CFT United
CFT United
CFT United, previously named California Teacher, is the union’s flagship magazine that is emailed to all union members. The award-winning magazine contains union news and positions important to members, and covers major issues in each division of the CFT: PreK-12, Classified, Community College, University, and Retired. Browse stories by date here or by index.
CFT United is published regularly during the academic year. We welcome unsolicited articles, letters, and story ideas. Please send letters, submissions, or other inquiries to Publications Director Jane Hundertmark.
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A Tale of Hope and Caution: How three Latin American nations are defending public education
By Joshua Pechthalt, CFT President
As part of AFT’s ongoing effort to build alliances with educators and trade unionists around the world, President Randi Weingarten led an AFT delegation in May to meet education union leaders and other unionists in Brazil, Argentina and Chile. I joined them as we looked at their multi-year effort to defend and expand public education, and to develop a response to attacks.
Lessons from Latin America: Reclaiming public education requires powerful fight back
By Joshua Pechthalt, CFT President
The CFT’s emerging campaign for quality public education underscores the fundamental problem we face in this country — the lack of a powerful social movement for economic, political and social equality.
Federal cuts threaten cooking and gardening classes
Berkeley community rallies to save famous kids’ grow-it-yourself program
Facing a massive loss of federal funds, Berkeley Unified officials may yank an innovative gardening and cooking program up by the roots. The slash and burn tactics are drawing widespread community fire.
For about 15 years, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture has taught low-income families about nutrition through school programs like the Network for a Healthy California. Congress, however, has revised its funding formula and California, which used to receive nearly a third of all USDA money, will lose about 40 percent of its grant. The funding for direct-to-kids programs like the NHC will be shifted to local health agencies to run publicity campaigns.
Why does Union City, New Jersey, matter in California?
David Kirp says lessons learned in this Latino community offer a narrative of hope
Editor’s note: In his new book, Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for American Education, UC Berkeley Professor David Kirp chronicles how a poor urban district transports Latino immigrant children into the education mainstream. In Kirp’s words…
Researcher Berliner describes how the education “crisis” is manufactured
David Berliner began criticizing the school reform industrial complex when he co-authored The Manufactured Crisis 17 years ago. He brought his case, strengthened by new statistical evidence, to delegates at the CFT Convention.
Educators at three charter schools choose AFT as their union
From a county jail to construction academy, charter workers are seeking union representation
Seeking a larger voice in their workplaces, career stability and the power to better serve their students, teachers and counselors at three charter schools recently voted AFT as their union, and will have the benefit of belonging to well-established and effective AFT local unions.
Adult educators build awareness, support to save schools
United street action and online communities making a difference
ADULT EDUCATION HAS been on the ropes, yet it continues to come back swinging to defend programs that are vital to many California communities.
Massive Open Online Classes threaten quality of education
Low-cost educational alternative likely to widen digital divide
MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE CLASSES have been hailed by officials at the companies that run them (the three biggest are edX, Udacity and Coursera) as a way to provide access to classes at elite universities to everyone, but critics say that MOOCs — free online course with potentially thousands of students, many of them outside the United States — would undermine education quality, increase the digital divide and cost teachers their jobs.
Locals take bold steps to build power in tough times
Faculty-classified alliance, improved communications empower members
Two Southern California classified locals
have recently seen how unity pays off.
“Our members understand that the more of us who go in, the
stronger voice we have,” says Debbi Claypool, president of the
Palomar Council of Classified Employees.
The northern San Diego County local represents about 400 classified employees at Palomar College, including maintenance, clerical, police, payroll and janitorial, according to Claypool, a business services technician.
Members work to end high-stakes test for second graders
CFT continues efforts to abolish STAR test for state’s youngest learners
Stephanie Bernstein says her second graders are typical seven-year-olds: “They need to get up and move about every 15 minutes.”
CFT launches member discussion of “quality public education”
The union explores partnership of community and educators to launch quality public education campaign
Making schools community hubs is key to the union’s campaign for quality public education, CFT President Joshua Pechthalt told participants at the Leadership Conference. Connections with community members comprise the CFT’s greatest strength and he encouraged educators to mine those ties.
Seattle teachers ratchet up movement against high-stakes tests
Garfield High School teachers boycott administration of state-mandated assessment
SEATTLE’S GARFIELD HIGH School teachers made the momentous decision in January to refuse to administer the state-mandated Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test — and it began with a discussion in the teachers’ lounge.
CFT Convention delegates elect leadership slate
Speakers laud union’s accomplishments and inspire future campaigns
Midway through this year’s state convention, CFT President Josh Pechthalt and Secretary Treasurer Jeff Freitas ran unopposed as part of a slate called QES-Quality Education Slate and the entire slate was elected by acclamation.
Who’s spying on you? Protecting your privacy in the age of servers and social media – 6 Maxims for your digital work life
Protecting your privacy in the age of servers and social
media
By Robert J. Bezemek And David Conway
Almost everyone uses social media. Whether it’s emailing, surfing the web, sending text messages, tweeting or tumblr, we are treating social media as an extension of our personal conversations with family, friends and co-workers. And we do it from every imaginable location — public transit, automobiles, restaurants, parks, sidewalks, the office, and throughout the campuses where we work.
Yes on Prop. 30: Tax the wealthy to raise money for schools and colleges
In the last four years, our schools and colleges have been hit with $20 billion in cuts, have lost 30,000 faculty members, and now have class sizes that are among the largest in the country.
The way forward: Greatness by Design
Over the past year CFT was a proud participant in developing the recommendations of Superintendent Tom Torlakson’s Educational Excellence Task Force and we applaud the results of this lengthy process.
No on Prop. 32: Don’t let billionaires take away our voice
California voters appear poised to reject a November ballot measure that would ban political contributions by payroll deduction, according to a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll. Forty-four percent of those surveyed said they opposed Proposition 32, which would eliminate the main fundraising tool of unions. Just 36 percent said they supported the measure.
Legislature fails to pass meaningful teacher evaluation bill
Opponents don’t care about validity of test scores, only scapegoating teachers
How could a bill that would have improved the teacher evaluation process die in the California Legislature? Assembly Bill 5, “A Best Practices Teacher Evaluation System,” fell victim to faulty assumptions and reasoning that defies logic. And our schools are poorer for it.
Get union endorsements fast using the Voter eGuide on your phone or computer
Access the Voter eGuide
YOU CAN NOW GET the union’s endorsements online using your mobile phone, tablet, or computer. In your personalized Voter eGuide, you will find positions on candidates and ballot measures based on where you live and are registered to vote.
Brown signs bill to improve reporting for adjuncts
The governor signed CFT-sponsored SB 114. Authored by Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), this bill helps correct misreporting of part-time faculty work to ensure the right amount of retirement service credit.
Tonkovich teaches and organizes with humor, joy and irony
UC Irvine lecturer and author credits mentors, and Ronald Reagan, for his activism
Q&A with Andrew Tonkovich
Andrew Tonkovich is a lecturer in the English department at UC Irvine and president of UC-AFT Irvine, Local 2226. He edits the literary magazine Santa Monica Review, and hosts Bibliocracy Radio, a weekly books show on KPFK 90.7 FM in Southern California. Recent short stories, essays and reviews of his have appeared in Faultline, The Rattling Wall, OC Weekly and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
New employees to face reduced retirement benefits
Workers not yet hired will take biggest hit under law passed by legislators with no input from public employee unions
A new law passed in the final hours of the legislative session makes sweeping changes to public employee pensions that impose most of the changes on workers not yet hired, creating a two-tier system in the workplace where two groups of workers doing the same work receive different retirement benefits.
Community stands with beloved City College of San Francisco
Report faults school for having too little money and doing too much for students
In early July, more than 300 people packed a San Francisco meeting hall to express their outrage over a letter from the Accrediting Commission for Community & Junior Colleges saying City College of San Francisco must prove its fiscal stability by March 15 to remain accredited.
Chicago strike models winning political strategy for California election victory
By Joshua Pechthalt, CFT President
The Chicago Teachers Union strike gave a shot in the arm to education unions and all of labor. CTU reawoke a labor movement lacking confidence that it could take a militant stand and win.