Reformers often say that they love “great” teachers. They
think that if they drive out all the “bad” teachers, then “the best
and brightest” will flock to teach in the schools. They think they
are restructuring the profession to make it attractive to the top
third of those who graduate from the very best universities.
This comment from a teacher: I feel
both embarrassed and horrified to be a teacher these days. What
keeps me going is being with the students and knowing I am helping
them. However, as a member of this ‘profession’ I am completely
disheartened and turned off by the politics and the bobble-headed
morons who make decisions that impact all of us. It’s like being on
a plane without a pilot….or a train without a conductor….or a
carriage without a horse…or….well, you get the picture. It’s
bad.
A site to discuss education and democracy
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Diane Ravitch's Blog by Diane Ravitch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
Led by clueless Arne who doesn’t realize he is the captain of this sinking ship…what a complete disaster he is.
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Arne is following orders. He needs the ego stroke, and that’s the pity. In the meanwhile politicians’ pockets are being lined to pass laws that destroy our wonderfully successful public schools. The object is to narrow and shallow the curriculum for those so-called” failing schools and turn them over to corporate entities such as pro forfit jails and care homes. It’s ridiculous. It’s savage. It simply disgusting. Egads, do the politicians have eyes? A conscience? Nope to both questions.
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Talk to me about politicians lining pockets. What do you mean? Who? Where? By whom?
Wouldn’t that be unlawful?
Seriously, I want to understand that allegation. I see it on this blog but I don’t know to what it refers.
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Joanna, you are still unaware of all of the huge campaign contributions made by the deformers? The ones they use to fund their lie machines so they can keep the jobs they have, jobs that no longer include serving the best interests of their constituents. Unless you just became aware of all this yesterday, there’s little excuse for not knowing about one of the 800 ton gorillas in the room. Not trying to be rude, it’s just that blatant out there.
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Joanna, Chapter 3: Who Are the Corporate Reformers? Everyone needs to have read this. Diane has written an indictment, a manifesto, and a roadmap to the future in one book.
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I don’t consider campaign contributions to be lining pockets. There is a difference. One alleges law-breaking. And that is very serious. And if
the counter-reform movement is to be taken seriously, casually making accusations of law-breaking is not a good habit to be in. I am married to a lawyer.
We are conscious of casual drops like that. While compromises of integrity might abound in the corporate reform movement involving politicians, it
is distasteful to accuse someone of “lining their pockets” as if they have stolen something. If our laws are enabling this type of behavior, then our laws need
to be considered. But grand, demogogic, hysterical accusations of law-breaking are not statements that strengthen the energy of those who wish to preserve public school (of which I am one). All statements like that do is make those whose energy is in opposition to that preservation less likely to listen and pay attention and more likely to feel justified in their actions. Having been raised to consider what comes out of my mouth, I think this consideration is blatantly obvious. Not trying to be rude either, but in my opinion there is little excuse for making grand statements such as “lining their pockets.” It’s the type of statement that causes eye-rolling.
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Joanna – Granted ‘lining their pockets’ causes eye-rolling among conservatives who see their struggle as being against union lackeys with a blame-the-corporations mindset. Yes, from a strictly legal point of view such lingo flirts [mildly] with libel and is in fact legal (with reference to campaign finance).
But to me as an over-60, this type of phrase is just shorthand for where we are, ‘legally’, today, after 35 yrs of watering down anti-trust law, undoing post-depression-era banking law, and putting corporate contribution to politicians on steroids via PACs, Cit. Untd. decision, 501c(4) organizations.
‘Stealing’ and ‘bribery’ in the public sphere have increasingly become narrow terms of art.
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Citizens Arrest and French/ Spanish:
Thank you for not giving up on the dialogue. I understand your sentiments. My point is that if we want to have legitimacy in conversations with others who have not yet realized what we have, we have to frame our speech as informed and lead people to conclusions without providing those for them.
Hyperbole often stops people from listening. If it is in the bounds of the law, passionate yelling won’t win a case.
This blog is a place to vent, sure. But well-thought out statements are what will get policy changed. Or at least insure a more likely chance of being heard.
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Arne is not clueless, all of his lies and dissembling no matter how transparent and pathetic are well planned in advance even though you wouldn’t know it from hearing them.
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Amen!!!
Right on.
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I love my job and have no intentions of moving on, but If I knew what I currently know about what is happening in education these days and was not already teaching there is no way I would become a teacher.
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What I see, because I read so much, is sort of like when haute couture makes it off the runway and trickles down to cheaper retail lines and you get little girls imitating fashions the origin of which they really have no clue. When I do hear a teacher or administrator completely sold on CCSS (and they do exist), that’s what I feel like Insm watching. It is uncomfortable to see.
I put all of my energy into the children and it is from them that I receive my energy to stay positive. I still find myself smiling at things they say and do and U frequently have adorable stories to share with folks of things they say. That is where I try to focus. That is why we are in this, afterall.
When I gave my principal a copy of Diane’s book (for which she sincerely thanked me), we discussed that recent link about Gates and his statement that we will know in ten years if the reforms he advocates will prove successful, she commiserated that we are guinea pigs the rich and powerful. And that, in fact, it typically has been about four prominent families that control America (throughout the years—and we live at the foot of George Vanderbilt’s home in NC, so it is easy to be in touch with this notion where we are).
I am still trying to get a grasp on Gates in this picture. And on powerful families in the history of American education.
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I am a special education teacher (in my state, we aren’t even called “teachers” anymore- we are “Intervention Specialists”- minimizing us even more) and what has happened to special education is simply heinous. In the guise of “inclusion” of students with special needs and severe cognitive disabilities, students with these disabilities are now required to not only participate in the general common core curriculum for their chronological age/grade levels, but are expected to demonstrate at lease 1 school year worth of PROGRESS each year, despite the fact that they may have disabilities that prevent that amount of progress in that amount of time, as can be expected of those without disabilities. When the student does not make that progress (and if we are honest and realistic, most students with disabilities that cause their intellectual levels to be, in some cases 8 grade levels BELOW their chronological age peers), who is to be blamed? The “reformers” who have enacted these unrealistic policies? Of course not! It is always blamed on the teacher, who if he/she were a “good” teacher would be able to overcome the student’s disabilities- no matter how severe, thus, in most cases, most special educators are considered as the “bad teachers”, whom the reformers are trying to get out of teaching. It is clear to me that the intent is to eliminate special education, as the reformers will see this lack of progress by students with special needs as proof that special education “doesn’t work”, eliminating special ed teachers and saving a boatload of money.
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I does appear that charter schools are a way around the mandates. I don’t understand how charter schools accept public funding and aren’t held accountable for all the IDEA laws that public schools have to follow. Can someone explain this?
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To Joanna Best, there is reams of evidence in existence that demonstrate the political “lining of the pockets” that is occurring in education, which is now big business and is generally infiltrated with big business interests, such as testing companies, publishing companies, etc. The evidence is out there. There was a reading program a few years ago, called “Voyager Expanded Learning” that was a supposed panacea to the reading issues of students in economically disadvantaged schools. Guess who owned this program? A good friend and colleague of George W. Bush. Sorry, but most current education policy, charter schools, etc, are lining the pockets of corporate America- and is for sale to the highest bidder.
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Restrained, refined language. That’s my point.
Hyperbole dilutes validity.
We don’t need that.
We need to be better than Fox News.
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TeacherE
Re: Voyager Expanded Learning
My district is STILL buying Voyager products. They recently bought MANY sets for my school and we don’t even need them. There’s a racket going on here in Florida….money to be made. Experienced teachers who’ve been around long enough see what’s going on. This is another reason “reformers” want to get rid of vet teachers…they know too much and can mess up their profit centers.
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“. . . she commiserated that we are guinea pigs (of/to?) the rich and powerful.”
Humans have been eating guinea pigs for eons. Archaeological sites dating back over 3000 years ago in the Andes have buildings with guinea pig “tubes” built into the walls much like some current indigenous residences who keep them to help keep down the insect populations and provide animal protein.
To me they taste most like squirrel which makes sense as they are both rodents.
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The plane does have a pilot–he’s aiming for the ground, so his real boss can collect and sell the wreckage.
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“They think they are restructuring the profession to make it attractive to the top
third of those who graduate from the very best universities.”
If they think this, they are seriously deluded. Students in the top third of the very best universities can identify Taylorist logic when they see it. And they know that where it prevails you want to be the one with the clipboard and not the one hauling the pig-iron.
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I’ve long theorized that most people so misunderstand what a joy and privilege it is to teach, to be with children and their energy for much of one’s day, that their empathy gap is so large, they’ll never get it; then they just continue abusing teachers, out of their greed and misinformation, and we teachers continue to take it. To survive as a teacher means that joy is worth more than the lack of money and respect.
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It’s one of the great secrets of teaching – how much fun kids can be. I often think that the reason Very Serious People opine kids need a longer school day and school year is to keep the kids away from themselves. Their feelings for kids are somewhat contemptuous, and by extension those of us who choose to spend our days with kids are seen as odd, perhaps deserving of that same disdain. “You teach teenagers? I mean – why would you want to do that?”
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“…a train without a conductor…”
Apt metaphor. Just Monday here in Chicago we had a “runaway”, “ghost” train somehow start itself up, go over an incline, go through at least two track switches, override the “dead man’s switch” and hit a parked train head on – all by itself with (apparently) no human on board. 33 people were injured, fortunately none terribly seriously. Education “reform” reminds me a lot of that train – absolutely senseless, out of control, and beyond explanation. Unfortunately, a lot more than 33 people have been injured, and many of the injuries have been quite serious.
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Now reformers are infighting and engaged in a financial power struggle over the low performing virtual charter, K12 – another sign the for-profit deform tide is turning.
How much has K12 funneled to Jeanne Allen’s Center for Education Reform over the past decade?
Tilson on K12 ‘My response to Dear Whitney – Are we having fun yet?’
http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/10/tilson-k12-short/
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At my school, I say we are all on a rudderless ship. We are being tempest tossed by the admins. I hope we don’t wind up on the rocks.
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