I toyed with the idea of writing an entire blog post this morning on how the GOP recaptured the Wisconsin state senate, since NEA seemed to think control of that chamber was such a big deal back in June, but I won’t be (such) a wise-ass.

The unions did what they needed to do. They helped re-elect the President and they brought to a halt any momentum there may have been for more serious and wide-ranging threats to their power base. They defeated hostile ballot measures in California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan and South Dakota, and were even able to put a tax hike over the top in the Golden State. There will be no mass movement into voucher systems, merit pay, tenure reform and collective bargaining limits. Those are big wins.

From a practical standpoint, however, we have the same President, the same Secretary of Education, virtually the same Senate composition, virtually the same House composition, virtually the same split of governorships, and virtually the same split of state legislatures. And unlike 2008, there is no prospect of card check, stimulus packages and edujobs bills on the horizon.

Where NEA and AFT tried to gain ground, they experienced very tough sledding. They couldn’t get tax hikes for education passed in South Dakota or Arizona. They failed to enshrine collective bargaining in the Michigan constitution. Spread thin, they couldn’t stop charter initiatives in Georgia or Washington. It’s too soon to evaluate the effect of all the state legislative races, but nothing indicates an ideological shift toward renewed public sector hiring – the only thing that can replenish union membership.

In short, the unions drove the barbarians from the gates, but not across the border. NEA and AFT spent a lot of money to ensure another four years like the last four. Is that a good thing for them? We’ll see.

The notorious PowerPoint, meant for union activists, spewed out lobbying tactics the AFT used against the Connecticut proposal. As the WSJ noted, this document gave us all a peek into “union cynicism and power.” The state’s AFT had a “Plan A” called “Kill Mode,” meant to totally shoot down the bill. It failed. So, the union swung into action with Plan B, “Engage the Opposition.” Meetings were held to work out the bill, but certain groups – like parents who supported the trigger – were not invited to the negotiating table.

Union leaders pumped their political muscle to wring out a parent-trigger law so weak it leaves Connecticut parents twiddling their thumbs rather than pulling any reform trigger. To add insult to injury, the union boasts that rather than depend on parent petitions to turn around a school, school governance councils will be established, but (wink, wink) “they are advisory and do not have true governing authority.”

It comes as no surprise that the PowerPoint was pulled, but not before reform blogger RiShawn Biddle made a copy.

There’s only one problem with that – they don’t.

The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers – two unions that have done everything in their power from distorting the truth and lying to intimidation and lawsuits to stop any reform that takes their control and gives it to parents – are driving this rally.

These groups fight charter school openings across the country. For example they are currently stumping against a Mandarin immersion charter in Milburn, New Jersey.

They’ve sued multiple times to stop or delay school choice bills from taking effect. The teachers association now has a lawsuit in Indiana to stop low-income students in failing schools from using a voucher to attend a different school of their parent’s choice.

They are even fighting the “Parent Trigger” law that was passed in California and allows parents to initiate changes to a school, like converting it to a charter, if a majority of parents agree and sign a petition.

It’s the same coalition of the past 35 years that just wants the status quo. Reform to them is about money, control and no high-stakes tests or accountability.

In each case above, and the dozens of ones not mentioned, these groups are eliminating the influence parents and students have, not moving it forward.

I’m not impressed.

I simply don’t see why the concept of putting student learning first is so challenging for Ms. Weingarten. Her attempts to pacify those who want to see bad teachers removed from the classroom and off of the public payroll lack specifics. What will she do to remove the stranglehold that her union has over principals across America when it comes to terminating the employment of people who cannot teach – so that we can rightly elevate and compensate those teachers who can? What I see is an ‘our way or no way’ approach by the AFT that neither benefits children to the fullest nor serves the best interests of her members.

Finally, any speech on “reform” by Ms. Weingarten is specious, given that her union claims to want the “best” schools for children. This can’t be true, or else she and her allies would be fighting for school choice programs, not standing in the schoolhouse doors blocking the exits for low-income children.

Randi Weingarten fails to impress once again.

Weingarten’s media makeover has served her well, leading many to do as Goldstein has and give her credit for talking the talk.

But that’s not the whole story.

For reformers, the real definition of reform – which we helped give life to in 1993 – is much more cut and dry than what is expounded here. Quite simply:

- The status quo embraces the existing system, and while members of the status quo will often advocate for policy or program changes, none of what they endorse will fundamentally change the balance of power between producer and consumer.

- Conversely, real reformers seek to fundamentally replace what is known as the school system with a system of schools that is accountable to those in power at each school, as well as to the parents, in whose hands the ultimate fate of their children depends.

By this definition, Randi Weingarten doesn’t even approach the notion of a reformer. On the continuum between status quo and reform, she has barely passed go.

Be Nice, they say in a new PR campaign. It’s a clever turn of phrase on the motto of the Knowledge is Power Program, the nationwide network that has re-educated thousands of children nationwide who had been failed miserably by conventional public schools. But they are missing something. “Work Hard” is how the motto begins. “Work Hard, Be Nice.” The two phrases go together. Deliberately. That’s what the teachers who now want a break signed up to do – Work Hard. We wonder -is it nice to take a job in a school that you know requires long hours and arduous work, and then go behind the backs of your leadership and fellow teachers and ask a militant national union to come in and rob children of the first opportunity they’ve ever had to learn?

As in most of the charter schools that came before and since KIPP, success comes precisely because of their independence from onerous contracts and the flexibility afforded by the charter to be able to design programs without top down interference. KIPP sets an ambitious path for staff and students – 7:30 to 5:30 every weekday, Saturday work and summer requirements. That’s one key reason their students perform exceptionally well, despite their disadvantages, the same disadvantages that other public schools blame for their own students’ failure.

“Work Hard”? Those teachers who wanted the union have complained to the newspapers that they are working long hours, and that their complaints go unaddressed. They’ve convinced colleagues to seek unionization, but must have forgotten that they chose to work at KIPP. They weren’t assigned there, as happens to so many union teachers in the conventional system. They got on board voluntarily. They could pick from thousands of NY schools that have traditional days/rules/requirements and unions. But they didn’t. They chose KIPP, and so maybe they should choose to leave KIPP, rather than seek to make KIPP like too many other public schools that do everything the same, and fail as a result.

In charter schools that succeed, the adults are focused not on themselves, but on what they can do better – constantly – to meet their performance goals. Unlike the status quo they left, the adults have agreed that student achievement is the reason for schools. That alone should be the driving concern for all complaints. It’s what has made most teachers love being in charters. But they are not for everyone. Clearly.

The teachers unions have been attempting to get their foot in the door in any state where collective bargaining is optional. It’s important to recall that not one charter bill in any state had the support of the unions when it was passed, unless it included their requirements for unionization. A few deals have been struck to ward off their opposition over time, like the rule in New York that says any school that starts with over 250 students is automatically part of the union. Most charters therefore, start with fewer, on purpose. The response by the union is to scatter loyal unionists in charters – to whip up discontent and cause suspicion where there may have been none. Honest people can begin to believe the worst about someone unless they remind themselves about the best.

And so they seek to cajole and convince others that KIPP doesn’t respect its teachers, and launch a campaign to encourage all charter teachers to write KIPP and encourage them to “Be Nice”. How about the kids? Is it nice to change the environment in which students are learning by creating dissension among teachers?   Where is the “Work Hard” part? That seems to be the part that some of the teachers at KIPP didn’t like, and that resulted in their demand for uniformity and protection through a union contract. Is that nice? Nope. That’s called selfish.

As the founder of the union running the Be Nice campaign once said, ”When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.” That’s the reality everyone needs to understand. This is about dues, not kids. And that’s the part that’s not nice.

Knowledge is power, KIPP’s moniker, might need to be more aptly applied to the parent company’s involvement and understanding of local school issues. The knowledge of what was afoot in two more of their NYC schools to convince teachers there to unionize may have helped them avert the rising mediocrity that will no doubt color this otherwise No Excuses school model. One wonders what campaign was hatched to convince so many KIPPsters that a regulatory environment would be preferable to the freedom they now enjoy.

Union leaders in NYC blogging yesterday provide some clues:

In a letter delivered to co-principals Jeff Li and Melissa Perry this morning, the teachers said that they had decided to unionize in order to secure teacher voice and respect for the work of teachers in their school. We want “to ensure that the [KIPP] motto of ‘team and family’ is realized in the form of mutual respect and validation for the work that is done [by teachers] each day,” they wrote.

The letter stressed that the decision to organize was directly connected to the teachers’ commitment to their students. “[A] strong and committed staff,” the teachers wrote, “is the first step to student achievement.” Unionization, the teachers believe, will help create the conditions for recruiting and retaining such a staff.

“We organized to make sure teachers had a voice, and could speak their minds on educational matters without fearing for their job,” says KIPP AMP teacher Luisa Bonifacio.

“For us,” KIPP AMP teacher Emily Fernandez explains, “unionization is ultimately all about student achievement, and the ability of teachers to best serve students at this crucial middle school time in their education.”

Mutual respect and validation?

Unionization is all about student achievement?

This isn’t the way typical charter teachers talk. In fact, it’s the way union teachers who take jobs in charters talk to their potential prey.

The teachers who signed up in these labor intensive KIPP charters knew when they signed up that long hours were part of the prevailing KIPP philosophy.

The New York Times today quotes KIPP founder David Levin, saying “Just because the school is available to kids at all times, that doesn’t mean that each and every staff member has to be available at all times. We’ve been able to successfully work that out.”

But union organizers believe they shouldn’t be forced to work those long hours. After all, this is the same union that cries over salary differentiation and opposes any performance pay that is tied to student performance and individually awarded to teachers. The move to unionize is a trade of “No Excuses” for kids in favor of “No More Time” for teachers.

I mention in the Times this morning that as long as you have nonessential rules that have more to do with job operations than with student achievement, you are going to have a hard time accomplishing your mission.

The UFT – and its parent, the AFT – has been duplicitous in its support of charters. They often send in loyal teachers to cause dissention, as was the case across the water in New Jersey with successful charters such as the Rutgers-based LEAP more than a year ago. “Don’t you think we work too long for this money?” they ask innocently, and with a tenuous economy and fear in the hearts and minds of anyone who relies on a job for basic sustenance, drinking the union kool-aid may have been a bit easier for the NYC KIPP folks than others might have imagined.

Knowledge is power. Indeed.

Alter’s column this week puts some heft behind the selection of Denver, CO superintendent Michael Bennet to be Ed Secretary. Could we really have another Bennett in that office? We could have a lot of fun with comparisons, but for now, we’re struck by the uncritical gaze that the otherwise keen Alter has given to both Bennet – and his interviewee of the week – Bill Gates.

Both in Alter’s estimation are reformers. He says Gates told him he believes in merit pay – and yet I’m not fully aware of any policy groups that strongly push for performance based pay changes in law which Gates is throwing money behind. The Gates Foundation is financially and morally supportive of the work of Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein and clearly Michael Bennet. But what superintendents can do is limited unless their state legislatures make it easier for them to free teachers from contract rules that limit pay and operational structures. Put in layman’s terms, it is state law that often dictates what supers do – state laws that teachers’ unions fiercely lobby for and against. We’re all for in-system reform – but one shouldn’t expect every super to be as heroic – or crazy – as reformers like Rhee, et al to make change. There simply aren’t enough of them out there.

Bennet’s much praised ProComp pay effort is a baby step in the big scheme of educational success for all kids. He’s made progress, some believe, by not confronting but rather by soliciting the union’s help and thus its approval of such a plan. But such efforts depend on people, and as the challenges in Washington with its teachers’ union makes clear, it takes just one change in leadership to blow up all the progress (WTU president had all but shaken hands with Chancellor Rhee when his VP launched a recall petition and called the national AFT on him who quickly moved in with their intimidation tactics).

Bill Gates should know – and people like Alter should report – that to make real change laws must change. The KIPPs and Green Dots that he visits when he’s looking for a pick-me-up came about because some of us fought to create strong charter laws that would enable such great networks – and some lesser known independent, non-network charters – to thrive. As laws get rolled back or sustain caps that make such quality charter options limited to only a fraction of all public school kids, such networks will remain a choice for the few.

“To those who much has been given, much is expected.” Gates’ philanthropy is extraordinary but it almost seems to overlook that laws matter. If Bill Gates can get our President-elect on the phone, he should be able to similarly use his clout to make permanent changes in law that allow more great programs to flourish. Our supply of human capital reformers is simply not big enough for even his money to sustain forever.

Oh, and Jonathan, the next time you talk to Gates or others like him, ask how much money they are spending to back legislative efforts to ensure all of the above. Thanks.