Hillary booed at NEA convention over favorable reference to charter schools...
Hillary Clinton and NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia at the July 2016 NEA convention. Both national teacher unions, the NEA and the smaller AFT, began supporting Hillary in October 2015, despite the fact that many of their members (some say, a majority) supported Bernie Sanders. Clinton spoke at the July 5 session of the NEA "Representative Assembly" (what the NEA calls its national convention) on July 5, 2016. Photo by NEA Today.Hillary Clinton was booed at the National Education Association (NEA) convention on July 5, 2016 when she tried to make a favorable reference to charter schools. The booing, which has not been widely reported, came when in her speech to the convention she called for "cooperation" between public schools and "public charter schools." The deep divisions in the Democratic Party over education policy and the massive privatization of public services promoted by the two most recent Democratic administrations were partly glossed over by the reception of Mrs. Clinton at the NEA RA. But that brief honeymoon ended when Clinton tried to talk favorably about charter schools.
The URL for the boos heard during her favorable remarks about charter schools can be found at: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/clinton-charter-school-teachers-union-boos-225117
The boos came during a portion of Clinton's prepared speech after Clinton was (partly) critical of the targeting of so-called "failing schools" by education policy (including, she did not note, the "Race to The Top" program of the Obama administration and the massive support for charter schools by Barack Obama and his long-term Education Secretary Arne Duncan). Clinton didn't mention the fact that the Obama administration replaced a supporter of charter schools (Arne Duncan) with a former charter school huckster (John King) as U.S. Secretary of Education a few months ago.
POLITICO CAUGHT THE BOOS AND REPORTED AS FOLLOWS:
Clinton's charter school comments prompt boos at teachers union event, By KIMBERLY HEFLING, POLITICO, 07/05/16 01:39 PM EDT
Hillary Clinton on Tuesday said traditional public schools and charter schools should share ideas — a remark met with boos by delegates from the National Education Association’s representative assembly.
To the thousands of teachers gathered at the labor union’s annual conference, Clinton said “when schools get it right, whether they are traditional public schools or public charter schools, let’s figure out what’s working ... and share it with schools across America.”
Some teachers in the audience booed. Clinton continued to preach cooperation.
“We can do that,” she said. “We’ve got no time for all of these education wars.”
The presidential hopeful won back the crowd by making a distinction between charter schools in general, and those schools run by for-profit companies. Clinton said people on the outside are pushing “for-profit charter schools on our kids.”
“We will never stand for that. That is not acceptable,” Clinton said to cheers.
At some charter schools, however, the distinction between for-profit and nonprofit status is murky. A school may be nonprofit, but it can hire a for-profit management company, which can be run by the same people as the nonprofit.
The Clintons are longtime charter school supporters, but charters are opposed by many teachers union members. Clinton was endorsed in October by the NEA — at a critical time in the Democratic primary. But Clinton’s support for charters has created some unease among rank-and-file union members, some of whom view charter schools as a threat to the survival of traditional schools. Soon after Clinton received the NEA endorsement last fall, Clinton surprised charter school backers when she criticized charter schools that "don't take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don't keep them.”
Charter schools are publicly funded, but they don’t have to follow all of the same rules as traditional public schools. With a nationwide enrollment of more than 2.5 million students, charters have become especially popular in urban areas.
Many Republican politicians wholeheartedly support charter schools. But even as President Barack Obama’s administration has backed them, Democrats are more divided as to whether charters are good for public education.
The NEA is the nation’s largest labor union, and it endorsed Clinton as Bernie Sanders was gaining momentum and Vice President Joe Biden was considering a bid for the White House. The move defied many state affiliates that wanted the union to hold off on the endorsement.
After Tuesday's speech, NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia noted that some delegates in attendance actually work at charter schools. But she said that many charters have strayed from their initial purpose to be incubators of learning.
"For us, the anger comes from the growing franchise for-profit charter schools," Eskelsen Garcia said. "When they move in, they devastate the local school district.”
About 7,500 NEA delegates from around the country are attending the NEA’s representative assembly in Washington. Delegates are educators from both K-12 and higher education, and include education support staff.
Both the NEA and the other major teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers, were early endorsers of Clinton.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/clinton-charter-school-teachers-union-boos-225117#ixzz4DccK4GkV
A REPORT BY THE REPORTER FROM THE ATLANTIC ALSO CAUGHT THE TONE OF THE NEA'S RANK AND FILE RESPONSE TO HILLARY'S SPEECH, NOTING THAT CLINTON IS TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO RESPOND TO OBAMA'S UNION BUSTING EDUCATION AGENDA...
Hours Before Campaigning With Obama, Clinton Tries to Distance Herself on Education... The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee wants to stick close, but not too close, to the president’s legacy. EMILY DERUY JUL 5, 2016 THE ATLANTIC ON LINE, EDUCATION
Hillary Clinton used her address at the National Education Association’s annual meeting as an easy opportunity to criticize Trump for failing to support students. Her attempt to distance herself just enough from President Obama to attract teachers, but not so much as to alienate his supporters, proved a more challenging balancing act.
Speaking to more than 7,000 members of the largest labor union in the United States, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said, “It is time to stop focusing on, quote, failing schools. Let’s focus on all our great schools, too.” Standardized testing, Clinton added, should go back to its “original purpose” of helping teachers and parents figure out which kids needs support.
The comments sounded innocuous enough, but they generated some of the loudest cheers during Clinton’s half-hour speech. Teachers have been among the harshest critics of the Obama administration’s push to identify, and they contend, ostracize, consistently low-performing schools, and the remarks gave some NEA members hope that a Clinton administration would be more friendly to educators. Teachers sometimes felt like they were being punished under Obama, said Sue Cahill, a kindergarten teacher from Marshalltown, Iowa, who said she walked away from the speech thinking a Clinton presidency “would be different.”
That’s exactly what the Clinton camp would like to hear. But Clinton, who boarded Air Force One with the president for a campaign stop in North Carolina immediately after her speech, also disappointed some of the union’s three million members when she said that as president, she would look to both charter schools and traditional public schools for models of what is working in education. “Let’s sit at one table,” she said. “We’ve got no time for all these education wars.”
The line didn’t go over so well. The Obama administration has been viewed by many union members as too cozy with charter schools, and Clinton’s comments seemed to do little to allay the fear that she would continue that pattern. Just after Clinton’s remarks, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, the union’s president, sought to explain the negative reaction to the charter comments by telling several reporters that “the anger comes from...for-profit charters,” which the union has accused of sucking badly needed funding from neighborhood schools.
While Cahill and a number of other NEA members said they were ultimately eager to back Clinton, she hasn’t won over others, including a science teacher from Seattle named Noam Gundle. The high-school biology instructor said he supported Bernie Sanders over Clinton because of the senator’s “progressive” education beliefs and ability to organize. He distrusted Clinton’s relationship with various education foundations, he said, and was upset with the NEA for backing Clinton prematurely.
"Let’s focus on all our great schools, too."
Gundle isn’t an anomaly. Clinton earned the union’s endorsement last fall in a move that prompted some chapters to refuse outright to support the endorsement and fueled accusations that the union didn’t adequately consult its members ahead of time. But other members said the NEA’s failure to endorse a candidate in the 2008 presidential primary was a cautionary lesson. That decision, they argued, allowed the Obama administration to expand charter schools and high-stakes testing. Eskelsen Garcia said Tuesday in response to a question about the early endorsement that the decision “passed overwhelmingly.”
While Gundle, who called Trump the “biggest danger to our country in 100 years,” said he will cast a ballot for Clinton in November, he won’t be doing so eagerly. “I think that we ought to be holding their feet to the fire,” he said of the candidates. The lack of enthusiasm for Clinton among teachers who had high hopes for a Sanders nomination could make mobilizing the union’s 3 million members a serious challenge. But Jaim Foster, a kindergarten teacher in Arlington, Virginia, said it was time for union members to put aside their differences and come together to elect Clinton. The union in his area has been going door-to-door and waging a social-media campaign to rally members behind the candidate, he said. Nikki Woodward, an early-childhood educator from Gaithersburg, Maryland, said local members have been organizing “phone parties” to call colleagues and urge them to vote.
The hope among supporters is that, even if they can’t be convinced to actively call for Clinton to win, fear of a Trump victory will drive some turnout among less-than-enthused members. Cahill, the Iowa teacher, recalled a 2006 immigration raid on a meatpacking plant in her town that she said rattled the community. “That’s what I fear is the alternative.” But negativity isn’t generally as good for turnout as actual enthusiasm, and, as Trump and his supporters have pointed out correctly, he’s successfully mobilizing people who don’t typically vote.
Eskelsen Garcia knows this. “This election has to be about so much more” than the Anyone But Trump movement, she said as she introduced Clinton. “Hillary sees our students as whole human beings, not as test takers.” Whether she can mobilize members behind that notion is still up for debate.
