When I printed the post by Kris L. Neilsen explaining why he quit his teaching job in North Carolina, I had no idea what the reaction would be.
It went viral.
Kris’s post has been read–to this point–by more than 130,000 people. It has been retweeted more than 800 times.
Previously, the post that had the largest readership was “I am a teacher. Let me teach,” read by 4,000 people.
For Kris’s post, more than 130,000 page views.
Wow.
I have only been blogging for six months, so maybe others have experienced posts that took off like a rocket.
This one was a meteor.
Every time I check, the numbers have soared yet again.
Kris captured the rage and frustration that many teachers feel.
He is sick of the disrespect.
He is tired of being micromanaged by people who know nothing about education.
He is fed up with the directives and mandates.
He wants to be treated as a professional.
He wants to exercise autonomy and judgment, as professionals should.
He wants to do what is best for his students, not comply with federal or state or local mandates.
Many others have written to say that Kris expressed their own feelings.
His story illustrates the sickness of what is now absurdly called “reform.”
It is nothing of the sort.
It is micromanagement by bureaucrats and politicians.
It will not improve education.
It sets up schools for failure and it demoralizes dedicated teachers.
The sooner the public understands what these people in Washington and in the state capitols are doing to the public schools, the sooner it will end.
Our job: Inform the public. Get the word out. Be strong.
But don’t quit. Be there when the madness collapses.
It will.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Kmareka.com and commented:
Interesting to see what goes viral from Diane Ravitch’s blog.
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I know other FB pages had it up, but your site does have clout and thankfully so!!!
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Thanks for the good news about the “I Quit” post. The word is spreading.
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North Carolina teachers (and others), watch WSOC-TV tonight (Nov. 2). Hopefully they don’t take me out of context. The word is, indeed, spreading.
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Best wishes to you, Kris, as you continue the crusade.
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Thank you, Kris, for providing much needed leadership.
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Thank you, Diane. I missed it first time around. I just re-tweeted it. Nothing sums up the frustration of high achieving teaching professionals as well as this letter. Both my husband and I just left our NYC public school teaching jobs. Between us, we raised over $400,000 in private and public funding to improve each of our schools. On our own time. He won two VHI Save The Music Grants, with full band and orchestra instruments donates, he established partnerships with Jazz at Lincoln Center. Of 15 students taken by audition around the city, 3 of his students made it into their Middle School Jazz Band. And his school is in the middle of the South Bronx, the poorest county in the US, I believe. Despite all the teaching artists and programs his fund raising supported, not to mention the band program, due to the mandatory testing, his school had to shut down this very successful band program. When he got this news, he knew it was time to leave. He’s just started a non profit, The South Bronx After School Band Project, with the help of a generous donor who has been supporting the band program in his school for the last 10 years. He’s now back in his South Bronx PS/MS, giving the same children instrumental music lessons, preparing concerts and beginning to reach out to other schools in the neighborhood to send students to him.
My story is similar. I taught in a great progressive small public high school, part of the Consortium, for 10 years. The DOE dropped my position (it was “artsy” – not math or science) and last year I was rotated into 25 Manhattan public schools as an ATR, an “excessed” teacher. This was after raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for my school which, I’m proud to say, brought smart boards into every classroom and a full iMac computer lab. I’m writing a book about last year’s experience, working title: “Yo Miz.” My husband and I are happy to be out of the compression of the system and on to a new chapter. It’s wonderful to feel creative and challenged again.
So Iike Kris, we are on to a new life. BTW, my parents were both NYC public high school teachers. We had a great life, a beautiful home, fantastic summer vacations. We felt like rich people. Both my parents loved their jobs. My father taught electronics, physics and math at Brooklyn Technical HS and my mother was a speech and English teacher at Bayside High. My parents were respected and looked up to as teachers. They had excellent relationships with their administrations (my mom was an acting chair one semester) and I grew up feeling privileged. (Incidentally, my father was an immigrant from Eastern Europe who learned English as his third language. He was offered a full scholarship to study math at Cornell U). The point is: Our NYC public schools were the best in the nation.
Now with Kris, we see some of our greatest pedagogic talent out the door. Duly noted.
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Good luck to both of you! Thank you for sharing your story.
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Thank you MST:)
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Beautiful story about how things were not so long ago, thanks for sharing, Elizabeth Rose. Maybe we can get back there some day.
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Despite all the insanity, I’m an optimist. We have Diane Ravitch’s voice which is steady, consistent, loving and authoritative. Because of DR’s blog, I continue to learn. Knowledge is power, after all. Keep the faith, keep those “comments” coming and hold the vision of what can be. Mine is that professional educators are given voice and political power in educational policy-making decisions. As these bad ideas (NCLB, RTTT) are exposed for their cost and lack of success, hopefully municipalities, states and the Feds will start asking us to join their committees. In the meantime, we must hold on to our most positive vision. We educators are the “carriers” of democracy to our charges. We need to continue to uphold our responsibility at all costs. Remember, once we close that classroom door, we can light the intellectual fire.
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This also has resonance in the UK. In a sense, the whole world’s watching.
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Low teacher morale is the ultimate measure of the reformers effectiveness. By that measure they are doing exceedingly well.
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Exactly right! I was SO discouraged when I was a teacher. I couldn’t believe I worked THAT hard to get a degree and invest so much of myself into the students and the job to simply be thrown under the bus every time an irresponsible parent whined about their kid under-performing….even after multiple requests for parent-teacher conferences, calls to the home, etc etc. The ultimate WTF moment came when the secretary in the main office bitched about not knowing her own kid was failing…and she sent out the notices to the families! The real problem? We, as a society, do not value our children and it is completely evident in the way we treat those who help, guide, and care for our children. It’s too sad for words.
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It was through that letter that I found your blog. Keep posting great information! I shared the link with a few friends in education.
Rudy
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For Diane Ravitch & Kris Neilson,
There are thousands of us who agree with you and stand behind you. Your courage is an inspiration to all of us who dare to think the “corporatization” of American education has no value, meaning, or credibility for creating education systems that can work. Of course there are problems to be solved. AND every solution reveals a new problem. No one considered nationalizing Wall Street or the Auto industry, when they FAILED us. No one suggested that corporate leaders are traitors, for off-shoring our jobs, and moving production overseas. The right wing assault on public education and higher education has been created by ideologues and profiteers, whose sense of entitlement reveals a lack of awareness in their role in destroying the middle-class, and that their ignorance about education is appalling.
Those of us in higher education, see administrations that are either complicit with this right-wing juggernaut, or who lack the courage to say, “No, we won’t”. We need more voices who will echo your words, and tell others what we know from the “inside”.
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Thank you, Kris. I have sent your letter out to everyone I know. You speak for many of us.
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Thank you Kris, Man;y of us feel the same way, we will be there to pick up the pieces when this house of cards falls.
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This post is an excellent example of why this blog is so important. Thank you, Diane, for providing a space for people to tell their stories, and thank you, Kris, for telling yours.
And thank you, all 130,000+ who read this posting. Don’t be surprised if many more people have read this than have paid to see WON’T BACK DOWN [which I think would be more aptly named CAN’T TELL THE TRUTH, SUCKA!].
We are increasingly urged to be in awe of the power of the number of dollar bills the edudeformers put behind their efforts. Diane and Kris show another side of the power of numbers: the power of a individual providing a platform from which another individual can powerfully present his story to 130,000+. And when some of those 130,000+ then speak and act…
IMHO, you are both heroes of education.
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thank you for posting
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Oh thank you for saying it will end, Diane! I thought things were looking up with the no ed. vouchers in New Orleans. I hope it ends soon. I’m tired of the lies.
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