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Teachers, RTW, and the ALEC Agenda in Minnesota
Yes, they're out to get us, but at least we can guess what's coming next. Minnesota 2020 and others have already looked at the connection between the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the current fightabout teacher tenure. They racked up some wins prior to this and have laid the groundwork for future fights. Thanks to some digging from the folks at Phi Delta Kappa, we can get a decent feel for what to expect if conservatives win the current fight about teacher retention.
Synthesizing several reports and investigations, we now have a decent list of top ALEC priorities in education. Here's a sample:
- Alternative teacher certification
- Increase student testing
- Use charter schools to weaken school districts
- Link teacher evaluation to standardized testing
- Use test-linked teacher evaluations to govern layoffs
- Undermine all unions via so-called “right to work” legislation
- Use test-linked teacher evaluations to govern all teacher pay and retention decisions
- Wisconsin-style abolition of collective bargaining rights for teachers and other public workers
- Pursue privatization through vouchers, for-profit charters, and any other means possible
Items in bold have already been achieved in Minnesota (though most are more complicated than just being ALEC initiatives). They're meant to lay the groundwork for the later items. Those in italics are active topics in Minnesota's state government right now, and the items at the end are the to-do list for future sessions.
ALEC has done a superlative job coordinating a multi-front campaign against public education as we know it. They see teachers' unions as their biggest political obstacles, so they introduce legislation that undermines the legitimacy of the teaching profession and frames teachers as a suspect class by invoking questionable myths and anecdotes. They mistrust public investment, so they set up as many alternatives to traditional public schools as possible via charter schools and vouchers. They then emphasize a set of unreliable tests to further muddy the image of teachers and public schools in the eyes of the public.
The worst part is, they've been winning, in no small part by dialing up the right rhetoric to win over some progressives who genuinely care about closing the achievement gap and doing right by all kids. The contradiction should be obvious: Universal educational equity can't be achieved by destroying the one institution providing universal educational access.
Posted in Education | Related Topics: Conservative Policy Teachers
4 Comments
March 29, 2012 at 11:02 am
ALEC is not “just another organization.”
It comprises over 2,000 state legislators from every state and hundreds of our largest corporations. It is led by the Koch Brothers, the National Chamber of Commerce and the anti-tax movement led by Grover Norquist.
It has tame think tanks in every state whose job it is to “prove” that global warming is a hoax, that unions are bad for workers (rather than the only protection workers have from employer wage exploitation and reduced worker safety), that the war against teachers and the entire public school system is not as described in the article above, the maintenance of gigantic tax breaks for corporations and wealthy persons, the destruction of the social safety net and other stuff you can read about at www.alecexposed.org.
State legislators, including 30 or so from Minnesota, travel to ALEC’s twice-yearly meetings at luxurious resorts, often on “scholarships” arriving from ALEC via lobbyists. Journalists are barred; non-loyalists are ushered out. There, they meet with a select group of corporations to write the legislation that will achieve the corporate agenda. Republican legislators try to pass the same legislation in support of the corporate agenda in every state, often with the same wording.
I sincerely hope you educate yourself on ALEC and the real danger it represents: that our democracy will become a nation ruled by a symbiotic corporate-governmental elite.
March 23, 2012 at 11:40 am
Chris, I would talk to the folks in Arizona who live under the new immigration system (ALEC bill) and the families and communities grieving in Sanford FL after the doctrine of “Shoot First” (an ALEC bill) has manifested there. It’s not the bill templates, it’s the funding that comes with them. And yes, I know we cannot document the sources of ALEC’s money and their expenditures, thanks to Citizens United and our overall campaign finance and lobbying laws. But there’s reasonable research about the purchasing power and what it has yielded this group here http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/07/10887/alec-funding.
You are completely right that union members—and any working people that care about economic stability, equality, and a shot at prosperity—should be working our asses off to win local and state elections. But it’s not silly to point out where these destructive proposals come from, to draw logical conclusions about the campaign funding that goes to legislators who carry ALEC legislation, and to include as part of our advocacy the absolute demand to know what groups are donating to our lawmakers.
It’s important to know where this is coming from. You’re not wrong about fighting it, but part of that fight is exposing how they use vast resources and what steps we need to take to limit that unadulterated use of money to fix a very disempowering system of influence over legislative actions.
March 23, 2012 at 10:54 am
Michael, this is a really silly piece.
ALEC is an organization like countless others (both conservative and progressive). Yes they produce template legislation. (so do many other organizations and many of these other organizations produce template legislation that overlap common themes with ALEC’s templates)
Ultimately they are just a collection of common policy goals and templates that are based on the current political climate for the Republican party. To suggest that they are some all-powerful demon organization is short sited and a waste of time by looking in the wrong direction.
Getting all worked up about ALEC is misguided. It still takes local legislatures to introduce and pass legislation. ALEC is simply streamlining the process by providing templates (kind of like finding lesson plans online *cough cough*). It’s common for other lobbyists to do the exact same thing…YES even lobbyists with progressive agendas! (THE HORROR!) This is how the process works today. It’s reality. live with it!
I get completely annoyed by the unending focus on ALEC. It’s dumb. Focus our efforts on winning local elections. Getting Union members to actually get off their asses and vote for the candidates that will support their causes (THIS DIDN’T HAPPEN in 2010 and now there are consequences to be paid!)
Pointing a finger down the dark alley and whispering “ALEC is out to get you” is childish. Union membership / leadership need to get their act together and mobilize people to vote and then make sure they vote for the right candidates. THAT is the ultimate problem, because quite honestly, it was an EPIC failure on their part in the 2010 election cycle, and simply drumming up boogey men ala ALEC isn’t going to solve that core problem.
Kip says:
March 29, 2012 at 8:13 pm
The word needs to get out on ALEC and in a very big way. The retoric ALEC produces is among the best propaganda put out since the days of Hitler. They know how to hit peoples buttons. My best advice to people is to “follow the money”!! Why would people like the Koch brothers, Coors, Wallmart, Kraft, and the American Chamber of Commerce care about workers? They don’t, but they make it sound so good. People who don’t actively seek out the truth, find out what’s behind the simplistic 15 second sound bite—they drink the kool-ade, and buy into the schemes to make rich people richer and destroy the middle class. Again, we need to get the word out on this propaganda!