A comment on the corporate reformers who say they want to attract “the best and brightest” into teaching:
“Attract the “Best and the Brightest” – please !!! I have 2 masters and have taught for 18years – in Miami – I make less than $44,000 … . Thanks Jeb – teachers are now starving and losing their homes in Miami
* was told last week we may get a big $2000 – $4,000 dollar raise … Please, after FL teachers have taken past cuts that combined equal 1 year pay – thanks
I lost my house because for 4 years I did not get a Salary step increase”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Stop Devaluing Our Teachers and the Teaching Profession. Stop Devaluing Our Kids. A talk given to the School Board of Palm Beach County, FL on October 16, 2013:
http://youtu.be/uETWrT5fE5o
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http://www.syracuse.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/10/common_core_vs_common_sense_which_will_win_commentary.html
An opinion piece/letter in the newspaper summarizing the issues and getting them out to the public more and more. There are people who do not understand or realize about the problems yet. But it is coming. Then they need to read Reign of Error.
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It has always been thus.
Administrator pay, consultant fees, testing costs, or everything above the classroom costs money and the teacher(s) pays.
It is astonishing on several levels: (1) that the admins/managers get away with it, (2) that teacher union management’s complicity gets away with it, and last but not least, (3) that teachers let them get away with it.
Is it any wonder that the money boys and their lackey politicians look at public education and conclude that the pickings are easy?
Come on folks (meaning teachers) wake up and take back the night!
Right now, we are sheep and sheep get slaughtered. (Gordon Gekko)
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I read the comment by the teacher in Florida with empathy as it made me realize that I am not alone. I, too, in WI am working on a 2nd Master’s, have been told by my administrator that I do not need anymore credits. We do not move a pay scale and we are looking at a larger pay raise this year than we have had in the past – – this is going to be a whopping $1500. They are still trying to decide if we are going to be able to move on the pay scale for credits. The name is not Bush but is Walker.
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Huummm,
Wonder if that Walker is related to the Walker of George H. W (Walker). Bush?
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News flash! teachers like you and me (I am in the same situation) are not considered “The best and brightest” by JEB. A year ago he was interviewed by Piers Morgan and stated flat out that “the older teachers are ineffective”. Good ol’e Piers didn’t even question him on it, it was a great opportunity for him to criticize the American education system. JEB went on to explain (from his position as an expert on public education) that he want younger best and brightest (TFA??).
Throughout my career, I have learned to accept difficult students, crazy parents and incompetent administrators as part of the job, but this current group of reformers makes me wish the Fl. Dept of Ed would offer an early retirement package.
If anyone knows how I can get a copy of the complete interview between Piers and JEB, please let me know.
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I assume you live in Florida. Be glad that Tony Bennett resigned as Superintendent of Florida schools. He did tremendous damage to the public schools in Indiana: instituting an A-F school grading system, expanding the number of charter schools, many of which have religious affiliations, and giving them money which made the public schools underfunded. Because of him, teacher’s evaluations and salaries are largely based on test scores.
Give thanks to some reporter in Associated Press whose journalism exposed Bennett’s work to change the scores of a charter school to please a campaign contributor who owned the school. I was watching and hoping he’d have to resign his Florida job.
Hopefully, your state will find a Superintendent of Schools who understands public schools and isn’t actively working to destroy them.
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I also live in Florida and was VERY happy to see Bennett leave, but I do not hold out much hope for a replacement who understands how schools should work. Our governor’s most recent action on education was to nominate a TFA’er to our state board. The politicians here in the Sunshine State still can’t see the light.
http://www.flgov.com/2013/09/23/governor-rick-scott-appoints-rebecca-fishman-lipsey-to-the-state-board-of-education/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=governor-rick-scott-appoints-rebecca-fishman-lipsey-to-the-state-board-of-education
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“A year ago he was interviewed by Piers Morgan and stated flat out that “the older teachers are ineffective”.
That’s part of it, the devaluing of experience. Hilarious coming from Jeb Bush. 1st, how old is he, and 2nd his entire media-inflated profile is based on his experience reforming Florida schools.
Under the reformers own guidelines most of them should be fired and replaced with “fresh” 25 year olds. If experience doesn’t matter, why should we listen to Jeb Bush at all?
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Good point. In addition, consider the (lower) entry-level salaries of novice teachers.
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What is the tipping point? When do we move from young and energetic to old and decrepit? Is it when the AARP card comes in the mail? Perhaps after our twentieth high school reunion.
Please, I would like to know.
Retired at 57 so I could enjoy my life.
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Devaluing work is happening to everyone. I agree that teachers are a particular target- I’m still a little amazed at how blunt and vitriolic the attacks are- because I don’t believe that this reflects the general public’s opinion of teachers. I know it doesn’t reflect the views of people here, anecdotally, but I don’t think polling shows this either. In the last poll on education I read here I was struck by how high the polling on TRUST is for public school teachers. Politicians should look at their own “trust” number. Can it go any lower? They’d kill for the polling numbers teachers get 🙂
What’s really disheartening is that people in other lines of work go along with this. Do they not see that they’re next? I’m not a teacher and it’s clear as day to me.
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Didn’t we, as a nation, just witness the devastating effect of a bunch of inexperienced Congressional ‘newbies’ at the helm…calling the shots…leading us where? And by this same Jeb Bush standard…isn’t he, Jeb Bush, beyond his ‘effective’ prime as a policy maker? Or is ‘age’ just a factor when one is peddling a business strategy disguised as education reform? Inquiring teachers want to know.
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According to these people the “Best and Brightest” is shorthand for 22 year-old temporary TFA scabs.
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Agree!
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The phrase “education reform” has become synonymous with buying into simple-minded, easy, cheap “fixes” for
a) nonexistent problems (i.e., “The U.S. has fallen behind the rest of the developed world in the educational attainment of its students”) and
b) problems that are neither simple nor easy nor inexpensive to fix (the extreme poverty of our inner cities and rural areas that is the primary root cause of the very real educational attainment issues in such places).
The reformers speak, often, from positions of great power and authority, but what they have to say almost always belies an essential cluelessness borne of hubris and lack of actual experience “on the ground”–in the classroom and in the educational publishing houses that create curricula.
Distant, centralized authorities are almost inevitably a) corrupt and b) stupid and c) very sure of themselves.
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We teachers are much to complacent. We need to start stepping up and speaking. These rich, powerful people got that way because they no how to play the free market games which takes no prisoners.
The comment above about the main problems being the severe poverty in the urban cities and rural America are very true. But why do we have this pervasive poverty. Dianne says it often. These same reformers have been shipping our jobs over seas and killing the middle class. It has happened throughout history and it eventually leads to revolution. I only home I am long gone and my children can escape the lie of the American middle class.
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It has been over ten years since the teachers in Buffalo, NY have gotten a raise. We also had a three year step freeze. It takes thirty years to reach the top step. Suburban school teachers make almost twenty thousand more a year than we do. And our job is more difficult (with lower test results – high poverty rate).
I feel for you in Florida.
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