A teacher writes:

“Diane, I am a special education teacher in Eastern NC. I have taught in some wonderful schools in Buffalo, NY and Richmond VA before coming down here to open my doors to foster children who are involved with the juvenile justice and mental health departments. My teaching role is to work with self contained students with behavior issues.I feel I am a humble person who doesn’t toot their horn much but I will say I have been proud of being involved in more miraculous reclaiming of youth than setbacks. I pay close attention to the politics involved in my former states. Both North Carolina and New York, politically are on opposite ends of the spectrum. However both states, and I’m sure many others, are clearly trying to destroy public education as we know it for the sake of publicly sponsored charter schools, many of whom are owned by huge conglomerates, many invested in by Middle Eastern oil barrens among others. They are doing this by driving out public school teachers to replace with unlicensed, inexperienced teachers in the Charter system and Teach for America. They are doing this by taking the caps off class sizes, and not investing in the buildings and school supplies. They are doing this by forcing a terrible curriculum down our throats on purpose in hopes the parents complain to their local administrators instead of the politicians and policy makers. I am sure I am not saying anything Diane Ravitch has not said before but it is frustrating because I am witnessing all of this happening before my eyes. I push into regular ed classes that have over 40 students in them, we haven’t had new teaching materials or textbooks since the 1990’s and we’re supposed to teach to this new curriculum. There is a feeling classes like social studies will be a thing of the past since it doesn’t translate to national test scores or the Common Core. Our teachers are no longer rewarded for having Masters degrees, we’ve had only a 1% raise in 6 years, and kids in class have no basic writing materials like pencils and notebooks because their parents won’t supply them, the school won’t supply them and teacher won’t pay out if their pocket for them. States up north are fortunate to have unions to slow this stuff down. Our state does not. It seems to me this plan of ultra reform will probably happen first in North Carolina. Parents need to get outraged and voice their displeasure. We all need to march on our state capitals and use our first amendment rights as best we can. We need to become political activists for the first time in some of our lives. We need to express that this is not a Democrat thing or a Republican thing, its the Constitutional right to a free and public education. We also need to expose the ultra rich individuals who are putting their funding and resources into these policies of evil reform.”