This may be the best blog post of the year. Read it. It is priceless!
Welcome to Opposite Day in Ohio!
Veteran educator Maureen Reedy explains what “education reform” meant on Opposite Day.
This is the day when StudentsFirst came to the Ohio Legislature to tout the virtues of charter schools, even though public schools in Ohio far outperform charters. The bottom performing 111 schools in the state of Ohio last year were all charter schools. Opposite Day!
And when StudentsFirst claimed that great teachers could teach 100 or more children online, even though Ohio already has poorly performing online charters. Opposite Day!
And when an employee of StudentsFirst boldly claimed that teaching is not a profession. Opposite Day!
Please read. This story should be on Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow and the Newshour. John Merrow, are you there?
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
I would add to the list Ed Shultz since his Mom was a teacher in Norfoldk, VA (and he has gone to bat for teachers several times over the past year) and also Cenk Uygar of TYT and the Young Turks on Current TV, (especially when you tie in the hundreds of milions of dollars being redirected from public schools to corporate interests).
I’m guessing the cherub from StudentsFirst has never taught. Teaching is not a profession! ????; but being a mindless Rheebot I guess is. Oh, youth is wasted on the young. (George Bernard Shaw)
Thanks Mark,
I have actually been on Ed Schultz twice and sent him a pitch for a panel which would include Diane Ravitch, Michigan legislator and Michigan superintendent.
Will re-send pitch with this blog as it is more of a story and something that might gain traction with him.
Spread the word, we are working to save public education, if you want some more detail about what I am involved in reaching across state lines, my email is:
maureen.reedy@gmail.com
Keep up the fight for our kids, our profession, and ultimately, our Democracy as we know it.
Time is running out…
Maureen
Concur with adding Ed Schultz. Additionally, he went to public schools in Norfolk and graduated from Maury High school.
Thanks Rick,
See comment above to Mark regarding Ed Schultz.
The chilling thing I did include in Opposite Day blog was, at the conclusion of the 3 hr StudentsFirst presentation before the Ohio House Finance Committee, a Republican Representative asked if the team could stay around for “about 6 weeks,” presumably to help craft the imminent House Bill on Gov. Kasich’s agenda for Education Funding/Reform.
Ms. Stabilia, who I quoted in the article as saying, “Education is not a profession…,” said, “I’d like to make a plug here and introduce you to our StudentsFirst’s Ohio Representative, he has an office here in Columbus and would be happy to help you with any parts of your bill…”
Absolutely chilling, absolutely appalling… we cannot let this corporate, for-profit, privatization trajectory continue in its agenda to decimate our public schools, our voice, our profession, our kids’ futures and ultimately, our Democracy.
Thank you to Diane, for working tirelessly and relentlessly to unite us together in our cause to save Public Education and to give us a platform for our voices.
Maureen
Sorry, I meant, “the chilling thing I did NOT include in Opposite Day blog….”
Maureen Reedy’s blog is persuasive and suggests that Ohio is, in fact, running its public schools the old fashioned way when they more or less worked, and exposes the weak performance of charters. Her post also suggests that unions can co-exist with excellence. Yet she does nothing to address the money laundering function of unions in which federal stimulus money goes to states to keep teachers employed during the depression, who in turn pay union dues, which in turn goes to support Democrat candidates. All that stimulus money came from taxes, and Obama used it to keep his constituents working while private sector jobs were lost. I find it quite unfair to collect general taxpayer revenue and then use it to protect teacher jobs. If teachers are doing as good a job as the Ohio teachers seem to be doing, one could almost condone it, but the impact on the economy as a whole of policies that damage the private sector will eventually turn the US into California, and then eventually into Oakland, or worse, Detroit.
Money laundering? Please tell me you are kidding. Do you have a problem with the Wall Street bailout, where taxpayer money was used for hefty bonuses, more than an average teacher would see in ten year’s salary? I suppose it’s ok for the one percent to throw their money around and affect elections, but it’s not ok for unions to do so. I would be more concerned with how the private sector is ruining our country.
Wall Street should not have been bailed out either, but since the government created the housing bubble, maybe it thought it had some responsibility for creating all those bad insured mortgages which Wall Street packaged into securities. All of government money comes from the private sector. No private sector, no public sector. I’m concerned about jobs and growth. What are you expecting?
I’m expecting to live in a republic, not an oligarchy.
Ah, another wealth envy-er. You are a lot closer to living in a socialist paradise than government by the wealthy. Immelt and Buffet and Soros are the friends of Obama, not of the people. You’re a public sector employee, right? Leech.
Already name-calling? I guess we’re done here. I work hard for my salary, so leech doesn’t fit. As for wealth-envy-er, I would not have become a teacher if all I cared about was lucre.
Ah, the left with its notorious lack of humor and incapacity for imagining irony. But you ARE a public sector employee, right? I know that many teachers work very, very, very hard to lift the ox out of the ditch, but few question why there is a ditch and how the ox got into it. The accusation of “name calling” is always a cop out. The left never name calls, right? The greedy, profit hungry private sector is always the problem, right? I take Swift as a model, but I haven’t quite arrived at a symbol of the relationship of public education to its students as brilliant as that author’s “A Modest Proposal.” To speak literally, however, if you, as a well meaning, hard working employee of some public school system do not understand that overall government is the problem, not just Democrat government or Republican government, but the size of government itself and its unsustainable drain on tax payers who need that money to either consume or run businesses, you will see the current reform efforts in education as “evil” rather than a natural reaction to a predatory philosophy of government. Education reform is NOT about education, but rather about the larger culture war between individualists and collectivists. You may HAVE to work on the collectivist side of things at present in order to feed your family, but you DON’T in your heart have to buy its economic nonsense. You may have to keep quiet at work not to excite hostility among your low information colleagues, but in the secrecy and depths of your soul, if you have the courage and can bear the cognitive dissonance, you can say to yourself “I realize that nothing gets done without individual effort and when the larger culture dis-incentivizes private investment and risk taking by ever higher taxes, I will come down on the political side of smaller government and join the ‘taxed enough already’ movement in this country.” ALL of that literal explanation was incorporated in my little bit of provocative name calling. If you CAN be offended, you are still lost to “truth, justice, and the American Way” (as Thayrone X calls traditional American values).
REPLY to LEHRER, but in a display mode easier to read than the column under his reply to me. I called him a “leech” to which he objected as “name calling” and said “We’re done here.” I explain below.
Ah, the left with its notorious lack of humor and incapacity for imagining irony. But you ARE a public sector employee, right? I know that many teachers work very, very, very hard to lift the ox out of the ditch, but few question why there is a ditch and how the ox got into it. The accusation of “name calling” is always a cop out. The left never name calls, right? The greedy, profit hungry private sector is always the problem, right? I take Swift as a model, but I haven’t quite arrived at a symbol of the relationship of public education to its students as brilliant as that author’s “A Modest Proposal.” To speak literally, however, if you, as a well meaning, hard working employee of some public school system do not understand that overall government is the problem, not just Democrat government or Republican government, but the size of government itself and its unsustainable drain on tax payers who need that money to either consume or run businesses, you will see the current reform efforts in education as “evil” rather than a natural reaction to a predatory philosophy of government.
Education reform is NOT about education, but rather about the larger culture war between individualists and collectivists. You may HAVE to work on the collectivist side of things at present in order to feed your family, but you DON’T in your heart have to buy its economic nonsense. You may have to keep quiet at work not to excite hostility among your low-information colleagues, but in the secrecy and depths of your soul, if you have the courage and can bear the cognitive dissonance, you can say to yourself “I realize that nothing gets done without individual effort and when the larger culture dis-incentivizes private investment and risk taking by ever higher taxes, I will come down on the political side of smaller government and join the ‘taxed enough already’ movement in this country.” ALL of that literal explanation was incorporated in my little bit of provocative name calling. If you CAN be offended, you are still lost to “truth, justice, and the American Way,” as Thayrone X calls traditional American values.
Pity, though. You seem like one of the good guys.
1. I am a public school teacher.
2. I have a great sense of humor.
3. I do not engage in name-callling, but have been known to do so when someone else has fired the first volley (I am only human), even though I would consider myself somewhat liberal.
4. Calling me a leech and then blaming me when I don’t understand the irony reminds me of the playground squabbles I deal with daily.
3. I believe that government is the answer, not the problem.
Lehrer, you post an exceptionally civilized and candid answer.