Vote the ultimate special interest: our children

Every year politicians take care of special interests; bankers, homebuilders, bottled water producers, luxury box owners and even yacht salesmen got a substantial share of the pie last year. Sadly however there is one special interest that routinely loses out which is undoubtedly the ultimate special interest we have and that’s our children.

This November why don’t we say enough is enough. That we’re no longer going to sit on the sidelines and allow the powers-that-be in Tallahassee make a few rich beyond our wildest dreams while at the same time they fund our children fiftieth out of fifty and force them to attend a school system that doesn’t support or value their needs, taught by a group, teachers, that have unfairly become the scapegoats for all that is wrong in education.

I get how people must be frustrated with Teachers. Waiting for Superman, Race to the Top, Senate Bill Six, it seems you can’t turn your head without teacher quality being called into question, and maybe rightfully so, after all they are on the front lines of a battle we seem to be losing.

The thing is you must understand how frustrated teachers are too. They are on the frontlines but at the same time they have had their, weapons, their tools of the trade stripped from them. Gone are creativity and flexibility, replaced by a rigid doctrine that I imagine the powers-that-be think a highly trained chimp could carry out.

I remind you that this debate about teacher quality has only erupted after a decade long failed experiment in high stakes testing and a one size fits all curriculum that tries to fit every child into the same hole regardless of what type peg they might be. It was only after both children and teachers were put in situations where success was hard to achieve that teacher quality began to be questioned.

Teachers did not decide to gut discipline, teachers did not decide to get rid of teaching the trades and the arts, teachers did not promise the moon with the lottery but only deliver cheese and teachers did not replace a whole curriculum with teaching to one test. Yet they are the ones blamed for the failed results. Enough lets hold the policy makers who have never been in a classroom, like John Thrasher and he crafters of amendment 8 responsible and vote them out

Vote against amendment 8, another thinly veiled attempt for the legislature to shirk its responsibility to fund education.

Vote against John Thrasher who has only met one teacher he liked, his daughter and she only did it briefly.

Vote against Rick Scott, whose education plans other than to reinstate senate bill six are vague at best.

When are we going to say enough is enough? When are we as a society going to make providing for our children it’s foremost priority, after all what’s more important, yachts, bottled water, another subdivision, you tell me? There is only one special interested we should insist our politicians take care of. And despite the fact that they don’t vote and they don’t contribute to campaigns, they are still the most important special around and it is time we decided to start treating them that way.