Connecticut was the scene this year of a bitter battle over legislation that was intended to diminish teachers’ tenure and to impose a punitive evaluation plan tied to test scores. In efforts to promote this legislation (SB 24), There was a great deal of hostile talk about greedy, lazy teachers, protected by their union and tenure, getting paid just to show up.
Jonathan Pelto puts the events of this past year into perspective here.
Pelto is one of those people who follows the money, always a good place to begin any investigation.
This is how he begins:
It started with Achievement First, Inc., the charter school management company co-founded by Commissioner of Education, Stefan Pryor.
Then came the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN), the Connecticut Coalition for Advocacy Now, (ConnAD), Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst (calling itself the Great New England Public School Alliance, GNEPSA) and Students for Education Reform (SFER, an off-shoot of 50-CAN, which, in turn, grew out of ConnCAN)
When Governor Malloy proposed his “education reform” legislation earlier this year, these groups, funded by millionaire and billionaire hedge fund owners, along with the Gates, Walton and Broad Foundations, engaged in the most costly lobbying, advertising and public relations effort in Connecticut history.
Since then, many of the same organizations funded Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch’s record spending effort to eliminate Bridgeport’s elected board of education and replace it with one appointed by the mayor.
Now, with the next session of the Connecticut General Assembly only a few weeks away, comes that news that a group called “Educators 4 Excellence” is opening operations here, as the corporate reformers seek to continue their efforts to privatize and undermine Connecticut’s public education system.
Educators 4 Excellence is a two year-old organization, funded by the Gates Foundation (among others) and set up by the corporate education reform trifecta of Education Reform Now (ERN), Education Reform Now Advocacy (ERNA) and Democrats for Education Reform (DFER).
There are days when I think we have reached the full depth of darkness in education, and the light MUST be shining just around the corner. I felt that way when the CTU actually went on strike earlier this year.
Then I look at the evidence, such as that provided in this article, and I think the public school teachers simply have no where to run, no where to hide.
True, nowhere to run or hide. It feels like a teacher holocaust.
Don’t you just love the Orwellian names they give these groups? In that world anything they say use the opposite meaning such as “I love you” really means “I hate you.” “I love the children” really means “I am going to rob all the money and not teach you.” This is the strange reality we live in now. It is time for the public to wake up and go to war on these self righteous billionaire thiefs. That is all they are as K-12 public education general funds are more than the DOD budget. This is big money and along with that revenue source you also get to control the minds of the next generation for your personal benefit. Did not Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Kim Al Jong teach us that lesson only recently? What do you really think they are after? Read “Hapsburgs to Hitler” and you will find out. That plan is in place here right now and the last step to total fascism is wiping out the unions which is what they are presently doing. Think about it all they are doing is using something that has worked in Austria since 1919.
There sure is an abundance of organizations for “professional finger pointers.” If they really want to make a difference, maybe they should get into the classrooms and teach for a career instead of constantly criticizing those who actually do.
How many teachers do we need to issue Bill Gates a grade of an F to make him go away? I was almost blinded in the classroom working in one of his “experiments”.
It’s amazing that people who don’t even reside in a state are given so much power to impact education in that state. Gates is a truly dispicable person. Does he have any idea what he has unleashed out here? Would he have the guts to interview charter school teachers face to face? Have the guts to go and find out what you have done. No wonder the sleazy Malloy was calling teachers “pigs”. Wow-follow the money.
For some odd reason this all reminds me of Dante’s Inferno.