On May 21 of this year, The Denver Classroom Teachers Association issued a vote of no-confidence in Supt. Michael Bennet after negotiations over a new contract reached an ugly impasse.
This week, that same organization tossed bouquets Bennet’s way as word surfaced that he was being seriously considered by Barack Obama for Secretary of Education. (And this isn’t idle speculation, by the way. He’s really being vetted, or so I’m told). In the intervening months, the contract was settled after a mediator stepped in. But DPS won most of the major mediation skirmishes, so I didn’t expect DCTA to be feeling especially benevolent toward Bennet.
So I decided to go to the source, and emailed DCTA President Kim Ursetta about the apparent union u-turn.
“It is not an endorsement- simply factual comments about MFB in his role as superintendent,” Kim replied.
The DCTA office had received multiple media calls about the Bennet rumor and Kim and others felt they had to issue a statement, Kim said.
While it may not be an endorsement, it doesn’t fall far short. Here is the entire statement, attributed to Kim Ursetta:
“As president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association (DCTA), I have worked closely with Michael Bennet for the four years that he has been superintendent of the Denver Public Schools. He is always accessible and willing to talk, even when we have different viewpoints on an issue.
“He is reform-minded and interested in new approaches. As a non-traditional superintendent, he thinks outside the box to find new answers to old problems, especially concerning student achievement. But he is also willing to work with DCTA because he knows that little can be accomplished without the support and involvement of the teachers who work with students every day.
“Superintendent Bennet has consistently supported the need for additional resources for low-performing schools. He believes that we must use multiple measures to assess student progress, and he introduced the DPS School Performance Framework which focuses on longitudinal growth. Recently he and the school board have supported DCTA in its quest to open an innovative school developed and run by teachers.
“Michael Bennet would bring new ideas and approaches to the U.S. Department of Education.”
What’s going on here, do you suppose? As Alex Ooms writes elsewhere on this blog:
Cynics might believe that DCTA has met a formidable foe in Bennet, and their interest here is to see him leave in the hopes that a new Superintendent might be more pliable. Education has a lot of cynics.
Kim didn’t respond to the part of my question focused on motives. I don’t blame her. But that leaves the field open to speculation. What better place to speculate than in the comments section immediately below this post?
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What Kim says about Michael is all true; the problem is what’s missing from her statements. I think she is being somewhat insincere which will undoubtedly breed even more cynicism about fixing public urban public education. I know this is all politics, all the time but I wish we had an environment in which people were more direct about the issues with concerns and praise for the various solutions. I wonder what Michael would say about Kim’s and DCTA’s leadership? I bet we could get more done in DPS if all of the ideas and strategies for improvement were more publicly discussed with a link to the current reality of schools. There remains too much happy talk about schools and what is happening with little or no rigor about exactly what is happening or being proposed. Let’s get real folks.