The last day of public school

From the Washinton Posts Answer Sheet

By Mark Phillips

And if I laugh at any mortal thing, ‘Tis that I may not weep” --Lord Byron

Summer vacations will be extended in all public schools in the U.S. this year. They will now be year-round.

This announcement yesterday by the Secretary of Education, which shocked parents all over the country, has been directly traced to the combined effects of the government programs No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. As one local teacher, now an applicant to teach on Mark Zuckerberg’s new Textbook, put it, “Now that the schools are closed, maybe we can get back to real teaching.”

A full analysis from The Institute for the Deconstruction of Twisted Logic in Palo Alto is due next week, but preliminary findings released help explain the events leading to the permanent closing of all public schools.

First, the Institute notes, there was evidently a major intelligence failure, detailed in the first chapter of the report, “Act First, Think Later.” None of the policymakers understood that their reform programs were solutions to the wrong problems.

“They were largely a solution to the problem policymakers have of needing numerical data quickly without wasting time doing a lot of research.” noted Lionel Mangrove, Institute spokesperson. “And it worked. They wasted none of their valuable time observing or listening or thinking, and got a lot of test results quickly.”

Few reforms have ever been more effective in changing statistics. Unfortunately, the real problem appears to have been low student engagement -- and the testing bombardment just made that worse. For some further understanding, read the earlier Institute report, “The Use of X-Rays and Marathon Running to Improve Lung Congestion.”

The likely effect of all of this on teachers was considered superfluous. Something had to give and a story out of Boston finally caught front pages across the country. A despondent teacher stood on the roof of his school screaming, “I’m mad as hell and and I’m not gonna take this anymore. Let’s just teach to the tests and give up the rest. Let’s give them exactly what they want!”

Soon, “Teach to the tests, the hell with the rest!” became a rallying cry for frustrated teachers throughout the country. Bumper stickers and t-shirts flourished. Eminem even wrote a hit rap song with that title and the lyrics:

“Our teaching is lousy
The laws are a scam
Test scores are rising
But we don’t give a damn
So teach to the tests
The hell with the rest
At least we’ll get funding
By the government blessed.”

The song reached No. 3 on the rap charts and won a Grammy.

Third, notes the report, almost no one noticed that more and more students just stopped showing up. One student, interviewed for 60 Minutes, stated, “When I decided to give up drugs, I knew I had to also give up tests. They were both making me homicidal. Now I’m really learning again. We hang out on Textbook, use Google and Twitter, discuss movies and books, real ideas and stuff, not that testing b.s.”

Zuckerberg’s brilliant spin-off from Facebook proved to be a colossal hit with students and teachers alike, helped by a nationwide ad campaign featuring the slogans “No Boredom on Textbook” and, “Tired of testing? Join a Textbook learning group today.” Soon, few students were showing up at school and even fewer for the tests.

The final blow was the Wikileaks report, Over the Top, based on a secret government study showing that almost 80 percent of American high schools had gone over the top, simultaneously achieving new highs in test scores, vandalism, and dropouts.

Still, the end came rather suddenly in recent weeks. It occurred to the few dedicated teachers left behind that if there were no students it was foolish to come to work. Besides, Zuckerberg was paying better, actually listening to teachers, students and parents, and, in an agreement with Amazon, providing all students with Kindles.

With no students and no teachers, the government stopped funding schools. As the Secretary of Education put it, “Let those guys foot the bill! We can use the money to improve the American family. Our great new program, No Family Left Behind, will do just that!”

Davis Guggenheim’s plans for another film, "Waiting for Close Encounters," about benevolent aliens who come from outer space after being contacted by Michelle Rhee to institute a lottery to rescue the schools, have apparently been shelved.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/the-day-all-the-public-schools.html

Education Matters calls for Oprah Winfrey Boycott

Perhaps the biggest appeal Oprah Winfrey has for her millions of fans is her every woman demeanor. She comes across as someone you could sit down and have coffee with, there is an innate connection. Unfortunately when it comes to education and what to do next Ms. Winfrey proves how disconnected she is.

Her stance on education reform puts her squarely in the billionaires for education reform, blame the teacher camp. Her solutions like theirs are punitive and seek to dismantle public schools. In effect whenever she talks about education she snubs her nose at the hundreds of thousands of hard working dedicated professionals nationwide and the children they teach too.

I think it is time we snubbed our noses back.

I think it’s time we said Ms. Winfrey when you want to talk about education bring teachers on your show, not billionaires like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckenberg, or public school hating film directors like David Guggenheim. Teachers more than them will have a better idea what works and what doesn’t. Even Oprah’s education idol Michelle Rhee only spent three years in a class room, before her running a Teach or America like program landed her the chancellorship of Washington D.C.s schools, of which I will add, her tenure was so polarizing that when the people of the capital voted for a new mayor in reality they were voting against her.

Oprah Winfrey has a powerful soap box which she could use for positive change but instead she has used it to denigrate teachers and public education. As a teacher I say enough and hope all other teachers and people who care about and believe in public schools will say enough as well

Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher

Teachers Unions must accept responsibility

With full disclosure, I believe in teachers unions, I am a member of Duval Teachers United and I have never been more disappointed in teachers unions than I am right now.

At a recent Union meeting I arrived ready to talk about the firestorm that is brewing around teachers and teachers unions however the old bait and switch occured. Instead of discussing strategies to combat the rampant disinformation being put out there, the union instead wanted to discuss a membership drive. They even flew in some guy from San Diego to lead the session. He had also just come from meeting with several other teachers unions throughout the state. At our tables they asked us to role play scenarios that would help us attract new members. I and many others sat dumbfounded.

Where of course we want the union to be strong, Rick Scott, Jeb Bush, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckenberg, none of whom were every teachers by the way, connected only by their vast fortunes, Michelle Rhee and several others already have teachers unions in their cross hairs and what at least my union doesn’t get, is that they are going to come after the teachers unions whether membership is sixty percent or one hundred percent. It doesn’t matter. Furthermore this group of super rich, with their marketing machines and cherry picked stats are way ahead of teachers in getting their message out and the message they are selling and that many people are buying is that the unions are bad for education and thus children and that our schools are staffed with lazy teachers unconcerned about their students education, just riding it out until they can retire. They are selling the bad teacher narrative and business for them has been good.

As I looked around the room my morale began to sink as I realized, now hopefully not to late, was the union just beginning to wake up and it dawned on me that the teachers unions were at least partly responsible or the hole teachers currently found themselves in; that they may have been one of the architects of their own destruction.

You see the union sat back and allowed standardized testing to be perverted into the end all be all of education.

The union shrugged its shoulders as districts began to gut discipline and insist teachers socially promote children without the skills they need to be successful at the next level.

Whatever, the union said, as districts began eliminating the teaching of trades, skills and the arts and started forcing all children regardless of aptitude, ability or desire into a one size fits all curriculum.

The union also turned a blind eye as teachers became inundated with mountains of paperwork that at best only had a peripheral relationship with students learning and teachers teaching.

The union turned its back as creativity and initiative were practically legislated out of teaching.

They did nothing about these problems despite the fact teachers all over the district and the nation new they were wrong and set back both kids and the profession. Instead the teachers unions were content to fight for a little extra time off here or a little extra money there, ignoring the real issues that teachers and students faced everyday in their classrooms; issues that have led directly to the abysmal state that our education system currently finds itself in. The teachers unions may have not created the problems above but through their omission they allowed them to fester and grow and now that the chickens have come home to roost, I thought to myself, all they are interested in is boosting membership!?!

For now the Teachers Unions seem content to sit back and allow the super rich and politicians, people for the most part who were never teachers (Michelle Rhee had a cup of coffee as a teacher) and never in schools; who themselves more often than not send their children to private schools that emphasize teachers experience, small classes and receiving a well rounded education with the arts, things they say aren’t important in public schools, tell their story, the bad teacher narative without an opposing voice. In doing so the unions are allowing them to further erode public education and the perception the public has of teachers. In the last year teachers have gone from respected and valued members of the community to borderline pariahs responsible for the ills of society. The Unions wanting to build membership first, is almost like somebody complimenting Nero’s fiddle playing as Rome burned down, sure the music might have been nice but the people at the time had slightly more pressing problems.

I get it though; the more members a union has the stronger it is and I want it to be strong too. It allows teachers to bargain collectively and it protects teachers right to due process, not bad teachers, as some would have the public believe. However every day the teachers unions and teachers sit back and allow the powers-that-be spread the myth of the bad teacher, every day we allow them to ignore factors like poverty, arguably the number one factor in determining a child’s success in school, every day we allow the public to be spoon fed the myths of charter schools which despite the fact they don’t have to play by many of the suffocating rules that public schools do, studies show for the most part perform no better and often perform worse, every day we allow the policy makers, parents, politicians, the students and the public, all equal shareholders in the problems we are now facing to get a pass, ignore their culpability in the problems we have, is one more day teachers get weaker and weaker, more marginalized, demonized and demoralized. Every day we wait for the teachers unions to wake up and fight back teachers’ get farther and farther behind.

Teachers, which I remind you, the vast majority of who are professional, work hard, sacrifice and do a good job. Teachers who deserve better from both their unions and those who would seek to belittle and marginalize them.