The public announcement that the teachers of KIPP AMP Charter School in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn had organized a union and signed authorization cards with the UFT has been the talk of the press and the education and labor blogosphere.
Here are a number of the reactions, from a number of different perspectives…
The Teacher Beat blog at Education Week
Ezra Klein at The American Prospect
Elizabeth Green at Gotham Schools
Mike Klonsky at Small Talk
Dana Goldstein at the Tapped group blog of The American Prospect
Andy Rotherham at Eduwonk
Russo at This Week In Education
Jonathan at JD2718
Fred Klonsky at PREA Prez
The anti-union precincts of the press and blogosphere were initially caught unprepared by the news, and still have not figured out how to respond to the public pronouncements of both Randi Weingarten and KIPP’s David Levin that they want to work cooperatively. But by today, the usual jeremiads were flowing.
Yesterday, the New York Post ignored the news, on the principle that “if you can’t find something bad to say, say nothing at all,” but today opened the Op-Ed page to the anti-union musings of Manhattan Institute’s Marcus Winters.
The designated hitman of the Fordham Foundation’s Flypaper blog, Mike Petrilli, was cussing up a storm about the organizing of KIPP AMP Charter School this morning. Petrilli seems a little miffed that the first Flypaper post by Terry Ryan suggested that this might be a moment for conciliation between charters and teacher unions.
And no anti-teacher union round-up would be complete without the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakkers of that world, Mike Antonucci on Intercepts and Jeanne Allen on Edspresso.
Maybe anti-union types think we are flattered by talk of how one “should never underestimate” the AFT, but truth be told, it just shows how little they understand this union. The organizing at KIPP AMP is not about folks like those who write this blog, it is about the KIPP AMP teachers – a great group of courageous, intelligent educators determined to do the best by their students and their school. We are proud to be associated with them.
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