We reject “Waiting for Superman” and the privatization of PUBLIC Education by hedge fund millionaires and corporate interests. PUBLIC Education is not for sale!
The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman was produced by The Grassroots Education Movement. The film is present by Real Reform Studios, produced, directed, filmed and edited by; Julie Cavanagh (teacher), Darren Marrelli (school social worker), Norm Scott (retired teacher), Mollie Bruhn (teacher), Lisa Donlan (parent).
Incentive programs for schools, teachers and students aimed at raising standardized test scores are largely unproductive in generating increased student achievement, according to a new report researched by an expert panel of the National Research Council.The punitive nature of such testing practices over the last few years is proof enough that the politicians and corporate interests have two goals in mind -- the destruction of the teaching profession and the privatization of America's Public School System.
The report said that standardized tests commonly used in schools to measure student performance — including high school exit exams and tests in various grades mandated by former president Bush’s No Child Left Behind law — “fall short of providing a complete measure of desired educational outcomes in many ways,” according to a summary of the lengthy document.
The report, together with a number of other studies released in the past year, effectively serve as a warning to policymakers in states that are moving to implement laws, with support from the Obama administration, to make teacher and principal evaluation largely dependent on increases in students’ standardized test scores.
Dear Governor Snyder,What a great idea and much better than a bake sale!!
In these tough economic times, schools are hurting. And yes, everyone in Michigan is hurting right now financially, but why aren’t we protecting schools? Schools are the one place on Earth that people look to to “fix” what is wrong with society by educating our youth and preparing them to take on the issues that society has created.
One solution I believe we must do is take a look at our corrections system in Michigan. We rank nationally at the top in the number of people we incarcerate. We also spend the most money per prisoner annually than any other state in the union. Now, I like to be at the top of lists, but this is one ranking that I don’t believe Michigan wants to be on top of.
Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner. They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children.
This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison. The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?!
Please provide for my students in my school district the same way we provide for a prisoner. It’s the least we can do to prepare our students for the future...by giving our schools the resources necessary to keep our students OUT of prison.
Respectfully submitted,
Nathan Bootz
Superintendent
Ithaca Public Schools
Nathan Bootz is right: Prisoners get a much better deal than many students do: they get health care, libraries, and good food – children of poverty get little or none of these. For many children, school is worse than prison.
These same children are also exposed to a mechanical, rote, test-prep oriented curriculum in school, while children of high-income families are exposed to a curriculum that emphasizes creative problem-solving. This adds mental torture to the physical discomfort of poor nutrition and lack of health care that many poor children endure.
The deadly curriculum children of poverty get in school was documented decades ago by Jean Anyon, and is more true than ever today, thanks to No Child Left Behing testing hysteria, made even worse by current US Department of Education policies.
We are even seeing the elimination of recess, in order to jam in more test-prep time. Ohanian's book, What Happened to Recess? is as relevant today as it was when it was published ten years ago.
Ironically, middle class children who attend well-funded schools do very well on international tests: They score near the top of the world. Our overall scores are less spectacular because we have such a high rate of child poverty, the highest of all industrialized countries. Providing poor children what our prisoners already have would profoundly improve school achievement.
Here they have been spending two years following the rigorous standards the dean ostensibly believes in, diligently studying the art and science of teaching, paying their own way for a $23,000 ($50,000 nonresident) masters degree at what they thought was a reputable teaching institution. They are spending hours of in-class time in actual public school classrooms getting invaluable experience, all in the hopes of applying for one of the rare teaching positions in the fall. Now they are being told that a stream of fresh grads will be brought in alongside them at U.W., given a special, condensed education, will do little to no student teaching, but will compete against them for the same jobs.Furthermore, Bill Gates has offered to pay the $4000 fee for the TFAers.
The day before [Stritikus'] appointment was even announced (August 18th), he contacted Wendy Kopp, the head of TFA. He asks her if she wants to build an on-line endorsement program for TFA with UW and to do press for him. She replies, “As you say, this is a terrific moment in the history of TFA and hopefully is a just a harbinger of all that’s to come in terms of the influence of alumni on teacher education.”Naturally the students at the College of Education are upset. They are spending thousands of dollars and years of their lives training for careers in education.
Further on in the e-mail, she says, “Let’s absolutely see what we can cook up in terms of ways of working together…”
Just one week later, he is tries to get together with TFA staff in Washington, D.C. He says, “I would love to be able to get a set of possible ideas for collaboration on the table and identify priorities.”
Also that week, he says, “I offered to help Janis in anyway she needed.” Janis is Janis Ortega, the TFA director for Puget Sound.
In an e-mail on Sep 13, 2010, again just weeks after he became Dean, Stritikus writes to a TFA official and says, “By that time (9/29-10/1), I will have talked to key faculty, developed a sketch plan for the master’s degree, and gotten a handle on the certification issues.”
One student referred to the UW-TFA deal as a “slap in the face.” You can’t blame them for feeling betrayed by Stritikus and the university...Is it really bad teachers? Can you make better teachers by replacing education students who spend years studying for their careers with recent graduates who get 5 weeks of training?
It must feel like running a 10-mile race, only to have the judges allow a group of new runners join in the last 100 yards and race you to the finish — on skateboards.
1. The kindergarten teacher: Mrs. L was a strong teacher. She kept her students focused on their tasks gently, yet firmly with a combination of personal strength, psychology, and a keen understanding of children's needs.
One of the things she needed from me was a "male influence" for one of the boys in the class. The boy was a difficult behavior problem...because of a difficult home situation. He is the student I remember most from the class. He had a "deer in the headlights" look...and was starved for attention. Each day when he came in he latched on to me and hung on me most of the day. During read aloud time time he climbed on me -- even if I was the one reading. I remember that he was not a very good student and spent most of his time trying to get someone to pay attention to him.
I also remember the advice she gave me about "difficult days." They were frequent during student teaching. Mrs. L was adamant...the difficult days don't go away, but they do become less and less frequent...and less and less painful. We all have them in the classroom, but as we grow professionally we learn how to analyze them for clues on how to improve our performance. Those "difficult days" become the basis of our education practice...the focus of our development as professionals.
2. The first grade teachers: I student taught with Mrs. M, but they were a team of 4 superior teachers. My time in kindergarten taught me about children...but student teaching in first grade gave me an insight into how a team of teachers could work together, building on each others' strengths. I also spent time observing one of them, Mr. J. There were very few men teaching primary grades (K-3) in those days, and I was impressed with his ability to relate to young children. An interesting aside: Mr. J retired this year after 37 years of teaching. That means, that he was in his third year...more experienced than I was, but still a newcomer.
3. Classroom management, organization, a caring approach to discipline...those are things I learned about. Some of them I improved upon as I grew professionally...classroom management was always difficult for me...large groups of children still scare me!
4. The biggest eye-opener was the vast differences in children's behaviors and abilities. I saw that in the classrooms...and in the halls. One of the most vivid memories I have is of another kindergarten teacher carrying a student to the buses every afternoon because the child was throwing a tantrum...every day. The child cried when she got to school every day...and cried when she had to leave. Transitions are difficult for some.
5. After I student taught I did some substituting before I got a job teaching kindergarten. I will never forget the first time I substituted. I walked into a fourth grade classroom at Sunnymede and spent about 40 minutes trying to figure out how to read the plan book. I was beginning to panic...realizing that I had absolutely no idea what any of the plans meant. Five minutes before the students arrived I was saved. The man who had student taught in that very classroom during the same semester I was there walked in. He knew how the class was run, what the teacher wanted to do, and most important, how to read her lesson plans. He spent about an hour with us...got me started...and things went smoothly after that.Education classes, internships, student teaching...those are just the beginnings of the process of learning to be a teacher. Good teachers grow each year...focusing on where they need to improve and never letting go of the goal of improvement. The attitude of the greatest teachers is "I still need to learn how to do this better." Becoming a "master teacher" includes acknowledging weaknesses and working to improve day after day...year after year.
Your lead sentence, “I have worked in education for much of my life”, immediately establishes your tone of condescension; for your 20-year “education” career lacks even one day as a classroom teacher. You, Mr. Duncan, are the poster-child for the prevailing attitude in corporate-style education reform: that the number one prerequisite for educational expertise is never having been a teacher.
...at the end of the process, our principal looked at all of her evidence and decided that she had failed. After that meeting, our Human Resources representative accompanied her back to her classroom to get her purse, where I and a few other colleagues were waiting for her in case she needed our support. As they arrived, Ms. HR informed us that she was not allowed to talk to us, and we were not allowed to talk to her. A security officer joined them, and then my friend was escorted out of the building as though she’d been accused of a crime.
(A judge later found the principal’s claims of her poor performance in the classroom completely baseless. His 40+ page decision explained in detail how virtually all of the evidence collected against her was either laughably flimsy, or supported her contention that she was, in fact, a very good teacher.)
...Even if there had been merit in the attempted dismissal, she hadn’t been accused of breaking the law. She hadn’t behaved in a threatening or hostile manner. In truth, there was no evidence to suggest she’d done anything wrong. So why call security? What was the point of treating this woman– who had exclusively devoted over two decades of her life to teaching needy kids– like a suspect? What kind of organization would humiliate people like this, in front of their peers and community, for no good reason? I wrote my resignation letter as soon as I got home.
In the current climate, anybody who raises the issue of how poverty affects students runs the risk of being labeled as:
None of those are true.
- a defender of the status quo
- someone who uses poverty as an excuse for bad teachers who are protected by bad teachers unions
- someone who believes that certain kids cannot learn as well as other kids.
Bloomberg's school CAO Shael Polakow-Suransky (Class of '08) has marched out the plan in New York City, this one with a price tag of over $60,000,000 for testing companies to develop tests for grades 3 through 12 (twice a year) in math, science, English, and social studies.
These tests come on top of the annual NCLB testing and the end-of-course Regents' Exams. Initial implementation is planned for this Fall, even though no community or teacher input has been sought or received, and no validity or reliability has been established for these tests that the testing industry is still cooking up. And what happened to the new Chancellor? The last time we saw him, Mr. Wolcott was walking his grandson to school and preparing pink slips for 4,500 NYC teachers.
The wealthy families and powerful corporate-backed foundations presented here are just a sampling of some of the forces currently taking aim at public education. By demonizing traditional public schools and the teachers that staff them, this corporate education movement is undermining a very basic aspect of our democracy: a public commons that provides true opportunity for all, no matter what their background or socioeconomic status.Read the whole thing here.
A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.Hedges interviews a teacher who understands the system.
Teachers, their unions under attack, are becoming as replaceable as minimum-wage employees at Burger King. We spurn real teachers—those with the capacity to inspire children to think, those who help the young discover their gifts and potential—and replace them with instructors who teach to narrow, standardized tests. These instructors obey. They teach children to obey. And that is the point. The No Child Left Behind program, modeled on the “Texas Miracle,” is a fraud. It worked no better than our deregulated financial system. But when you shut out debate these dead ideas are self-perpetuating.
“Imagine,” said a public school teacher in New York City, who asked that I not use his name, “going to work each day knowing a great deal of what you are doing is fraudulent, knowing in no way are you preparing your students for life in an ever more brutal world, knowing that if you don’t continue along your scripted test prep course and indeed get better at it you will be out of a job.It's important to ask the question, "Who is going to want to teach our children in the current educational atmosphere?"
Teachers, under assault from every direction, are fleeing the profession. Even before the “reform” blitzkrieg we were losing half of all teachers within five years after they started work—and these were people who spent years in school and many thousands of dollars to become teachers. How does the country expect to retain dignified, trained professionals under the hostility of current conditions?Why is this happening? Why is the US systematically dismantling its public education system? Privately run charter schools and voucher schemes are draining more and more money from the public treasury, while public schools serving the nation's poor are getting less and less. Public schools are being closed rather than improved...and the blame is being laid at the foot of America's teaching professionals.
“I cannot say for certain—not with the certainty of a Bill Gates or a Mike Bloomberg who pontificate with utter certainty over a field in which they know absolutely nothing—but more and more I suspect that a major goal of the reform campaign is to make the work of a teacher so degrading and insulting that the dignified and the truly educated teachers will simply leave while they still retain a modicum of self-respect,” he added. “In less than a decade we [have] been stripped of autonomy and are increasingly micromanaged. Students have been given the power to fire us by failing their tests. Teachers have been likened to pigs at a trough and blamed for the economic collapse of the United States. In New York, principals have been given every incentive, both financial and in terms of control, to replace experienced teachers with 22-year-old untenured rookies. They cost less. They know nothing. They are malleable and they are vulnerable to termination.”Are bad teachers the problem? Do we gut the teaching profession, privatize public education and staff our newly opened private schools with the untrained and the inexperienced? That's what we're being told we need to do...and where is the public money for education going? Who is really getting rich off of the changing face of education? Is it the public school teacher averaging around $50,000 a year?
Children who ingested even small amounts of lead performed poorly later on school tests compared to students who were never exposed to the substance, according to a new study of Connecticut students.Will this be brushed aside, too? Will we hear the "reformers" shouting "No Excuses?" instead of working to do something about the high levels of poverty in the US?
The Duke University study also found that black children were much more likely to have experienced lead poisoning from paint residue, dust or other sources by age 7 than the state's white children. Educators worry that factor might be among many contributing to Connecticut's status as the state with the largest achievement gap between the races.
Several other government and university research studies nationwide over the years have found links between lead poisoning and delays in academic and cognitive growth, although the Duke study is Connecticut's first research linking individual students to their test results.Does Scott Walker (R-WI) think that removing teachers rights to collective bargaining will help? Does Mitch Daniels (R-IN) believe that paying teachers based on the test scores of their students will help? Will Arne Duncan (D-DOE) still cheer when states close schools...will these students somehow magically improve their ability to learn if they are in a different school?
...Numerous studies have shown that vouchers failed to make any difference in student performance. Just like in Washington, DC and Cleveland, private school vouchers in Milwaukee failed to produce the gains their supporters promised...with students in the Milwaukee voucher program actually performing worse than comparable public school students.We know it's not about the money. When the teachers in Wisconsin offered to give in to the Legislature's and Governor's fiscal demands to save collective bargaining, the legislature took all the fiscal measures out of the bill and cut collective bargaining anyway.
...now Republican Gov. Scott Walker wants to expand the ineffective voucher program while cutting funds to public schools. And so much for the emphasis on testing -- voucher students will now be exempted from the tests that revealed the program’s failure.
...That’s right, even though voucher students are “lagging behind their peers in public schools,” voucher programs are being rewarded with expansion while public schools are punished with cuts. With little care for accountability and testing, this move by Walker and the Wisconsin GOP demonstrates how the push for private school vouchers is really about the Right’s ideological war against public education.
What's the real goal of Walker's stripped-down education "reforms"?
"The real agenda is to dismantle public education through privatization schemes..."
Recognizing that the erosion of their monopoly would stop the gravy train that pays their members handsome salaries without requiring them to satisfy paying customers, unions would ensure that any grass-roots effort to introduce supermarket choice meets fierce political opposition.The "gravy train" is, apparently, that fund of cash which pays teachers an average of $50,000 a year.
I lived in those low-income, segregated regions of some of our great American cities and countryside, and I would walk or drive to the local supermarket, guess what: I found that they sucked. There were rats, roaches, and mice; the tiles on the floor were coming up; the shopping carts wouldn’t work; the refrigeration often was broken; you risked getting robbed walking home with your bags in your arms; the food was old, of poor quality, and almost guaranteed to give you high blood pressure and to make you obese. Plus, numerous studies showed that the prices for this crappy merchandise was often higher than at fancy supermarkets in more well-to-do neighborhoods. Any laws to prevent this sort of nasty racial and economic discrimination are and were toothless and/or gutted by business interests.He goes on to remind us that teachers and their unions are not necessarily the ones who have caused the economic situation in which we now find ourselves…
But wait a second. I thought the reason we are in a crisis right now, and that so many folks are out of a job, is because the billionaires who run the big banks and Wall Street …FOLLOW THE MONEY
(a) Shipped all the good manufacturing jobs to low-paid, seriously exploited workers overseas and are doing the same thing with a lot of high-tech jobs as well;
(b) Played such incredibly irresponsible gambling games, for their own benefit, that they have brought the entire world near the brink of bankruptcy, not once, but repeatedly;
(c) Changed the tax and regulatory and legal climate over the past 20 years so that the super rich have gotten an ever larger part of the national (and world) pie, while the rest of us get less and less and have to pay more and more for everything;
(d) Are doing their very best to organize an all-out attack on workers’ rights, pensions of all types, medical plans of any sort, and all of the rest of the ‘social safety net’, by blaming us, the working class, the middle class, and the poor, for our own problems!
(e) Have ushered in an era of nearly endless war and foreign interventions and invasions, violating just about all of our own Constitutional protections and international laws, and justifying each and every one of those violations.
is professor of economics at George Mason University and a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center.Then he lets us know that the Mercatus Center
was founded and is funded by the Koch Family Foundations. According to financial records, the Koch family has contributed more than thirty million dollars to George Mason, much of which has gone to the Mercatus Center, a nonprofit organization. (SourceWatch)Brandenburg ends his report with…
The Koch Brothers are funding many of the attacks on public employees across the country (Lipton, Eric “BillionaireBrothers’ Money Plays Role in Wisconsin Dispute” New York Times, Feb. 21, 2011).Charles Koch is expanding his role in universities as well. Besides George Mason, he has donated millions to Florida State University. One of the conditions of the donation is the right to approve candidates who fill the positions in the University's new programs...
Boudreaux is certainly not going to bite the hand that feeds him.
called the Study of Political Economy and Free Enterprise (SPEFE) and Excellence in Economics Education (EEE).Presumably, the positions will be filled with such experts in the field of public education as Donald Boudreaux.
When the teachers, parents, and students who know and care the most about public education are treated as “special interests” in our own domain; and people who’ve spent virtually no time studying or practicing education, or even being inside of public schools are viewed as “experts” (who then try to ignore or minimize those of us who dare to publicly disagree with them), it’s time to MARCH!
I do not believe that your rhetoric, however clever, can erase from consciousness the fact that Race to the Top is anti-democratic — imposed through bribery using taxpayer money. It is an open agenda for privatization and the elimination of any last vestiges of democratic governance of and purpose for schooling. Wall Street and various monopolies are attempting total control through for-profit charters, anti-worker legislation, publishing and testing companies, private foundations, and of course, a national curriculum and privately managed testing regime aimed at workers compliance.Anthony Cody who writes the Living in Dialogue blog for Education Week had these questions (among others) in a post titled An Open Letter from an American Teacher to Secretary Duncan.
Justin Hamilton, Arne Duncan's press secretary, said, referring to Sabrina Stevens Shupe's response, "It’s disappointing to hear that someone feels that way, but we don’t think that’s how the broader teaching community feels about it."
- What does it mean to say it is unacceptable for a single student to drop out, or for students with disabilities to fail, when the funds that support these students have been slashed to bits?
- How is it that your Department of Education continues to fund programs that place poorly trained interns in urban classrooms, and supported legislation that circumvented a court decision that ruled such interns are not "highly qualified"?
- If you agree with us that it is unfair when "teachers alone are blamed for educational failures that have roots in broken families, unsafe communities, misguided reforms, and underfunded schools systems" why did you support the firing of the entire staff of teachers at Central Falls High in Rhode Island last year?
I wonder if anyone's listening?
- Most teachers, believe it or not, have learned that experience in the classroom matters, and that turning the profession into a glorified temp job will do little more than provide "life support for a system of injustice and exploitation..."
- Most teachers, believe it or not, would prefer more support over more money.
- Most teachers, believe it or not, would like some means of...control over charter schools as a means of protecting teachers and students from predatory, for-profit snake oil salesmen.
- And most teachers, believe it or not, probably have a more informed perspective on how to go about meaningful change in the classroom since most teachers, unlike Secretary Duncan, have taught students.
WHEN we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition.But in education it's different. When things go wrong it's the teachers' fault.
And yet in education we do just that. When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.In The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries Dave Eggers and Ninive Calegari discuss how we treat our public schools and public school teachers.
Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives.
At the moment, the average teacher’s pay is on par with that of a toll taker or bartender. Teachers make 14 percent less than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education. In real terms, teachers’ salaries have declined for 30 years. The average starting salary is $39,000; the average ending salary — after 25 years in the profession — is $67,000. This prices teachers out of home ownership in 32 metropolitan areas, and makes raising a family on one salary near impossible.They suggest that we follow the lead of the countries in the world with the highest test results. Countries like Finland, Singapore...South Korea...
So how do teachers cope? Sixty-two percent work outside the classroom to make ends meet. For Erik Benner, an award-winning history teacher in Keller, Tex., money has been a constant struggle. He has two children, and for 15 years has been unable to support them on his salary. Every weekday, he goes directly from Trinity Springs Middle School to drive a forklift at Floor and Décor. He works until 11 every night, then gets up and starts all over again. Does this look like “A Plan,” either on the state or federal level?
Turns out these countries have an entirely different approach to the profession. First, the governments in these countries recruit top graduates to the profession. (We don’t.) In Finland and Singapore they pay for training. (We don’t.) In terms of purchasing power, South Korea pays teachers on average 250 percent of what we do.Read the whole article. We claim to want "research based reform" and "scientifically proven methods" but we are doing exactly the opposite of what's been shown to work.
And most of all, they trust their teachers. They are rightly seen as the solution, not the problem, and when improvement is needed, the school receives support and development, not punishment. Accordingly, turnover in these countries is startlingly low: In South Korea, it’s 1 percent per year. In Finland, it’s 2 percent. In Singapore, 3 percent.
EXTRA:
- discourage teachers from getting more training in their fields,
- discourage new teachers from professional preparation,
- evaluate teachers based on test scores that reflect the gaps they cannot close,
- provide pay bonuses based on test scores, thus discouraging teachers from working with the children who need the most help,
- turn teaching into test score production management,
- drain existing teacher resources, cut benefits, and drive down teacher pay by encouraging more corporate welfare charter schools,
- ignore poverty and pretend that teachers can fix poor children with total compliance and brainwashing,
- portray teachers as selfish mossbacks who resist change,
- continue to encourage the resegregation of American schools.
It is way past time to get mad. Each week, it is hard to know which of the latest outrages against American public education is the worst.That's what Diane Ravitch said when she posted her Outrage of the Week on her Education Week Blog, Bridging Differences.
They love Fern Creek [Elementary School],” said their father, who lost his job hanging drywall after the economy collapsed. “I can’t say nothing bad about Fern Creek.”I've included postings about homeless children at school before, HERE and HERE. It's way past time to get mad.
The children’s mother, Felica Blue, who lost her job working the 11 p.m.-to-4 a.m. shift cleaning the arena after the Orlando Magic’s basketball games, said: “They love Fern Creek. Brianna’s always talking about kids from her class.”
CEO bonuses at 50 major corporations jumped a median of 30.5%, the bigest gain in at least three years, according to a study of the first batch of corporate pay disclosures by consulting firm Hay Group for The Wall Street Journal.Executive Bonuses Bounce Back
One of the big bonuses landed in the wallet of Robert A. Iger, leader of Walt Disney Co. He earned $13.5 million for the year ended Oct. 2. That represents a 45.4% increase.2011 Executive Compensation on Wall Street: Taking Stock
Recent data also shows that CEO pay has increased 27 percent and the top 25 hedge fund managers have raked in a total of $22.07 billion. ProPublica has reported that “even while the economy took a beating and unemployment soared, average pay in the banking industry continued rising at the same rate as it had before the financial crisis...” [Emphasis mine]Diane Ravitch is right. It's WAY past time to get mad!
"In light of the legislation requiring public school teachers to be certified in CPR, the use of defibrillators, the Heimlich maneuver, etc., this is what I would like to know: If a student has a heart attack in my classroom and I revive the student, but the student doesn't pass ISTEP, can I still qualify for merit pay?"My follow-up question is: When will we expect to see legislation requiring that doctors receive training in educational topics?
-- George Peterson, Fort Wayne
I have worked in education for much of my life.Yes, he worked in education. He went right from his private school education in Chicago to Harvard to play basketball and study Sociology. He has been a school administrator, heading the Chicago Public Schools by appointment from Mayor Daley. He has worked in education...but he has never taught in, was never an administrator in, in fact, has never even attended a public school. This is the man who is responsible for the nearly 100,000 public schools in the United States.
Praised the mass firing of all teachers in certain ‘failing’ schools......and...
Promoted questionable school reform policies embraced by powerful non-educators over the express opposition of many teachers (and public school parents, for that matter)...
Undermined the teaching profession by:
- frequently elevating the views of non-educators over those of educated, experienced professionals
- supporting programs and policies that continually lower entry standards into the profession
- increasing the instability of the profession (and our schools) by promoting policies that tie teachers’ evaluations and continued employment to flawed value-added measures based on flawed tests
elevated and increased high-stakes tests that are hastily scored by temporary employees and/or machines over classroom-embedded assessments designed and evaluated by teachers...I've said it before (and I did once again above) but it's nice to see someone else repeat it, too...again, Sabrina...
More fundamentally, your very presence in the role of Education Secretary reflects a level of disrespect for our profession not found in others. Our Surgeon General is a career physician, who earned a full MD before going into family practice. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a career naval officer, who studied at the Naval Academy before participating in combat operations aboard a destroyer. Yet despite “working in education” for a while, you never studied education, and you’ve never taught in a public school classroom. Working in non-profits, playing basketball, and being a political appointee are not substitutes for classroom experience.She adds...
I can say firsthand that my beliefs about educational failure changed dramatically when I went from “working in education” to actually running a classroom of my own. Classroom teachers have to contend with far greater “accountability” while having far less flexibility or control over how, when, what, and with what we teach. Meeting the academic, cognitive, and social needs of 20 (or 30 or 40…) students simultaneously is very different from working with small groups or tutoring one-on-one. Until you have navigated that, it is very difficult to fully appreciate just what teachers are up against.I started my teaching career when Duncan was in Elementary School. I was still teaching when he was playing basketball in Australia. I'd like to see Sabrina's last question answered as well...
Schools are places where all of society’s issues—all the ‘isms, all the politics, all the everything—play out. Ideally, the person in charge of our whole school system would, at a minimum, have seen all aspects of it firsthand (as a student, as a scholar, as a teacher, as a parent, as a school leader, etc.) before ever being entrusted with overseeing it. We need leaders who can combine in-depth knowledge of education policy and history with practical experience at all levels of the public education system, and a proper respect for the perspectives of those doing the work every day.
And if we can’t have all that, then at the very least we need someone who is humble enough to admit what they don’t or can’t know, and defer to the those who do and can—instead of seeking the counsel of those who know even less.
So what do you plan to do to prove you respect, value, and support teachers? And when can teachers expect your apology letter, for the disrespectful and destructive policy choices you’ve already made?
