Newsweek's article "Is Pat Buchanan Anti-Semitic:"

Buchanan also wrote that if the United States went to war, the fighting would be done by "kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales, and Leroy Brown." Buckley, in his usual opaque writing style, argues that this amounts to charging Jews with starting a war they wouldn't fight in a genuine slur against them. He adds: "I find it impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination amounted to anti-Semitism, whatever it was that drove him to say and do it: most probably, an iconoclastic temperament."

These are rough words coming from Buckley, who goes to great pains to distinguish between anti-Semitism and simply voicing criticism of Israel.

It is hard to be surprised by a man who has written many columns concerning World War II revisionism, but this may be his worst yet.

However, what may be most surprising is why Buchanan still has a job.

Actually, there is a place on MSNBC where he may belong - you would have to ask Keith Olbermann about that one.

UPDATE: MSNBC is currently promoting Buchanan's column on MSNBC.com. This is beyond ridiculous. The National Jewish Democratic Council just issued a statement that says: "This sort of historical revisionism is deplorable. Buchanan's latest column should be removed immediately from MSNBC.com, and no worthy news organization should employ a commentator who engages in such vile fiction."

UPDATE II: Within an hour of our press release, MSNBC has removed Buchanan's column, "Did Hitler Want War," from their website. Here's a response from David A. Harris, NJDC's President: "MSNBC took the responsible action and removed Pat Buchanan's column defending Adolf Hitler from their website, but no worthy news organization should employ and promote a commentator who engages in such vile fiction."

Follow Aaron Keyak on Twitter: www.twitter.com/akeyak

Plot to kill Post Office cloaked by right wing ‘recess rally’ chaos

From: PWW

Author: John Wojcik
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 08/11/09 13:13

Even as it works overtime to disrupt the national debate on health care reform, the radical right is taking advantage of the chaos to quietly destroy yet another public service Americans take for granted – the United States Postal Service.
Working through Sen. Thomas Coburn, R-Okla., they have rolled a huge boulder onto the road lawmakers are taking to close a $7 billion budget deficit hanging over the agency for the year ending Sept. 30.

Coburn attached a killer amendment, just before the Senate’s August recess, to legislation that would grant the Postal Service the $5 billion it needs to cover health care costs for retirees. Without the legislation the agency says that on Sept. 1 it will have to fire more than 50,000 workers, close down hundreds of post offices and kill Saturday pickup and delivery.

The right-wing amendment effectively squashes the collective bargaining rights of the entire Postal Service workforce by ordering arbitrators to place the fiscal condition of the Postal Service ahead of any contractual obligations the agency has to its workers or retirees.

The law, as amended by Coburn, would allow the Postal Service, for example, to withhold a $5.4 billion payment it must make within a month to cover retiree health care costs.

The postal worker unions are warning that attachment of the Coburn amendment to the rescue bill forces them to withdraw their earlier support for the legislation.

“The Coburn amendment serves only to upset collective bargaining procedures,” said Bill Burrus, president of the American Postal Service Workers Union.

The new Letter Carriers president, Frederic Rolando, told senators in a hearing just before the recess, that his union also could not support a bill containing the Coburn amendment.
Witnesses at the Aug. 6 Senate hearing pointed out that health care costs are only part of the problems the agency faces.

Mail volume has dropped by 12 percent in the last year and the drop is expected to reach 16 percent by the end of fiscal 2009, in September, according to the Government Accounting Office.

Postmaster General John Potter told senators that the USPS has lost much of its volume because of the Internet.

Potter, who was named by a GOP-appointed Postal Board during the Bush administration, has proposed cuts in the workforce as the solution. He says that at least 677 post offices should be closed, most of them in major cities, and that 55,000 workers should be fired.

The USPS workforce, the unions note, has already shrunk, through retirements and buyouts, to 603,000 workers, from 773,000 several years ago.
The unions are saying there is a better way than job cuts.

Both union leaders are angry about the radical right amendment to the rescue bill because they have already been working with USPS management on money-saving plans.

The Letter Carriers and the agency, for example, are reviewing 168,000 city letter carrier routes, examining them for possible consolidations.
Senators at the Aug. 6 hearing were non-committal on the Coburn amendment.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Ind., Conn., was among the group of supposedly pro-labor Democrats who weren’t saying too much.

He asked Rolando and Burrus to submit conditions they would attach to any arbitrations.
Both restated their opposition to the anti-labor amendment attached by Coburn but declined to offer any others.

Limbaugh’s Nazi slurs draw condemnation

From: PWW

Author: Susan Webb
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 08/11/09 14:43

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threw Rush Limbaugh into a snit when she objected to use of Nazi symbols by anti-health-reform protesters.

On Aug. 5, when a reporter asked Pelosi if she thought the right-wing-organized protests were real grassroots expressions, she replied, "I think they are Astroturf, you be the judge."

Astroturf, the fake grass used in sports arenas, is being used to refer to fake “grassroots” happenings that are a specialty of far-right groups, going back to the “Brooks Brothers riot” in December 2000 that intimidated Miami-Dade election officials into stopping the vote recounting.

"They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town hall meeting on health care," Pelosi noted.

Limbaugh, the next day on his radio talk show, accused Pelosi of being “deranged” because “she's running around now claiming that we're Nazis, that not only are we an unruly mob but that people are showing up wearing swastikas.”

But a spokesman for Pelosi told FOXNews.com that Pelosi was referring to a photo taken at a Massachusetts town hall meeting hosted by Democratic Rep. Ed Markey. The photo showed a protester holding a sign bearing a swastika crossed out over Obama's name and a question mark.

Also in Massachusetts, according to news reports, one protester compared Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern to the Nazi Josef Mengele, who did ghastly medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners.

At a photo site linked to the right-wing freerepublic.com, someone named Dallas59 posted a photo of people at an unidentified rally holding a giant photo of Obama with a Hitler mustache drawn on.

On Aug. 7, CNN’s Rick Sanchez identified the same photo as from a rally outside a health care forum in Romulus, Mich.

Sanchez also displayed a photo from Texas of a man holding a sign depicting Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett as the devil, next to another sign with the symbol of the Nazi SS and a slogan talking about stopping socialism.

Today, Rep. David Scott, D-Ga., told reporters that his district office in Smyrna was vandalized with a four-foot swastika last night.

Viveca Novak, at factcheck.org, writes, “Pelosi did not actually accuse opponents of being neo-Nazis; that’s just the way Limbaugh and others chose to interpret her phrase, ‘carrying swastikas and symbols like that.’ It is clear from the images in hand that the anti-Obama protesters were the ones accusing others of Nazi-like tendencies. And Pelosi turns out to be right.”

In fact, Limbaugh spent much of his Aug. 6 radio diatribe invoking the Nazis and Adolf Hitler in a highly provocative way, with a strong paranoid streak.

Limbaugh declared, “The Democrat Party and where it's taken this country, the radical left leadership of this party bears much more resemblance to Nazi policies than anything we on the right believe in at all.”

“The Obama health care logo is damn close to a Nazi swastika logo,” Limbaugh claimed, calling it “right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook.” He likened Obama to Adolf Hitler, saying President Obama is “not who he said he was” and cannot be trusted.

An event today showed that Limbaugh’s provocative language is not just an abstract matter.

MSNBC today aired footage of the crowd gathering before Obama’s afternoon town hall meeting on health care in New Hampshire, and pointed out one man in a group holding protest signs with a gun in a holster on his hip.

The gun-toting protestor was holding a sign reading “It is Time to Water the Tree of Liberty.” It is a reference to the Thomas Jefferson quote: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Police said the man is legally carrying the gun, is nowhere near where the president will be, and is "under constant surveillance," Talking Points Memo reports.

Last Friday, major Jewish groups condemned the use of Nazi comparisons and images to attack health care reform.

David A. Harris, president of the National Jewish Democratic Council, called the Nazi references "not funny" and "profoundly troubling."

"At these too-well-organized 'mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore' town hall meetings around the country this August, more and more of these disturbing Nazi comparisons are cropping up — and they all seem to be coming from the heart of the Republican base," he said. "And it has to stop."

The Anti-Defamation League issued a statement condemning the use of Nazi imagery by some reform opponents as "outrageous, offensive and inappropriate."

The ADL, the nation's largest Jewish civil rights group, specifically condemned Limbaugh’s Nazi comparisons.

“The use of Nazi symbolism is outrageous, offensive and inappropriate," said ADL national director Abraham H. Foxman, a Holocaust survivor.

"Comparisons to the Nazis are deeply offensive and only serve to diminish and trivialize the extent of the Nazi regime's crimes against humanity and the murder of six million Jews and millions of others in the Holocaust," said Foxman. "I don't see any comparison here. It's off-center, off-issue and completely inappropriate."

The National Jewish Democratic Council has an online petition “Tell Rush: Nazi Rhetoric Must Stop.” It calls on Clear Channel Communications (the parent company of Premiere Radio Networks which produces “The Rush Limbaugh Show”) to “stop allowing Limbaugh to abuse the memory of the more than 12 million Holocaust victims who suffered and died at the hands of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime.”

suewebb @ pww.org

SickForProfit: Video Series Highlights Insurance Company Greed

From: AFL-CIO Now Blog

by Mike Hall, Aug 7, 2009

United Healthcare’s “mission is to help people live healthier lives,” CEO Stephen Hemsley told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee in March.

But the health insurance giant’s real mission is to maximize its profits and executive pay and to defeat health care reform that threatens that pot of gold, says the new website SickForProfit.com.

Launched by Brave New Films, SickForProft will feature a series of Web videos spotlighting several large insurance companies—their profits, their CEOs’ astronomical compensation and the stories of everyday families insured by those firms but denied coverage or turned away altogether.

Welcome to the American health insurance industry. Instead of helping policyholders attain the health security they need for their families, big insurance companies get rich by denying coverage to patients. Now they’re sending lobbyists to Washington, D.C., to twist the arms of lawmakers to oppose reform of the status quo. Why? Because the status quo pays.

United Healthcare’s Hemsley finds the status quo quite comfortable, with nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars in unexercised stock options and millions in annual salary, according to the first film posted at Brave New Films.

But that same status quo made the first few years of Isabella Griggs life miserable and painful for the little Watertown, Wis., girl, and heartbreaking for her parents. Isabella was born with several life threatening conditions, says her mother, Stephanie, including the inability to eat solid food.

Isabella was forced to use a feeding tube that delivered liquid nourishment straight to her stomach, a painful and frightening treatment for a young child. But when her parents discovered and were accepted into a treatment program for which doctors said Isabella was “an ideal candidate,” United Healthcare refused to pay. Of course, the company had gladly accepted the Griggs’ premiums for years.

After waiting weeks for approval, Stephanie says:

First, we were told that the paperwork was lost, and then we were told that it was being denied….They make all that money off the backs of people like us.

It was only after Stephanie posted a YouTube video chronicling their battle and United Healthcare’s despicable denials, that the Griggs’ family saw some action. After thousands of views, posting on insurance watchdog websites, United Healthcare, seeing the quick viral growth of the video, suddenly had a change of heart and agreed to cover the treatment.

Click here to see Isabella’s story and those of two other United Healthcare customers coldly denied the life-changing treatment. Click here to find out how much insurance industry CEOs are making out of the broken health care system and here to tell your own story of insurance industry abuses.

Labor issues call for a new New Deal

From: PWW

Author: John Wojcik
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 07/29/09 13:13

The executive council of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, called for a massive second economic stimulus package yesterday, modeled after FDR’s Works Progress Administration, noting that the agency put 3.5 million people to work in 1935 alone. The council, after a one-day meeting yesterday in Silver Springs, Md., declared:

“President Roosevelt’s strategy can be re-engineered to help revitalize the modern manufacturing sector by putting the jobless to work renovating factories and public structures, while others can develop financing and marketing plans to support domestic production and jobs.”

In addition to the WPA-type program the federation said the second stimulus plan must include an additional seven weeks or more extension of jobless benefits, another increase in food stamp benefits, more aid to state and local governments to prevent further layoffs and service cuts and more spending on infrastructure and clean energy products.

The federation said the measures are called for because the current recession is much deeper than anyone had first thought.

The call for the second stimulus was issued after the executive council met in a closed-door session with Jared Bernstein, a top economic aide in the Obama administration. During the session Bernstein talked about the administration’s pro-labor moves, said the first stimulus is slowly beginning to work and that the administration is not yet ready for a second stimulus.

AFL-CIO Policy Director Thea Lee said, in a phone interview, that Bernstein told the council that “one third of the stimulus money has been spent or is in the pipeline.” Lee said the union leaders directly pushed the administration spokesman for a second stimulus package and that “Bernstein said they’re not ready to talk about that yet.”

Labor has, of course, been more than ready to discuss a second stimulus.

Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, has been calling for one for several months.

Earlier this month Trumka said the first stimulus, at $787 billion, was “too small for an economy with a 9.5 percent jobless rate, falling industrial production, rising foreclosures and declining gross domestic product.”

The union leaders went further in their warnings about the economy yesterday than they have gone in any statement thus far. Their statement said that, within 12 months, one third of all U.S. workers could end up finding themselves in either the category of unemployed or underemployed.

The executive council also announced plans for two big labor mobilizations in August – one on health care and another on the Employee Free Choice Act.

Both campaigns are intended to counter the on-going business backed efforts against both health care reform and labor law reform.

Sources say the labor leaders were angry about the decision of the Democratic-run 111th Congress, due to divisions within the Democratic majority, to put off final decisions on health care until after Sept. 8.

Even as the council was meeting unions were funneling 50,000 phone calls to members of Congress as part of a national day of action on health care reform.

Discussing the Employee Free Choice Act after the meeting, AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff said, “The important thing is to preserve the essential elements of the Employee Free Choice Act: Restoring the freedom to organize and bargain collectively. That’s the measure by which any tweaking of the law will be judged.”

The council itself reaffirmed the federation’s strong support for the bill’s majority sign-up provision, which calls for recognition of a union as soon as a majority of workers sign cards indicating that they want representation by that union.

Acuff said that alternatives to majority sign-up, including mail-in ballots, mail-in authorization cards and quick NLRB elections were not discussed much at the meeting but were also not ruled out. “These would be dramatically better than what we have now,” he said.

Current law allows long campaigns that give employers the opportunity to harass, intimidate and fire union organizers.

Senate sponsor Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, continues to insist that majority sign-up is still on the table. “Nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to,” he is saying.

After the meeting AFL-CIO Legislative Director, Bill Samuel and AFSCME President Gerald McEntee described some of the discussion on health care reform.

“We reviewed what’s happened so far and talked about our success in beating back the idea of taxing health benefits,” Samuel said.

“But if the Senate Finance Committee decides to let employers off the hook and to ax the government run public option, we’ll have to see what to do,” said McEntee.

McEntee’s union, alone, has some 16,000 members out campaigning for health care with a strong public option and is running a national television ad campaign on the issue.

White House school reform plan draws mixed reaction

From: PWW

Author: Susan Webb
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 07/27/09 14:41

Teachers unions and advocates gave a mixed reaction to a $4.35 billion education reform initiative announced by President Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan last week.

Billed by Obama as “one of the largest investments in education reform in American history,” the new program is part of the $787 billion economic stimulus plan passed by Congress and signed into law by Obama in February.

Under the “Race to the Top” program, states will compete for federal funding grants for innovation in education.

"Rather than divvying it up and handing it out, we are letting states and districts compete for it,” Obama said as he and Duncan announced the program last Friday. “That's how we can incentivize excellence and spur reform and launch a race for the top in America's public schools.”

Duncan said his department will be “scrutinizing state applications for a coordinated and deep-seated commitment to reform.”

Among the more controversial elements of Race to the Top are requirements that promote the growth of charter schools, link teacher evaluation and pay to student performance and push for national student performance standards — presumably measured by standardized tests.

Duncan said states will be awarded grants based on their readiness to implement four core reforms:

* “adopt common, internationally-benchmarked K-12 standards that truly prepare students for college and careers.” To speed this process, Duncan said, the Race to the Top program will set aside $350 million to fund the development of” rigorous, common state assessments.”

* “monitor growth in student learning—and identify effective instructional practices.”

* “identify effective teachers and principals, reward and retain more top-notch teachers—and improve or replace ones who aren't up to the job.”

* "institute far-reaching reforms, replace school staff, and change the school culture.”

Duncan emphasized that the four reforms are interrelated, and “one reform reinforces the others.”

“When teachers get better data on student growth,” he said, “it empowers teachers to tailor classroom instruction to the needs of their students and boost student achievement.”

“When principals are able to identify their most effective and least effective teachers, it makes it easier for them to place teachers where they are needed most—and provide struggling teachers with help.”

“When superintendents have the authority to tackle their lowest performing schools by replacing staff and shaking up the school culture, they will have the ability—for the first time—to close or remake the dropout factories in our urban districts that are at the root of our dropout problem.”

Obama said the Race to the Top competition “will not be based on politics or ideology or the preferences of a particular interest group.”

“We will use the best evidence available to determine whether a state can meet a few key benchmarks for reform — and states that outperform the rest will be rewarded with a grant,” the president said.

Many education reform advocates, including teachers and their unions, are concerned that the competition guidelines appear to place excessive reliance on standardized multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank tests

National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel said in a statement that the NEA would “encourage the Education Department to think more broadly about what it views as the basic tenets of a student’s educational experience.”

“If we continue to focus narrowly on test scores, then students in need of the most support will continue to get more test prep rather than the rich, challenging, engaging education they deserve,” Van Roekel said.

“Teachers should be evaluated on their practice using multiple criteria, not just one,” he said.

Likewise, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said on the AFT website, “Hopefully we will agree that teacher evaluations must be improved the right way. We need meaningful, fair and multiple measures for supporting and evaluating teachers so that evaluations aren't based on one observation by a principal or one standardized test score."

Weingarten and Van Roekel along with state and local teachers union leaders were among the invited guests at the July 24 announcement of the Race to the Top initiative.

One of the local leaders, Jean Clements, president of the Hillsborough (Fla.) Classroom Teachers Association, a joint affiliate of the AFT and the NEA, addressed the gathering. "There is no 'one thing' that will improve teacher quality or student achievement," she said.

She cited successful joint initiatives by her local union and school district including high-quality mentoring and coaching, well-trained principals who work collaboratively with teachers, adequate resources, and professional growth opportunities at all career stages.

Noted educator and reform advocate Deborah Meier says the drive for national standardized testing gives her “chills.”

In a July 14 interview posted on her web site, Meier condemns reliance on standardized tests. “We have made what can be measured cheaply (and thus is easily ranked) the definition of being ‘well-educated’,” Meier says. “We have defined ‘achievement’ and even ‘performance’ to scores on paper-and-pencil tasks, largely of the multiple choice variety, without any evidence that this is wise policy, or will produce either a stronger economy or a stronger democracy. (Or even stronger college performance!)”

The two national teachers unions said they would study the details of the Race to the Top proposal and, in Van Roekel’s words, “use the 30-day comment period to find common ground with the administration.”

suewebb @ pww.org