Kris Neilsen wrote an amazing post (“NC Teacher: I Quit“) a few months back, which was opened by 150,000 people, at a minimum.
He continues to teach and to write. He has recently written a series called “This Is How Democracy Ends.” In this post, he expresses his profound opposition to the Common Core State Standards.
He believes that the corporate reform movement has foisted the Common Core standards on the schools, with the expectation that scores will fall, reinforcing their claim that American public education is a failure:
He writes: “This fits nicely with the ongoing onslaught that StudentsFirst, TFA, Bill Gates, The Broad Foundation, the Walton family, and Democrats for Education Reform have sustained. As Kentucky schools showed recently, the mix of new standardized tests and the Common Core leads to dismal school failure. How many more schools, districts, and states will see the same problems? How long will it take for teachers and schools to be the ultimate scapegoat of those failures? How long will it take for bad policy to remove good teachers and replace them with mass-produced teachers with 6 weeks of training in test administration and little else?”
Rhee would not last a year as a teacher today, thanks in part to her rheeform efforts. Many teachers are feeling that it’s only a matter of time before the boom gets lowered on them, not because they are not great teachers, but that the job has truly become impossible.
I agree.
Regarding the question about how long it will take these stacked evaluations to remove teachers, my understanding is that the evaluations are to be normed so that a set percentage of teachers must be rated ineffective annually, just as a set percentage of students must fail high stakes tests.
The number I’ve heard is about 7% per year, which theoretically could mean the removal of 100% – perhaps not likely, but theoretically possible – of current teachers in ten years.
Meanwhile, in NYC, the leadership of the United Federation of Teachers is refusing to allow a member vote on the evaluations being negotiated, even though it’s part of the contract, and even though it represents the biggest change in teacher working conditions in decades.
Control, intimidation, scapegoating, and churning, that’s the menu for public school teachers, unless resistance like we’re seeing in Seattle grows.
Education sat on a wall
Education had a great fall
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Education together again:(
I am lucky to work in an independent, non profit school where teachers are given great freedom and significant responsibility to engage and teach the children in their care. I have written a memoir about my first six years in this school in the 1990s. It is called A Gift of Wonder, School as it Could Be. I am currently looking for an agent and a publisher. The chapters in this book show many instances where a teacher’s freedom to act in the moment to meet the needs of her class made a vital difference. Diane, I would be honored it you would agree to read and comment on my manuscript.
The Place Where Three Wars Meet
great post.
Who could forget GW’s axis of evil. I loved the next iteration, the venn diagram of evil.
What is amazing is the amount of so called democrats involved in this ruination of education including Obama and Duncan. If it was only Tea Party Republicans it would be more understandable. The mass inclusion and cooperation of democrats shows just how corrupt we have become to the sirens song of “Big Bucks.”
On the other side of that coin, those who have sent me words of support are also from both sides of the party-line fence. Conservatives and liberals–perhaps for different reasons–want to save our schools from this power and money grab. Perhaps this is the issue that brings us together a little more.
This is straight forward manipulation of divide and conqueor. What is stunning is
we are talking war language in response to the questions of how and why so
many layers of our Democracy and global interests are being unraveled. What would motivate such an attack on ourselves from the inside? Who would perpetrate such deceit and for what reason? There are answers and they can be found in the sophisticated articles of our Think Tanks and universities, creative hubs of expression such as the movie industry (under constant attack), military defense complex, religion,so forth and so on. Each struggle for the minds and backs of the masses. Greed qnd avarice, power and dominance, ownership and adoration, formulas and quests.
A simple old film called Demolition Man (Slyvester Stallone and Wesley
Snipes ((now in jail for tax crime)), Denis Leary ((previous job Yale Professor)), Sandra
Bullock) a 1993 sci-fi film illustrates in simple form a subliminal message for young people to come to understand the state of what was happening and moving
into their future. I called this film and those like it mind seeding films. Everything
suggested in that film has already come to pass and some still in the process.
You have to listen and look closely at each line, gesture, and realize the complete message. Amusing and fun on the surface but deadly serious with
prophetic understanding. The kids that watched that fim are now adults and we are
back to the future. The end of the film is today and where we are standing. Right back to the question!!! Take a minute to relax, rent the film and apply the body of work to your
questions and understand the making of a revolution…..feel familiar? Hope!
Journalist Glen Ford, who has been alert to these issues for years, has the most keen insights on the origins and rapid evolution of the corporate privatization of public education that I have ever heard, “The Corporate Assault on Pubic Education”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdPACwRgw04
While at YouTube, also check out another of Glen Ford’s videos, “Resisting the Corporate Education Agenda.”
These are MUST SEE videos for anyone who cares about children, public education and democracy. Help them to go viral so they reach the masses and are reported by mainstream media.