The stunning hypocrisy of people who hate teachers (rough draft)

Morning Joe had Campbell Brown on to discuss the ruling in California that struck down teacher protections. What you ask? Who was the teacher they had on to describe how important work protections were and how unions don’t set budgets or lay off teachers? Come on guys you know hey didn’t have a teacher on, why bother, who cares what teachers have to say or think.

Well Mrs. Brown who has never met a public teacher she likes and is able to equate a few extreme cases into the entire teaching profession and whose husband runs charter schools, said both, we need to get rid of teacher protections because during budget cuts the newest teachers are the first cut and then later, poor kids are suffering because all they get is the newest teachers and they don’t tend to be as good.

Um WTF!!!!!

Are there new teachers that hit the ground running and are there veterans who have stayed longer than they need too? Sure. But the truth is there are a small percentage of both groups and once again when did a union ever lay a teacher off. If great new teachers are being laid off how is that the fault of older more experienced teachers!!!??!!!  Why aren’t people fighting against budget cuts and for better funding? They aren’t and that should tell you all you need to know.

Destroying the teaching profession are these people’s plans and we need to stand up. Write letters to the editor, demand political candidates state their support and then follow through or the exact opposite of what our president has done. We need to draw a line in the sand and say no more.

Friends you may disapprove, you may be afraid to fight, you’re afraid for your job? Well, too bad! We're in this war for the profession, boys and girls. It's simple numbers. They have billions and billions of dollars but we have millions and millions of voices. And every day we should be fighting back because our families and our students need us to.

Public school teachers need to stand up to Obama and his anti-teacher agenda!

I have to say I had such high hopes when Obama was elected. He said all the right things. It’s just to bad that after he was elected and picked me up for dinner he dropped me off with a black eye, a torn dress and a threat that if I told anybody what he had done then he would come after me. Well no more my friends, it is time we stood up to him and did it through the electoral process.

We should no longer tolerate the policies of his education department and the gleeful demonizing and dismissing of teachers by Arne Duncan. Today when the judge inexplicably sided with a billionaire over work protections for teachers, Duncan made it out to be the best thing since sliced bread.

“For students in California and every other state, equal opportunities for learning must include the equal opportunity to be taught by a great teacher. The students who brought this lawsuit are, unfortunately, just nine out of millions of young people in America who are disadvantaged by laws, practices and systems that fail to identify and support our best teachers and match them with our neediest students. Today’s court decision is a mandate to fix these problems. Together, we must work to increase public confidence in public education. This decision presents an opportunity for a progressive state with a tradition of innovation to build a new framework for the teaching profession that protects students’ rights to equal educational opportunities while providing teachers the support, respect and rewarding careers they deserve. My hope is that today’s decision moves from the courtroom toward a collaborative process in California that is fair, thoughtful, practical and swift. Every state, every school district needs to have that kind of conversation. At the federal level, we are committed to encouraging and supporting that dialogue in partnership with states. At the same time, we all need to continue to address other inequities in education–including school funding, access to quality early childhood programs and school discipline.”

It’s not.

I make this vow right now and I hope you do too. I will vote for gridlock in Washington D.C. and encourage my fellow teachers and friends to do so too unless Obama replaces Duncan and starts respecting the teaching profession and I am not talking about the lip service he routinely provides but with an actual legislative agenda. 

On the local level and state level I will fight for pro education candidates but on the national level I would like to see Obama’s last two years as miserable as possible unless he changes his anti-teacher ways.

Teachers having work protections is not a hindrance to providing a quality education and if Obama and Duncan don’t get that then to hell with them.

Arne Duncan and the Obama administration treat teachers like vermin... again!

By Peter Green of Curmudcation

Arne Tells Teachers To Go To Hell (Again)

Arne has popped up with a statement in reaction to the Vergara tenure-FILO-smashing verdict. You will be shocked to discover that Arne sides with the billionaire backers of this attack on the teaching profession. Let me break it down and translate for you:

For students in California and every other state, equal opportunities for learning must include the equal opportunity to be taught by a great teacher.

Arne is going to go ahead and pretend that he believes the bullshit premise of these attacks on tenure-- that somehow tenure and FILO are keeping great teachers from getting to students and not, say, offering some job protection that might make teaching appealing as a lifelong career. Also, ignorance is strength.

The students who brought this lawsuit are, unfortunately, just nine out of millions of young people in America who are disadvantaged by laws, practices and systems that fail to identify and support our best teachers and match them with our neediest students. 

Arne will also go ahead and pretend that these nine sock puppets actually had something to do with the lawsuit created and bankrolled by billionaire David Welch. 


Today’s court decision is a mandate to fix these problems. Together, we must work to increase public confidence in public education. This decision presents an opportunity for a progressive state with a tradition of innovation to build a new framework for the teaching profession that protects students’ rights to equal educational opportunities while providing teachers the support, respect and rewarding careers they deserve.

Did Arne have to read this somewhere? Because I'm not sure how he could get through it without puking. Yes, the destruction of job protections will totally show teachers that they are supported and valued. But we're salivating now, because we can create a new framework, one that doesn't involve teaching as a career, or teachers' unions as a political force, or teachers as people who have a voice, or even stick around schools long enough to become a problem.

My hope is that today’s decision moves from the courtroom toward a collaborative process in California that is fair, thoughtful, practical and swift.

Oh, hell. I know my stock in trade here is supposed to be wit and snark and all, but-- bullshit, Arne. That's just plain unvarnished bullshit. You can't possibly hope any of those things at this moment with a straight face.

Every state, every school district needs to have that kind of conversation. At the federal level, we are committed to encouraging and supporting that dialogue in partnership with states. At the same time, we all need to continue to address other inequities in education–including school funding, access to quality early childhood programs and school discipline.

You know who can't have those kinds of conversations? Teachers who have no job protections. Teachers who have no job protections can only mostly have the kinds of conversations that involve statements like "Yassuh, whatever you say, suh" and "I'm sick of your lip. You're fired."

But then, when you said school districts and states and federal overlords needed to have conversations, you probably meant "conversations without teachers in the room."

God, just when I think the Obama administration has found every conceivable way to signal that they consider teachers vermin to be stepped on and crushed, they find one more way to drive that point home. At this point, I think the GOP would have to run a convicted ax murderer in order for me to vote Democrat in a national election. This is a whole new level of pissing on us while telling us it's raining. This is a whole new level of disregard for the teaching profession-- no, no, that's wrong, because this is not disregard. This is assault. This is deliberate, lying with a straight face, cheering for the dismantling of teaching as a profession.

 

http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2014/06/arne-tells-teachers-to-go-to-hell-again.html?

Why is accountability only good for public schools but not good for choice schools?

From Michael Q. McShane, of the American Institute, writing in ReDefined Ed: At the same time, conservatives and their school choice allies can work to create a new and better system.  This system, driven by parental choice and flexibility in funding, does not have to play by the same rules as the old system. In fact, it shouldn’t –

http://www.redefinedonline.org/2014/06/for-me-but-not-for-thee-accountability-in-an-age-of-school-choice/#more-36393

First a better system is highly debatable and second WTF!?!

He wants these schools to take from the same pot of money but he doesn’t want to play by the same rules. These are the same rules by the way, which he all but admits were created by pro-school choice advocates, ignoring poverty and emphasizing high stakes testing, that have caused people to want to have choice schools. In effect they have created a problem and are now seeking to profit off the problem.

My grandmother would call the chutzpah, and my 17 year old nephew would all it a dick-move. 

He goes on the call public schools a monopoly, which they have never been and to extol the virtues of the free market system, which admittedly does work really, really well for a few but the results are definitely mixed for the majority of us. He then also insisted schools would never council out poor performers or deny ESOL and ESE students from enrollment and at the point my breakfast started to come up.

I don’t know what I found more appalling, his disconnect from reality, the gall of him saying accountability should be for public schools and not choice schools or that somebody would give him a forum and a job to propagate this nonsense.

Blech!!!

Is it okay to sacrifice some children’s futures as the school choice movement figures it out.

I asked one of the ReDefined Ed guys, Jeb Bush’s pro-privatization blog, who had just written a piece about how great charter schools were doing, about the 250 charter schools that have taken public money and closed leaving families and communities in a lurch in Florida over the years. Where they factor into all the good data. 

It was almost like I was speaking Greek to him as he said since they closed the students who attended them didn't have their data factored in. Though we all know the kids data was factored into the public schools they returned too. He then said it’s a good thing that those charters closed as it would leave only higher performing charter schools left. It didn’t matter that thousands and thousands of children had their educations and futures damaged.

Then today in the same blog Jason Bedrick of the, I have never met a public school they liked and charter school they didn’t, Cato Institute wrote, over time, this market process weeds out ineffective approaches and encourages the proliferation of more effective approaches.

http://www.redefinedonline.org/2014/06/education-excellence-cant-achieved/#sthash.QRv36qXK.dpuf

Oh, over time, a few years maybe, perhaps a decade, perhaps longer, who knows right? The free market eventually figures everything out after all. Also who cares if tens and hundreds of thousands of children more have their futures shortchanged in the mean time?

In their dystopian future public schools have no place, with only a few charter chains and an unregulated voucher accepting private schools remaining. That's what they want the free market to figure out.

School choice advocates pay lip service to poor and mostly minority children.

The school choice movement claims over and over that they are selling their snake oil so poor and mostly minority families can have the same choice, the choice to abandon public schools that richer families have. They think if they repeat this lie often enough then people might just believe it.

Friends, they aren’t giving vouchers so poor and mostly minority kids can attend the same types of schools people like the Obamas and the Bushes send their kids too. You know the ones that believe in the arts, don’t rely on standardized tests and wouldn’t let common core through their gates. Not by a long shot.

They are steering these poor kids to schools in abandoned strip malls, ones with teachers without degrees and that teach creationism as science. These are the schools, 90 percent of which are religious, that they want taxpayers to pick up the bill for.

Now are their some good private schools that take vouchers? Maybe, possibly but the truth is who knows as they and their supporters resist accountability and saying they are required to take some test, doesn’t pass muster. Why do they resist even the most basic of accountability measures, and why can’t one be for teachers to have at least some sort of degree? I believe it is because they know their house of cards will crumble.

Their choice arguments are designed to do one thing and one thing only and that’s to weaken public schools because they know once they are gone they won’t be coming back.

Come back school choice advocates when you want to make all schools like the cathedrals of learning that the Obama children go to but until then especially since you resist accountability like you resist kissing somebody with a cold sore, fewer and fewer people are buying what you are selling.  

The cure is worse than the disease.

I saw an Internet meme that asked, why aren’t our test scores going up? After all we have cut music, art, PE, recess and put in a three hours of remedial reading and math plus additional test prep.

I was both hysterical and profoundly sad because for many of our schools especially those in neighborhoods wracked with poverty it is all too accurate.

Is destroying the love of learning worth an additional point or two on a standardized test? These tests by the way only give people a snap shot and not always an accurate one at that of the learning that is going on in our schools. It does however give you a road map to the poorer neighborhoods, as the schools that service them are the ones that invariably don’t do as well. 

Standardized tests, the FCAT, has sucked the joy of education out of so many teachers and students alike and switching to Common Core, an untested and expensive curriculum, that doesn’t address poverty, our real problem and siphons more money out of classrooms where it is needed and doubles down on standardized tests is not the answer.  

The cure here in Florida for our education problems is far worse than the disease.  

Why aren't our test scores gong up?

The hypocrisy of Edu-Philanthropists (rough draft)

Do you know what I have noticed about Edu-Philanthropists like Gates, the Waltons, and locally in my hometown the Chartrands? First the obvious thing is they are wealthy. Which means it is hard for them to understand things like poverty, which is why they vacillate between ignoring it and calling it an excuse. They have the mistaken belief that a great teacher should be able to show up and that alone can cancel out the effects of hunger, violence and apathy. They believe that alone should be able to make up the deficits that the children arrive with.

Then none of them were educators. None of them taught a day in their lives. They all had teachers though and they turned out rich so they look at the gig and think anybody should be able to do it. They don’t respect the craft and that’s at least partly why so many of their ideas kneecap the teaching profession. They don’t mind an ever-revolving door of teachers because they think anybody should be able to show up and do it.

Then they are hypocrites, they have joined the President, Jeb Bush and so many others in sending their kids to the types of schools that we all wish we could send our kids to or work at, ones that valued smaller classes, the arts, and ones that don’t double down on high stakes testing or experimental curriculums. The schools that they send their kids to are vastly different from the ones we send our kids to.  Take Gates for instance, he has spent hundreds of millions on common core but sends his children to a school that wouldn’t let it through their gates.  

Finally they think they are the smartest kids in the room and teachers are some of the dumbest. You see to them wealth equals intelligence and maybe that’s whey they disrespect teachers so much. They can’t understand that many of us get our wealth from seeing kids grow and learn because the only thing to them that matters are zeroes after ones. They look at teacher’s bank accounts and seven year old cars and it causes them to loath them.

They don’t understand where many of our kids are coming from and they don’t understand what teachers do. They think wealth equals intelligence, which automatically means they are right, and teachers, the professionals actually in the classroom are wrong. Then at the end of the day they would rather invest millions if not billions to create the types of schools for our kids that they would never let their kids near. 

I guess what I have really noticed is they are despite their vast fortunes, they are doing a lot more harm that good.

To read more about Gates and the hundreds of millions he spent on Common Core, click the link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bill-gates-pulled-off-the-swift-common-core-revolution/2014/06/07/

WJCT’s guilt by association

Let me start by saying I think education reporter Rhema Thompson has really elevated their game. I also like Mellissa Ross of First Coast Connect too, though sometimes the toughest question she asks is, how is your day?

Now with that out of the way, let me present their guilt by association.

First, Trey Csar of the Jacksonville Public Education Fund is on the community board with fellow Teach for America alumni and school board candidate Darryl Willie.

I was wondering why we haven’t heard much about TFA and who he’s going to support in district 4 too.

Then on the leadership board we have Ashley Smith-Juarez, school board member, Rachel Vitti, the super’s wife, Delores Barr-Weaver whose husband has been increasingly involved in local education and who has donated to numerous school board candidates and Kristen Majdanics the wife of KIPPs Tom Majdanics. Maybe that’s why we haven’t heard about the Chartrand Rule which has protected their school grade or anything about KIPP for that matter.

Furthermore Rick Mullaney who has a monthly policy show, also has a daughter in Teach for America, gee I wonder how he feels about that policy. He recently had Gary Chartrand on his show and he was like a coat, you know as in let off the hook repeatedly.

Speaking of Chartand until just recently, I mean in the last few days, the WJCT web-site carried a banner saying sponsored by the Chartrand foundation. Gary Chartrand who went from grocer to running our schools is one of the biggest drivers of the school privatization movement in Jacksonville and he and his families have donated to several school board candidates with a privatization bent including the aforementioned Smith-Juarez and Willie.

Couple this with the Waltons yes those Waltons K-12 initiative who are also big donors to public radio and who are part of the national privatization movement, then what stories are we missing?

No really, what stories are we missing?

I know I didn’t miss the pro-common core story that ran the other day as I am sure the Gates foundation, another big donor with a privatization bent who have spent hundreds of millions promoting common core didn’t.

To read more, click the link: http://pando.com/2014/06/05/revealed-gates-foundation-financed-pbs-education-programming-which-promoted-microsofts-interests/