In response to my letter to Jill Biden, this teacher remembers the school he attended with one of the Biden’s children. He laments that current “reforms” make it impossible to maintain the standards of excellence that he experienced when he was lucky enough to attend a private Friends school as a youth.
I attended a Friends school — one of the Biden’s kids was a few years behind me.
At Friends we received a character building education of topical breadth and intellectual depth.
Our teachers were trusted to design and implement instruction and their assessments of our achievement was held in high regard by top selective universities.
Now I am a mid-career teacher in Bridgeport, Conn. at a school that faces every struggle my own high school did not. My endeavor is to bring to my students the same kind of educational excellence I got as a lucky scholarship kid at a Friends school. My reputation among my school’s community is that of someone who is bringing this high standard to the classroom.
Race To The Top and Bridgeport’s Chicago-based education reformers will severely hamper if not entirely end this personal endeavor of bringing a Friends caliber education to disadvantaged students.
The best educators in my building and city — those who teach with verve, dedication, and skill– they will be hobbled by RTTT. The only benefits I foresee will be for the corporations who will deliver the consultants, texts, testing, and charter schools.
One side note about places like a Friends school. They were $20k/yr when I attended (again, on scholarship) And I imagine must now run $30k /yr in addition to what a family is paying in property taxes for the public schools their kids are not attending.
Public schools do it for under $10k/yr. Where do people get the idea that public education spending is bloated? That idea is pushed by those who will profit by privatization.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Let me speak as (a) a Quaker who (b) graduated from a Quaker College (Haverford), who (c) served as a teacher intern in a Friends Secondary School some 3 decades ago, who (d) spent one year on the board of a Friends elementary school, and (e) just retired as a public school teacher.
1. One reason parents are willing to pay high tuition for Friends and other select independent schools is the smaller class size (which is more expensive, even though independent school teachers are often paid significantly less)
2. in a school that is not subject to government constraints it is far simpler to offer a strong sense of ethics – in Friends schools that comes from the Quaker belief in the inherent worth of every human being, a belief one can trace back to George Fox telling people to answer that of God in each person they met
3. I have multiple times challenged the President in my online writing to insist on a education for public school students equal to that his daughters get at Sidwell Friends, an institution with which I am quite familiar. I do not think his Department of Education should impose – even as a condition of aid (aka the bribe of extra money through Race to the Top or waivers under NCLB) – on public schools and their students what he would not be willing to subject his own daughters to.
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Mr. Bernstein,
I’ve only just seen that my comment was re-blogged here while looking through the archives– not sure whether you’ll read this…
I am like minded on several of the things you’ve written. I’d argue your point about ethics, though — you’ve implied that somehow public education is less inclined to be ethical than it is to be so in schools that are “free of government constraints.”
This is probably just a quibble about your wording– I think you may have meant specific g’vt constraints like RTTT. But the wording sounds so much like the “government meddling” language of reformers who want to clear space for corporate constraints.
I hope you can tell from my posts how deeply ethics is a part of my teaching. And I am doing it in a school under constraints both governmental and societal — and I take pride in doing it in a place of poverty, where the inner light of God is often ignored in the children by our society.
A public school CAN be the place where this is nurtured. It must be. That is what community is for.
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fwiw I just retired after 17 years as a public school teacher and ethics were essential to how I taught and what I taught, so I do not think we are in disagreement
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I have read many of Kenneth Bernstein’s writings and yours, Diane as well. i feel that the education one wants for their children should be made available to all children. Keeping that in mind would hopefully steer people in the right direction. However, I see over and over again that’s a long shot. Not happening.
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To the Bridgeport teacher,
I have noticed your postings on the CT Pelto blog and CT Post. I teach in CT, too but not Bridgeport. Isn’t there a BOE meeting coming up on June 25th to extend Vallas’s contract? Maybe you can use this forum to notify parents, students and taxpayers.
Also, just wondering, did Vallas ever meet with the teachers in your building to get ideas and feedback? I noticed it didn’t take long to get pictures of himself on the BPS website.
I wonder how he got his stellar reputation? He reformed Chicago, now look at it. He reformed, New Orleans, now look and he reformed Philly and it is a mess. So what exactly is he heralded for?
If that was the success rate for a teacher, he/she would be out of work.
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Hi Linda. No, Vallas met with no teachers to my knowledge. Sorry, just seeing this. The teacher whose room is in the photographs (you can see her in the photos) is one of the good ones who left the system among the reformer-caused chaos and uncertainty.
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The “reformers” have their own Lemon Dance going as the shuffle around among these saved and resaved districts.
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ah, yes, the dancing “reformer” lemons
the biggest lemon, from whom you cannot get lemonade, is Paul Vallas – Chicago – Philadelphia – New Orleans – Bridgeport
but there are also Arlene Ackerman DC – San Francisco – Philadelphia
Jean Claude Brizard Rochester – Chicago
John Deasy – Santa Monica – Prince George’s County MD – Gates Foundation – LA Unified
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As one who is opposed to Common Core and RttT, I can’t argue with anything in this piece. Teachers and parents will never be trusted by bureaucrats. The top -down approach to learning by bureaucrats and supported by elected legislators, do not trust the local communities.
This is why everyone, teachers included, should stop supporting the feds interference in public education.
I can’t figure out why teachers say they oppose the interference then their unions support politicians who believe it’s good to micromanage their classroom.
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It is a curious paradox that certain people value education for their children, but do not value education for the people who educate their children.
“Paradox” is of course the nice word for it.
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