Whereas, for the last several decades, wealthy individuals, using their for-profit companies, foundations, and fake grassroots groups, have been pushing for what they call “reform” of public education, from pre-K through higher education, but their “reform” is actually privatization that diverts public education tax dollars into private profits; and

Whereas in preK-12 these policies include but are not limited to:

• Charter schools and education management companies that can cherry pick easy-to- educate students and are held to lower standards of accountability than regular public schools, and have been plagued with corruption and fraud;
• Starving traditional public schools of funding while showering with money charter schools that do not serve all students, leading to overcrowding in traditional public schools;
• Repetitive standardized testing used to falsely claim school and individual teacher failure;
• School closure as a remedy, even though it leads to more crowded schools and only benefits real estate interests;
• Attacks on education unions and experienced teachers, leading to higher turnover and a steep decline in college students preparing to be teachers;
• Common Core curriculum designed by and for vendors;
• Replacing local school boards with takeovers by cronies of mayors or governors; and

Whereas in higher education these policies include but are not limited to:

• Shifting the costs of education from the government to students and their families;
• False measures of student success that do not take into account the failure of national and state legislatures to fund colleges and universities nor provide adequate financial aid for individual students;
• Demanding larger class sizes and indiscriminate use of technology, which make student success less, not more, likely;
• Over reliance on part-time, “temporary” faculty, who are usually paid far less and receive fewer or no benefits compared to full-time tenured instructors, which also undermines faculty participation in shared governance;
• Privatizing student services to eliminate classified staff unions;
• Expanding administration with overpaid executives who take their cues more from the foundations of the wealthy than the needs of their students;
• Using the accreditation process to judge colleges on unwritten and illegal criteria; and

Whereas our state retirement funds have a fiduciary responsibility to at least do no harm to the public employees contributing to those funds;

Therefore, be it resolved that the California Federation of Teachers will work to have our members’ retirement funds avoid investing in, and where appropriate, divesting from, any of the corporations or money managers that lobby for and profit from privatizing public schools and/or attacking defined benefit pension plans; and

Be it finally resolved, that the employee retirement funds of the California Federation of Teachers itself shall avoid investing in, and where appropriate divesting from, any of the corporations or money managers that lobby for and profit from privatizing public schools and/or attacking defined benefit pension plans.
 

• Passed as Resolution 17 on March 25, 2018
• Submitted by the Retirement Policy Committee