CNN Uses Massive Education Protest to Push Performance Pay

The March 4^th protest scheduled to take place in 29 States across America in protest against cut-backs in the education system has been interpreted by CNN’s resident expert as an attack against the overpayment of teachers. Steve Perry, CNN’s “Education Contributor” suggests that the protests are a sign that “There needs to be some honest conversations about what’s happening [in our schools].” Without pointing his finger directly at teachers, Perry notes that “The system is being fleeced by the people within.” Yet, there seems little other explanation in Perry’s view than that the teachers’ unions are the primary ones doing the fleecing, for, as CNN’s news release quotes Perry, “teachers’ salaries make up 70 to 80 percent of schools’ budgets. In order for school programs to survive, those salaries must be based on performance and revenue instead of union mandates.” So the whole protest, it would seem was one being driven by students (the victims) against the unions (villains). Despite the fact that this protest is being driven by teachers, unions and students in solidarity against education cuts, CNN’s man uses the protest to push anti-unionism and performance pay. And it is telling that he can cite no higher authority on education than the CNN business model:

“At CNN, you don’t get a raise if there’s no money. It doesn’t happen that way…If there’s no money and you’ve not performed well, then you do not get a raise.” http://www.hartfordschools.org/contact.php

Thus, the real basis, on this point of view, is the fact that performance pay has not been implemented to kill unions and drive teacher pay down from the 70-80% of is budget that this labour-intensive institution has traditionally paid out in the past. Only when teachers can actually drive up revenue should they be entitled to raises. In a strange kind of way, Perry almost makes you believe for a second that the strike is based on a need to put teachers on straight commission.

Steve Perry is the founder of Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford , Connecticut , where the board has fully implemented school choice, a favoured policy of charter schools and privatization.

pf button both CNN Uses Massive Education Protest to Push Performance Pay

http://forpublicschool.blogspot.com George Thompson

What CNN is doing is common practice. The media has to give the last word to its right-wing think mouthpieces. The Christian Science Monitor, for instance, uses the protest as further justification to consider “innovative” ways of funding, which, of course, is code for privatization via partnership with corporations.

“But one fact remains: “The real problem is that the state is broke. No amount of demonstrating will change that fact,” says Steven Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College in Northfield Minnesota.
What the demonstrations can do is raise consciousness and perhaps begin to pressure cash-strapped states into thinking innovatingly [sic] about funding higher education.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0304/Day-of-action-highlights-education-woes
Bruce Daley

I wonder what other solutions you have for this problem. Taxation is a patch, even if you tax corporations and individuals the entitlement structure will not sustain. CA education authorities pays billions of dollars to retirees. A 50% cut in those payment will make the CA education system flushed with cash for years and years to come. And I also don’t understand what’s wrong with pay for performance: you want your kids to be taught by low level teachers?
John Garfield

Please stop giving Steve Perry a forum to voice his incorrect personal opinions on what he believes are the best practices for education. He has made progress at one school, but is hardly qualified to speak to a national audience. His arguments, for some reason always point back toward teachers as the problem and he has the solutions to fix the problem. In the end he comes across as an angry want to be intellectual.
Howard Beale

Bruce Daley’s comment misses the point. The point is not whether pay for performance is wrong, but how corporate influence is making use of CNN to present its own agenda in the middle of a story that is a protest against education cuts. There weren’t any signs or protestors saying “we need pay for performance”. It’s a complete non-sequitor, and Perry’s opinion has no place in the story, exept as evidence of the payolla per “report” system of accountability being used by CNN. In a way there’s a certain analogy to be made here: just as it’s cheaper to deliver corporate propaganda than it is to pay real reporters, so will it be cheaper to hire corporate propagandists than to hire real teachers. The truth is a luxury that’s just too damned expensive in these troubled times. I’ll take lower taxes and lies any day.
Vee Landry

Mr. Perry’s magnet school expelled students who did’t make the grade academically or behavioraly–his magnet (private) school is left with only the best. It is not difficult to educate the brightest and most motivated. Perry’s school should be required to take in EVERYONE including Special Ed kids. Then we shall see his numbers drop like a stone.