Just got this in the email. It was posted on Facebook:
Deborah Hohn Tonguis posted in LA Public Teachers: Our Classrooms are Not for Sale!
Here is my email response to Holly Boffy, who sent an email request to all of the Louisiana Teachers of the Year to participate in an upcoming visit by NBC. She has no shame…
From: Holly Boffy
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 9:53 PM
Subject: Unique opportunity in the New Orleans area
Dear Teachers of the Year,
If you live in Orleans or one of the surrounding parishes and are currently a classroom teacher, please email me about an opportunity to be part of NBC’s upcoming visit to our state. I’d love to have a Teacher of the Year involved in the activities.
Sincerely,
Holly Boffy
Dear Holly,
Are you talking about NBC as in “National Board Certification”?
If so, which Louisiana Teacher of the Year would like to make NBC aware that the BESE board wants to make teacher certification optional in all but public schools? That our highest education policy-making body believes that schools should not require its classroom practitioners to have any sort of education-related degree, certificate or training, much less a passing Praxis score or a state issued teaching certificate to teach in Louisiana’s fast growing charter and for-profit school industry?
Perhaps a Louisiana STOY would be proud to articulate this to NBC: that our own Superintendent of Education, John White, with whom you have aligned yourself in ALL voting on the BESE board, has publicly demonstrated that teacher education and experience DO NOT matter in the classroom, and then proved his belief by hiring a former TFA teacher with only 2 years of classroom experience to spearhead our state’s highest teacher accountability system for public school teachers, COMPASS. She now facilitates teacher evaluation training workshops. This 27 year old BESE Board approved hire is telling administrators what highly effective teaching looks like. This from someone with a 5 1/2 week “how to” course and practically no teaching experience. (http://theadvocate.com/home/4004848-125/evaluator-defends-not-renewing-own)
Maybe a former LATOY would be proud to inform NBC that our new BESE board president, Chas Roemer, another board member you have unilaterally voted in agreement with, stated publicly his wish that even more Louisiana public schools would become charters, in spite of the fact that charters do not outperform public schools.
(http://www.thenewsstar.com/article/20130207/NEWS01/130207023/BESE-president-wants-see-more-charters)
Let’s see if a highly respected LATOY would be willing to further perpetuate our state’s legacy of corruption by explaining that Chas Roemer’s sister, Caroline Roemer Shirley, is executive director of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools. As a state employee, I was required to take an online ethics course that specifically forbids “the participation of a public servant or elected official in a vote on any matter in which a member or his immediate family has a substantial economic interest. ” But then again, our BESE board seems to be above the law as evidenced in its continued practice of funding non-public voucher schools with tax payer money even after the program was ruled unconstitutional.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2012/11/30/la-judge-bobby-jindal-school-voucher-program-unconstitutional/)
Holly, surely you would not encourage the good people from the National Board Certification office to visit our state and see the shameful way duly certified, highly qualified teachers are being made obsolete at the hand of our own DOE.
But then again…maybe you meant NBC as in “National Broadcasting Company”. In that case, please bring them on and place me at the top of the list, for we could use national media attention on what is happening to our state’s education system in the name of reform.
Deborah Hohn Tonguis
2009 Louisiana Teacher of the Year
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Howard Thurman
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Clarification…who is Holly Boffy? What is her position?
I love the response…Deborah…you are my long lost sister! 🙂
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Boffy is an elected member of the State Board of Education. She was a Teache for several years and a teacher of the year. Then Jindal’s machine co-opted her services and helped finance her election. She pulled the wool over too many voters’ eyes using her teaching experience as a cover. She now rubber stamps Jindal’s reform policies. All a matter of record by the way.
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Shame, shame on Holly. Sell out! 😦
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Holly Boffy was also a previous Louisiana Teacher of the Year.
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Hard to believe due to the votes she has cast degrading the profession!
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She is also for getting rid of tenure.
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Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
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Holly, want to make a name for yourself in broadcast journalism??
Interview Ms Tonguis for her side of what’s really going on down here and then report it in full as a counterpart to whatever propaganda your network spouts.
Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.
-Kingsley Amis-
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This is a well crafted and rhetorically powerful letter. It should be a rallying call for teachers across the country to begin organizing to take back the schools so that they can serve this democratic society and not just the few who have wrested democracy from the people by legislating against good teaching and schools that are truly in sync with the basic American values so nicely expressed in the Declaration and in that wonderful piece by Dewey titled “On Democracy.”
http://wolfweb.unr.edu/homepage/lafer/dewey%20dewey.htm
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I believe Boffy was referring to MSNBC which is bringing Education Nation to New Orleans. One panel is evidently going to be made up of National Board Certified Teachers. I applied when it was suggested to me by NBPTS but it appears that MSNBC may not want a retired teacher. I offered to bring another perspective to the table as a recently retired teacher who is also cognizant of and involved in the battle to save our public schools. A major component of the National Board certification process is community involvement and of teaching as a PROFESSION and lifetime commitment. In Louisiana that is becoming more and more difficult. Example : in 2010 our legislature passed law that retired teachers could not teach, mentor, substitute at any level at a public institution part time or full time without forfeiting the retirement benefits they earned. As an NBCT I can no longer officially mentor NBCT candidates. That is an example of how our Superintendent is improving education.
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if they wanted NBCTs, would not it have made sense to have NBPTS do the reaching out for them? I know they keep track of NBCTs, picking up when we win awards of any kind
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Be sure to inform us of Boffy’s response, if there is one.
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Holly will not respond. I keep waiting for her to realize that she is on the wrong side of these issues. If she won’t use her position to advocate for teachers, then she should at least think of the children who are being experimented with. She has been bought by big business contributors to her BESE board campaign, and can’t say no now. Too many people are dependent upon her throwing lucrative contracts their way. She is now the TREASURER of the BESE board. Just awful…
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Deborah, if it IS, indeed, the National BROADcasting (those loud & proud “Education Nation” folks) Co., do, indeed, ask them about their “fair” reporting of the cheating scandal in Atlanta (in which they CLEARLY finger-pointed at the TEACHERS, making it appear that the TEACHERS who cheated did this for the bonus pay, & that the TEACHERS were in it for the money; also, the TEACHERS kept the children from receiving an education–in essence, the TEACHERS “stole the children’s education.”). One parent who was interviewed stated that, “They should send all the TEACHERS to jail.” Their reporting (if one can call such biased
blathering “reporting”) was absolutely vicious.
NBC= MISeducation Nation (or DISS-education).
And–thank you for speaking out, Deborah!
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Reblogged this on Crazy Crawfish's Blog and commented:
An excellent response to a bought and paid
for BESE member, by one of my favorite local Teachers of the Year, Deborah Tonguis.
Read and see what types of quality educators “Reform” and John White’s temp teaching corps is driving away in favor 5 week, quasi-trained “troops” soldiering on to what they consider are their “real” careers after fluffing up their resume nests with 2 years of teaching to the test.
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This is what is coming your way crazycrawfish. Make sure the teachers of Lousiana are ready. The Education Nation is a farce.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-c-pedroni/roy-roberts-detroit-schools_b_2994274.html?utm_hp_ref=detroit
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Diane, I remember when NBC was organizing their first teacher town hall and you tried to get them to talk to some of us who were articulate experienced teachers. No such luck.
Perhaps people should go explore the experience of a highly articulate teacher who was on the 1st panel at that event, Steve Lazar of NYC – as he puts it, I should have known better
I live-tweeted that first Town Hall – from home. I noted that 1/3 of the educators who got on stage with Brian Williams were from charters at a time when only about 5% of the students in the nation were in charters. I saw him quote the totally misleading statement from Waiting for Superman about the number of certificates legally lifted in IL. I wrote several posts about that event, before and after, which you can read in order here, here, here, Here, and here.
In the eyes of many of the teachers I know, NBC has no credibility when it comes to its coverage of education. Things have not really improved since that first year’s Education Nation.
If NBC wants quality teachers, those teachers should insist on being on live so that the network cannot edit them out.
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This is the bs that is going on with Education Nation…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-c-pedroni/roy-roberts-detroit-schools_b_2994274.html?utm_hp_ref=detroit
Pretty sad. What a joke.
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Deborah Tonguis is my hero.
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What an excellent response, Deborah Hohn Tonguis! In Arizona, the charter conglomerates, Great Hearts Academies, in particular, proudly will tell you that they hire people who DO NOT have a background in educatiion. In a job posting for a headmaster position on their website they specifically state, “professional degrees or certificates in education or administration are not preferred.” How does a state legislature get away with allowing charter schools that receive public funds to hire individuals who are not certified? Where are the parents of these charter school children? Have they researched the backgrounds and qualifications of the people with whom their children spend the majority of their waking hours?
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“How does a state legislature get away with allowing charter schools that receive public funds to hire individuals who are not certified?”
By looking out for Number One:
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More like the Number One-Percent!
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Thank you for this information. Clint Bolick of the Goldwater Institute sued the Arizona Cave Creek Public School District to stop them from using leftover bond money designated for new construction on existing school improvement–calling it unconstitutional. Bolick won. Cave Creek is appealing. This issue is a travesty of epic proportions.
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I thought I saw that you were from Grand Rapids, MI. Look at what was on Huff Post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-c-pedroni/roy-roberts-detroit-schools_b_2994274.html?utm_hp_ref=detroit
Pretty pathetic.
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What a letter, Deborah! As a fellow Louisiana teacher, I encourage you to accept any invitation to participate in NBC’s Education Nation. Just yesterday I saw the brightly colored Education Nation bus outside our local NBC affiliate, WDSU, so they are already here and ready to report. We need people like you, Deborah, to speak out about the ridiculousness of BESE and DOE so we can be heard!! Please keep us updated.
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Move that bus…shut down that bus…make protest signs NOW and picket that bus…..start a R E V O L U T I O N now! I am not joking…wish I lived closer.
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Education Nation jumped on the corporate sponsored “reform” bandwagon a long time ago. They have no interest in reporting the truth.
They don’t care that education “reform” is a business plan. They don’t care that the plan is all about promoting the privatization of public education, so that public schools will be shut down and non-educator entrepreneurs can open up their own schools, feed at the $500 billion a year public education trough, at tax payer expense, and conduct business without having to concern themselves with regulations.
They don’t care that anyone can establish a new business/school and not have to worry about procuring start up funds, because the government and foundations like the Waltons will provide that. They don’t care that anyone can become an “executive” with a six figure income and not have to know one thing about the field in which they are assuming a leadership role. They don’t care that poorly trained, inexperienced people are being hired to fill professional positions, so that our most at-risk children are not getting real teachers.
They don’t care that profits trump children, because they ARE corporate America and corporations have determined that this is the American way today.
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MSNBC and NBC have shown very little support of Public Schools. They gave perfunctory time to our union leaders, called on them to speak very little and allowed Rhee and other “reformers” to dominate the conversation. Do’t expect them to be fair to LA public school teachers!!!
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I am proud to have Deborah among my “friends”. These friends, as yet unmet, give me strength every single day. I read what they write. I look forward to their words of wisdom, their humor. Their spirit picks me up on days when I think we will never beat these corporate giants. Some I will get to meet at UOODC13. Others I might never meet in person but their strength and their passion fuels the fire of solidarity in our fight for public education.
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Thank you, Gail. You have definitely “fueled my fire” about many issues!
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You go, Deb!! Various organizations have tried to capture the TOY voice–telling Teachers of the Year that *they* don’t need to be afraid of test data-based teacher evaluations– and can elevate their own profiles and make additional money by advocating for charters, merit pay, etc. Being on TV as part of Education Nation is not teacher leadership…
Enormously proud to know you and read your statement. More TOYs might speak out, given your example.
Nancy Flanagan, Michigan Teacher of the Year, 1993
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Nancy…you have inspired me to use that “teacher voice”…and you model teacher leadership in every way. You have the clout and reputation to invite an open dialog among our small community of STOY’s, to gauge a sense of how we could best contribute to this national movement. I have been used before by educational conglomerates who only wanted “feedback”, not INPUT, and to put my name and title to sanction their work. That was before I understood the big picture. Your experienced guidance worked with us before…it would be even more useful now. How about it?
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Deborah, Our state desperately needs you and the other STOY’s to be the voice of opposition to privatization. Dr. Ravitch did an excellent job when she visited Baton Rouge, but she is pretty busy with trying to stop the ALEC madness sweeping the country. The STOY’s as a group, (excluding HB) can send a powerful message.
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One more thing about Teachers of the Year, who are lured into selling out. Read this article in the Washington Post which quotes Jason Kamras, National Teacher of the Year 2005 (who learned all he knows about education policy at the knee of Michelle Rhee) talking about how he puts great stock into evaluating teachers using value-added methodology. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/creative–motivating-and-fired/2012/02/04/gIQAwzZpvR_story.html
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I believe that in some states TOYs have to engage in a great deal of self promotion in order to be named Teacher Of the Year. Is it really any surprise that a person who spends their time and effort seeking accolades would then sell their name for a hefty price in order to keep that sought after attention?
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Actually, there was very little self-promotion that I have saw. The TOY selection process used to be quite good at seeking out those teachers with a true heart of service. In fact, all of the extracurricular and community work that teachers do was documented in detail on the old application, which gave a more thorough picture of how the teacher used his/her position as an educator to change lives. However, I have seen the 2013 application, and yes, the new TOY selection process is tied to teacher evaluation scores. Only those teachers who score highly efficient and whose students back that up by meeting their SLT’s will be considered. The application uses the language of VAM by stating that the chosen teacher will model the attributes of COMPASS…whatever those are! 🙂
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Actually, there was very little self-promotion that I saw. The TOY selection process used to be quite good at seeking out those teachers with a true heart of service. In fact, all of the extracurricular and community work that teachers do was documented in detail on the old application, which gave a more thorough picture of how the teacher used his/her position as an educator to change lives. However, I have seen the 2013 application, and yes, the new TOY selection process is tied to teacher evaluation scores. Only those teachers who score highly efficient and whose students back that up by meeting their SLT’s will be considered. The application uses the language of VAM by stating that the chosen teacher will model the attributes of COMPASS…whatever those are!
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Sorry for the typo…I reposted below! No delete or edit in this forum! 🙂
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Diane or anyone else:
WHERE is Jim Thorpe in all of this?
Robert Rendo
NBCT
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Jim Thorpe is a media guy. His academic background is in education, and he cut his teeth as administrator in high-end private schools. From there he moved into foundation work, and before going to NBPTS, he was VP at WNET in NY, where he used broadcast media to highlight a issues in education. NBPTS is all over the idea of having NBCTs on Education Nation.
When Education Nation came to Detroit a couple of weeks ago, I was contacted and asked to be part of the audience. I declined. The audience was specifically told not to talk about politics! This is a state where the legislature and governor have taken over “failing” districts, vacating their contracts, disenfranchising their elected boards and superintendents, and selling off their publicly funded resources.
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Just an angry teacher that probably is a strong supporter of teacers unions and does not like the idea of students being allowed to attend schools that they deem better academically. If you read her post closely and also her links, you will see that she is against school choice, she is against teachers being judged on their ability rather than their degree or certifications, and she is also against local residents being in control of their local school systems. Just one more teacher that is more concerned with her own job and the status quo than she is about the welfare of the children. Enough said.
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How do you judge teachers’ ability? Test scores? Wrong.
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Clearly a TFA alumni. Or worse a parent for whom the wool has be pulled over their head.
Don’t believe the hype. They pay for that too …. with tax dollars.
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John…if you knew me personally, you would know that I have criticized teacher unions more than I have supported them. I want teacher unions to do what they are paid to do – represent the teacher’s classroom perspective to lawyers making educational policy. I am the AFT’s harshest critic when it politicizes educational issues and tries to tell me how to vote. Secondly, if you knew me personally, you would know that I am a registered Republican who voted for Jindal and spent the past 3 summers at the USDOE working on RTTT policy that included plans for public and charter schools to be equally funded and coexist, so that parents ARE able to determine where their child’s educational needs are best met. In addition, I am a course choice provider in the St. Tammany School District, where I teach an articulated college course to high school students called STAR. My junior and senior students are dual-enrolled at ULM. But most of all, I am a staunch advocate for effective, research-based teacher accountability. NO ONE wants bad teachers out of the system faster than I do, because they make my job impossible, are bad role models for kids and can ruin student academic progress. As one who has spent 30 years teaching students to be independent thinkers and creative problem solvers, nothing makes me angrier than a “pay-check taker” teacher. And on a personal note: not that it is any of your business, but my husband and I own a multi-million dollar ship repair business on Tchoupitoulas Street in New Orleans. I have NEVER needed to work, so I am clearly not “concerned with keeping my own job”. I can retire tomorrow and not have to take a dime of my teacher’s retirement. I get in my car every morning and walk into my classroom because I LOVE teenagers and want to help create an educated populace. I advocate for the students I see being experimented with by politicians who do not have any business creating educational policy. I am the one who has to look into the eyes of these students everyday, not Chas Roemer or John White. Because I am hired to implement the LDOE’s policies, I, along with parents, am the BEST source of information as to their effectiveness. But these current reforms lack teacher AND parent input, and above all, vision. So I invite you into my classroom at Mandeville High School, room #256, to judge for yourself my abilities as a practitioner. Don’t go by the fact that I have earned a “Highly Effective” rating for both of my observations or that more than 70% of my students did indeed meet their SLT’s at the end of their first semester. And by the way…I always find it important to KNOW who you are criticizing. Perhaps you should have done a simple Google search or found me on LinkedIN to see if I am some angry, status quo, union-loving teacher. Enough said.
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Fuck yeah. This is so awesome. Sorry for cursing. Feels warranted
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/04/01/kipp-charter-schools-editorials-debates/2044375/
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Tron – the article you cited states that “KIPP operates on a model that demands much more of students, parents and teachers than the typical school does”. Give public schools the flexibility and finances to do the same, and you will see those kids who were not chosen by lottery succeed at the same rate as the KIPP lucky ones!
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I have my ticket for the Education Nation Town Hall in NO on April12th. I am not a National Board Certified teacher. I am a 2nd grade teacher in a public school. I will represent public school teachers in LA. Think I’ll be allowed to speak?
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Defintion ofLouisiana RSD and DOE: A Governor controlled entity that follows the money, fires excellent teachers and support staff ,hires a bunch of unqualifiedTFA’s and non educators, keeps the public out and is above all Federal and State Educational Laws.
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