What's next for the education uprisings?
This year I’ve spent a good deal of time following the teacher uprisings around the country. They’re still not over: thousands of North Carolina educators are planning to take off work on May 16th, to rally in Raleigh on the first day of their state’s legislative session. Yesterday teachers in Pueblo, Colorado launched the first teachers strike in the state in almost 25 years.
As someone interested in the intersections between labor and education, it’s been fascinating to follow all this organizing. Many of you might be surprised to learn that it was a 23-year-old music teacher in Phoenix who sparked the strike in Arizona, where teachers across the state ended up staging a historic six-day walkout. Many of us in education journalism tend to focus on “veteran teacher” narratives, and so I thought the impact this one young educator had on his colleagues across Arizona was pretty remarkable.
With that said… I’ve had some #feelings lately about the uprisings. A few weeks ago I covered a school-bus driver strike in DeKalb County, Georgia, where hundreds of low-paid drivers called in sick to protest their working conditions. Eight drivers considered “ringleaders” were immediately fired, and have not been reinstated. This episode was largely ignored by advocacy groups and the media.
Today at The American Prospect I have an op-ed where I worked to get some of my thoughts down about these dynamics. The teacher protests have commanded great public support. Is that because the thought of full-time workers struggling to make ends meet outrages us, or teachers specifically?
And then there are frustrating efforts to reverse the gains of these movements. Yesterday I published a story at Rewire.News looking how conservative activists in Oklahoma are trying to rollback the tax increases passed to fund OK teacher raises.
Finally, last week I published a story about teachers at the largest charter network in L.A filing union cards after a very heated three-year organizing battle. The network—Alliance College-Ready Public Schools—has spent millions of dollars since 2015 fighting the union effort, and educators told me they felt their organizing is part and parcel of the broader uprisings we’re witnessing around the country.
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In some other news, I’m happy to say I was picked as a 2017 finalist for the Education Writers Association awards! I’ll be in L.A. next week for their national journalism conference, which is where they’ll also announce the winners.
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