"Teachers count a lot. But reality counts too.Who's Bashing Teachers...

[YvonneCa]

... and public schools, and what can we do about it?" by Rethinking Schools editor, Stan Karp. EXCELLENT article...long, but very much worth it.

http://www.notwaitingforsuperman.org/Issues/Karp-TeacherBashingText2010-12-10

Excerpt from his introduction:

I wish I were here today to announce that I had just completed a deal to buy Facebook, the Oprah Winfrey show and Paramount Pictures—since that’s where a lot of education policy is apparently being made these days—and was turning them all into publicly accountable institutions devoted to improving education for all kids—and this was the first meeting of the new steering committee.

Unfortunately that’s not happening. Instead I’m here today because I’ve been asked to talk about “Who’s bashing teachers and public schools and what can we do about it?” And since I live in a state with a new Governor who’s making a national reputation doing just that, I guess it makes me something of an expert or at least an experienced victim, though this is clearly a national phenomenon.

The short answer to this question is that far too many people are bashing teachers and public schools, and we need to give them more homework because very few of them know what they’re talking about. And a few need some serious detention.

But the longer answer is that the bashing is coming from different places for different reasons.
And to respond effectively to the very real attacks that our schools, our profession and our communities face, it’s important to pay attention to these differences.

Please take the time to read the entire speech, if you can. :)

[Tansy_Gold]

1. I'm so sorry I can only recommend this once

But I passed it along to my daughter, who works in the Paterson NJ school district.

Thank you Yvonne for posting it.




TG,TT

[YvonneCa]

3. You are very welcome. Thanks for...

...the rec...and for passing it on.

I have hope that when facts become common knowledge, things will change for the better in education. :hi: Kudos to your daughter. :grouphug:

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. ...

A good example of how federal ed policy has gone off the rails came last Feb. when the President and his Education Sec. Duncan hailed the firing of the entire staff of a high school in Central Falls, RI because it had low test scores. They said it was a “courageous” act that was “right for kids.” A model of “accountability” that the Administration wants to repeat in thousands of schools over the next few years. Duncan has talked about closing “the bottom 1 percent of the nation’s portfolio”—like the CEO of a runaway multinational corporation.

Neither the President nor his Education Secretary mentioned that the school was the only high school in the poorest city in the state. Or that 65% of the students were ELL learners or that parents, students and alumni loudly protested the plans to fire the whole staff. They didn’t explain that the wholesale firings were made possible by changes in federal Title I regulations proposed by the administration or that the state supt. pushing the plan was part of the Broad Foundation’s growing national network of pro-privatization, anti-union school administrators.

Instead the President mentioned the low percentage of the students who passed the state math test. That was the sole justification for supporting the wholesale staff firings. And it’s the kind of punitive test-driven policy that the Administration is proposing to impose on over 5000 schools in the nation’s poorest communities.

That same week, in Wake County, North Carolina where my grandchildren go to school and where the school board was the target of a Tea Party-type takeover last fall, the school board voted 5–4 to end the one of the country’s most successful “diversity” plans. The plan uses free and reduced lunch numbers to limit the concentration of poor students at any school to 40% or less. The Raleigh plan has led to some of the best progress on closing achievement gaps in the country. But despite strong local opposition from parents, community groups and the NAACP, the new board majority voted to restore “neighborhood” assignment policies that will re-segregate the district and create numerous schools with high poverty concentrations well above 40%.

Yet unlike in Rhode Island, President Obama and Secretary Duncan had no comment on that decision, even though it will condemn many more students to separate and unequal schooling and will roll back decades of effort to desegregate Raleigh’s public schools.

[YvonneCa]

4. It's really good to see educators finally...

...speaking out, isn't it? :hi:

[daleanime]

5. Yes,,,

but can we get people to listen to them?:banghead:

[YvonneCa]

14. Good question. n/t

[dkf]

6. How do the Asians do it?

How do they take their poor and uneducated and turn them into the top students? Are they being fed, clothed, and sheltered so much better than we are?

[YvonneCa]

8. Asia has many countries. Is there a...

...particular one you are asking about?

[JDPriestly]

7. These paragraphs impressed me the most.

The most complete study of charter school performance by Stanford University found that only 17% of charter schools had better test scores than comparable public schools and more than twice as many did worse. And unlike charter schools, traditional public schools accept all children, including much larger numbers of high needs students and students without the heroic, supportive parents we see in the film. In most states charters also do not face the same public accountability and transparency requirements that public schools do which has led to serious problems of mismanagement, corruption and profiteering.

Charter-school teachers are, on average, younger non-unionized and less likely to hold state certification than teachers in traditional public schools. In a word, less expensive.

As many as one in four charter school teachers leave every year, about double the turnover rate in traditional public schools. The odds of a teacher leaving the profession altogether are 130% higher at charters than traditional public schools, and much of this teacher attrition is related to dissatisfaction with working conditions.

Charter schools typically pay less, and require longer hours. But charter school administrators often earn more than their school-district counterparts. Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children Zone and Eva Moskowitz of the Harlem Success Academy, two schools featured in the film, are each paid close to half a million dollars.

http://www.notwaitingforsuperman.org/Issues/Karp-TeacherBashingText2010-12-10

Charters should be subject to the same accountability standards as other schools. All school receiving government money should play by the same rules when it comes to accountability.

[YvonneCa]

10. "Charter-school teachers are, on average, younger non-unionized and ...

...less likely to hold state certification than teachers in traditional public schools. In a word, less expensive."

It's time for the public to make the connection to states' failing economies and education reform. States can't afford teachers anymore.

[snot]

9. Excellent; thank you!

[YvonneCa]

13. You are quite welcome. n/t

[LWolf]

11. I'd rather see this "state of public education" speech

aired next month than a "state of the union" by Obama.

In some respects public education is the most successful democratic institution we have and has done far more to reduce inequality, offer hope, and provide opportunity than the country’s financial, economic, political, and media institutions.

But its Achilles heel continues to be acute racial and class inequality, which in fact is the Achilles heel of the whole society.

Those who believe that business models and market reforms hold the key to solving educational problems have, as I’ve noted, made strides in attaching their agenda to the urgent need of communities who have been poorly served by the current system. But their agenda does not represent the real needs or the real desires of these communities:

It does not include all children and all families
It does not include adequate, equitable and sustainable funding
It does not include transparent public accountability
It does not include the supports and reforms that educators need to do their jobs well
It doesn’t address the legacy or the current realities of race and class inequality that surround our schools every day.

Where we go from here, as advocates and activists for social justice, depends in part on our ability to re-invent and articulate this missing equity agenda and to build a reform movement that can provide effective, credible, democratic alternatives to the strategies that are currently being imposed from above.

Because in the final analysis what we need to reclaim is not just our schools, but our political process, our public policy-making machinery, and control over our economic and social future. In short, we don’t only need to fix our schools, we need to fix our democracy.

:applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause:

[YvonneCa]

12. I can tell you liked...

...it. :7 I agree with you.