Michigan House bills 4625-4628, which recently passed the state Senate and were signed into law by Republican Governor Rick Snyder, will gut tenure rights for public school teachers and college instructors and severely limit collective bargaining. The measure is one of the latest attacks on teachers and public education being encouraged by the Obama administration nationally.

The Michigan Education Association (MEA), an affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA), did nothing to oppose this attack. On the contrary, the state’s largest public employee union betrayed its 160,000 members’ interests and was complicit in the further dismantling of public education.

The following statement is being circulated by Socialist Equality Party supporters at Macquarie University in Sydney, where the National Tertiary Education Union is seeking to push through a new enterprise agreement that will further the federal Labor government’s “education revolution.” Similar agreements have been imposed at individual universities across Australia over the past 18 months, with the union isolating its members at each campus in order to prevent a unified struggle against the introduction of a free market regime that will undercut the conditions of staff and students nationally, as part of a broader assault on public services.

Amidst a flurry of last-minute bills passed at the end of the New York State legislative session in June was a “compromise” on tuition hikes for the state’s two major public university systems, the State University of New York (SUNY) and the City University of New York (CUNY).

Although slightly less drastic than Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo’s original proposal, the final bill, known as SUNY 2020, includes tuition increases of $300 per year over the next five years.

Under this legislation, in-state, undergraduate students in a typical four-year bachelor’s degree program will pay $900 more in their senior year than in their freshman year.

Events in the Australian state of Tasmania over the past few weeks have shone a revealing spotlight on the role of the Greens in spearheading austerity measures. In what the Murdoch-owned Hobart Mercury described as a “stunning backdown”, the Labor-Green state government was forced by public outrage to postpone plans to shut down 20 schools by the end of the year.

Closely supported by national Greens leader Bob Brown, the party’s state leader Nick McKim had been assigned the task—as education minister—of implementing the closures, a substantial attack on the public education system in a state with just over half a million people.

At least 36 states have announced funding cuts to public colleges and universities effective this fall. The reductions, totaling upwards of $5 billion nationwide, will immediately impact students and their families through tuition hikes and reduced financial aid.

As a direct result, thousands will be priced out of higher education altogether, and millions of others will have no choice but to take on still more loan debt.

Both the scale of the cuts and their immediacy present serious hardships for students. Many go into effect this month with the beginning of the new fiscal year, prompting universities to raise tuition and fees closer to the opening of fall semesters—less than a month away in some states—than ever before. Families may not find out about changes to their bills or to aid disbursements until the semester has gotten under way.

The California State University’s (CSU) Board of Trustees voted on Tuesday 13 to 2 in favor of increasing tuition by an additional 12 percent for the 23-campus system.

The 12 percent increase in tuition, amounting to an extra $588 in expenses for students each year, will be in addition to the previously approved 10 percent increase.

The latest hike will bring the upcoming year’s tuition to $5,472. Including the mandatory fees that average around $950, students will be paying about $6,422—double the amount required in 2007. This number does not include the cost of books and housing.

These tuition increases will mean that thousands of students will be priced out of attending the state’s major universities. The cost of education is dramatically higher even as the employment situation, particularly for young people, is disastrous.

Last month a new for-profit investment fund was created, the first of its kind, to finance the construction of charter schools across the United States. Jointly managed by Canyon Capital Realty Advisors ($20 billion in assets) and Agassi Ventures, LLC, owned by Andre Agassi, it plans to buy up undervalued urban land and jumpstart the construction of 75 new charter schools.[1]

The Canyon-Agassi Charter School Fund announcement states, “The fund will provide investors with current income and capital appreciation by responding to the growing demand for quality charter school facilities in the nation’s burgeoning urban centers and by capturing the opportunities arising out of the current dislocation in the real estate market.”

In other words, it will buy inner-city land cheaply, develop it and then sell the facilities to charter operations. The firm expects to raise $300 million in equity and invest up to $750 million.

Mary T. Wood became an advocate for charter school accountability in Michigan in 1999. That year, her daughter had enrolled at a new, very promising-sounding charter school, Conner Creek Academy, in her suburban Detroit neighborhood.

After the fifth grader described attending classes in tents on a playfield, Mary learned there was no occupancy approval for the school building. Then she discovered the names, addresses and resumes of the academy’s manager, its school board, were not filed with the state, as the law required.

Finally, she saw that these sorts of violations were commonplace and that parents throughout the state had the same concerns and many others. For example, she was contacted when a Detroit academy, Timbukto, was found to be offering inner-city parents $100 cash for enrolling their children.

The National Education Association—whose 3.2 million members have been a major target of the Obama administration’s attack on public school teachers—became the first major union to endorse the Democratic president’s reelection bid in 2012.

On Monday, 72 percent of the 8,000 delegates attending the union’s national convention in Chicago endorsed the president for a second term. “President Barack Obama shares our vision for a stronger America,” Dennis Van Roekel, president of NEA, declared. “He has never wavered from talking about the importance of education or his dedication to a vibrant middle class.”

Indeed, the president never stops talking about the importance of education while his administration wages an unrelenting war against public education on behalf of the financial and corporate interests that are setting out to destroy it.

The National Education Association—whose 3.2 million members have been a major target of the Obama administration’s attack on public school teachers—became the first major union to endorse the Democratic president’s reelection bid in 2012.

On Monday, 72 percent of the 8,000 delegates attending the union’s national convention in Chicago endorsed the president for a second term. “President Barack Obama shares our vision for a stronger America,” Dennis Van Roekel, president of NEA, declared. “He has never wavered from talking about the importance of education or his dedication to a vibrant middle class.”

Indeed, the president never stops talking about the importance of education while his administration wages an unrelenting war against public education on behalf of the financial and corporate interests that are setting out to destroy it.

Research published by the Institute of Education has revealed that one in six children is allocated a stream by the age of seven. Streaming is a distinct type of selection, in which pupils are placed into different classes on the basis of a judgment about their supposed academic ability.

Wales has the highest incidence of streaming, where one in five children (19.5 percent) are streamed by ability, Scotland 16 percent and Northern Ireland 11 percent.

Several research studies have proven that streaming and setting, where children are divided into ability groups within the same class, can cause long term damage to a child’s educational achievements and aspirations. Its prevalence reveals that a two-tier education system is firmly entrenched behind a mask of continued adherence to the comprehensive ideal of mixed ability teaching in order to at least partially overcome educational disadvantages associated with social class.

The ruling class in the United States is intensifying its campaign to dismantle public education.

With the new fiscal year that began yesterday, states throughout the country are slashing education funding, leading to the layoff of tens of thousands of teachers and the closure of hundreds of schools.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties are using the fiscal crisis—the outcome of decades of tax cuts to the rich, the bailout of the banks, and an economic crash caused by rampant speculation—as an opportunity to undermine and eliminate public education.

In 2010 alone, 151,000 state and local education workers were laid off. In the coming school year, a further 227,000 layoffs are planned, according to a recent survey by the American Association of School Administrators. This is the elimination, in just one year, of 2.2 percent of the 10.3 million state and local education workers in the US.

This week, 1,000 pink slips are being sent out to Chicago Public Schools (CPS) teachers. In addition, 150 educational support staff members who provide extracurricular help in mathematics and reading are also to lose their jobs.

Teachers who are fired as part of budget cuts are not eligible for their pensions, and are only eligible for day-to-day work as substitute teachers. Since 2009, around 4,000 teachers have been laid off as part of school closures, consolidations and budget cuts.

Chicago’s new Democratic mayor, Rahm Emanuel—Obama’s former chief of staff—recently announced a $75 million budget cut for CPS. The cuts are expected to result in increased class sizes, poorer transportation services for students, and the lack of janitors t
o clean classrooms.

Teachers in the Detroit suburb of Birmingham, Michigan ratified a new two-year concessions contract Tuesday as school districts across the state are in the midst of imposing a new round of layoffs and pay cuts on teachers and support staff.

The new contract requires teachers to pay 10 percent of total health insurance costs, some $200 a month for a family, and imposes a new 13-step salary schedule that lengthens the time it takes for teachers to receive pay raises. Teachers will also be required to work an extra day this year and next year with no additional pay.

The teachers’ union, the Birmingham Education Association, recommended acceptance of the cuts. BEA President Scott Morrow praised the ratification of the contract, declaring, “I am very glad to have a two-year contract in place.”

In the midst of historic austerity measures being implemented by the administration of Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, California public schools confront staggering budget shortfalls. In certain districts, privatization is being offered up as an alternative to mass teacher layoffs, school closures, program terminations, and increased class sizes.

State officials and private financiers are working to ensure that certain charter schools—at least for now—receive increased funding, while leaving public schools without the funds necessary to maintain even a minimum of necessary programs. Under these conditions, some teachers, demoralized by decades of relentless cuts and a union that collaborates with state officials, have declared themselves in support of the conversion of their schools into private charter schools. In fact, charter schools do not represent the way forward for the defense of education.

Detroit Public Schools (DPS) Emergency Financial Manager Roy Roberts announced on Thursday that the district would demand 10 percent wage cuts from all employees in 2012, while axing 853 more jobs. The cuts are part of a broader dismantling of the public education system in Detroit, and will come on top of previous concessions and mass layoffs of public school workers.

The plan estimates that 66,360 students will enroll next year, down from 74,000 total students this past year. All major contracts with the school district, including transportation, utilities, and supplies, will be rebid with planned reductions in services.

A proposal by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder to drastically reorganize the Detroit school district, the latest stage in the dismantling of public education in the city, has received the complete support of the Obama administration.

Snyder, a Republican, has announced a plan to establish a separate state agency to run “failing” schools in the city. These schools, operating under an emergency financial manager, will be free to wipe out teacher pay, job security and benefits. If implemented, the initiative would remove nearly a third of the remaining DPS schools from the system, following year after year in which dozens of schools have been closed or turned over to private charters.

The Chicago Board of Education last week unanimously voted to rescind a 4 percent pay raise owed to 30,000 teachers and indicated it would do the same in regard to scheduled raises contained in contracts with other employees of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS).

The decision is one of the first for the newly installed school board and an opening salvo by the administration of Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel against the jobs and living standards of teachers and other public employees. It also makes clear that the former White House chief of Staff and Wall Street investor plans to escalate the war against public education being spearheaded on the federal level by President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan.

Earlier this month, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Randi Weingarten, visited Detroit to meet with local union officials. The AFT-affiliated Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) has increasingly faced opposition by teachers for its complicity in the destruction of their jobs and living standards and in plans to privatize the public schools.

DFT President Keith Johnson, who barely won reelection in a January vote that was widely believed to be rigged, worked closely with Weingarten, then-Detroit schools Financial Manager Robert Bobb and Detroit Mayor Bing to ram through a contract in 2009 that cut teachers’ pay by $10,000, destroyed seniority and tenure protections, and integrated the DFT into the process of firing so-called “underperforming” teachers.