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Thursday, January 1, 2015

Florida's school will never reach their potential as long as we marginalize, neglect and ignore teachers.

Media Matters recently did a piece outlining how when discussing education the big three cable news networks, CNN, MSNBC and Fox had on sixteen actual educators and 169 non-educators, that's roughly a ratio of ten to one against professional educators when discussing education issues. Pretty outrageous right.

Well unfortunately it just mirrors what Florida has done with the sate board of education where you won't find one true educator. There is the chair Gary Chartrand who is a grocer by trade and who has close ties to charter schools; John Padget the owner of a private equity investment firm, Ada Gonzalez, a healthcare executive, John Colon, a banker,  Andy Tuck, a citrus grower, Marva Johnson a cable TV executive and finally Rebecca Fishman Lipsey currently a social impact director (a direct quote from the FLDOE website) who is a recent transplant from New York where she taught for two years as a Teach for America Teacher. And there you have it the entire board has two years of public education teaching experience and that happened a decade ago in New York City.

Can you imagine running a police department without law enforcement personnel or a hospital without doctors, or a newspaper without editors? Well that is basically what we have done here in Florida by putting completely unqualified people for the job on the board. Now they might have great business acumen, though I am not sure what a social impact director does but shouldn't we have more professional educators than Rick Scott campaign donors on the board? The job of leading our education system should be done by professionals not by donors and friends of the governor.

Florida's schools will never reach their potential as long as we marginalize, neglect and ignore professional educators. Contrary to the governors opinion not just anybody can do the job. So next time you get down on public education or teachers you might want to start with the board of education.

2 comments:

  1. 2 years of classroom experience? That ought to be illegal. The real problem is the teachers. Where are the protests? We,I, myself included, continue to pay dues to DTU for what? No one is helping teachers, not even teachers.

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    1. Yea, Right! When I taught at Duval County Public Schools I did not join the DTU. I would have been insulting my own intelligence by paying Union Dues to a Teachers' Union headed by a SPINELESS LEADER. What are her duties, to serve cookies and soda to the SUPERINTENDENT and SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS? She supports everything that undermines and marginalizes Duval Teachers. Its a SHAME!!!

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