I the past few days, Twitter has been a twitter with tweets acclaiming or denouncing Whoopi Goldberg for her comments opposing tenure on “The View.” Ken Previti says that it is not reasonable to criticize Whoopi because she clearly doesn’t know much about what tenure is and why teachers defend it. It is a guarantee of a hearing, of due process, if a boss wants to fire you. Teachers earn tenure over a period of 2, 3, or 4 years. Many teachers don’t have tenure. Unions don’t grant tenure, administrators do.
Are our schools overrun with bad teachers? No. The latest evaluation plans typically find that 95% or more of teachers are effective or highly effective.
Critics of tenure never acknowledge that about 40% of new teachers don’t last more than four or five years. Teaching is a hard job, and tenure is a guarantee that you won’t be fired. For arbitrary or capricious reasons. You get a hearing, where an independent arbitrator considers the evidence. This protects teachers from students who make false accusations, from parents angry that the teacher didn’t raise their child’s grade, from community members who don’t want teachers to mention evolution, climate change, or certain literary classics. Tenure protects teachers from being fired because the district wants to hire cheaper teachers; it protects teachers from being fired to make a job for a city councilman’s daughter; it protects teachers from being fired because of their race, their gender, their sexual orientation, or their looks.
Ken Previti says, don’t blame Whoopi: educate her. Reach out to her on Twitter or Facebook. Help her understand.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Problem with Ms. Goldberg: people ARE trying to educate her and she has simply doubled and tripled down on it. In front of a national audience. Some people have been rough, but she is also clearly not listening.
“I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it.” – Edith Sitwell
Exactly. She tore up papers that had Facebook postings from teachers on air. I wrote two quite long posting myself, and when I did, I saw that there were nearly 1,000 postings. She could have read some of those before she flew off the handle TWICE after the first statements.
@Threatened Out West: Maybe she’ll get a piece of the Bill Gate’s Fortune Pie after her show is cancelled.
Exactly.
Peter Greene does a great job of defending tenure in this blog post:
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2014/08/without-tenure.html
She called people who disputed her “a bunch of crazies.”
And then said it was only about taking away tenure from “bad teachers”. Uh, Ms. Goldberg? That’s called FIRING. Which can happen with tenure.
Are Whoopi’s notions her own? As a person whose profession it is to convincingly deliver scripted ideas and lines composed by others, it is entirely possible that her paycheck depends on NOT understanding things. In that case, educating this latest rawgabbit is a waste of time.
The same thought occurred to me, Alan. I am wondering if Whoopi has been given “talking points” from the network executives regarding the topic of teacher tenure. If so, what’s to forgive?
Or possibly talking points (and money) from reformers. In my opinion, reaching out to Whoopi is waste of time. Instead, write to the advertisers of The View.
Not sure it’s already posted, but I read her agent is Rahm’s brother.
We no longer have tenure In Oregon for public school teachers and the sky has not, yet, fallen. And I’m not sure that in new models of a profession of teachers/leaders in communities of practice, that tenure as a buffer for the adversarial relationships between teachers and administrators makes sense. In fact I’d like to blur the lines–more teachers working in the summer to design and build the district resources and then evaluating their teams performance on meeting their self-defined objectives sounds good. Pie in the sky? You bet!
Ryan, I’m curious about not having tenure. If a teacher in Oregon is dismissed because the administrator wanted to make room for her nephew (or some other arbitrary or capricious reason), does she still have due process? If so, what would that look like?
It’s difficult for me to believe that police officers, city librarians, firefighters etc. would have “due process” and job permanence after six months on the job, but teachers would not. Would this be constitutional? Thanks.
Utah is a Right to Work state. While teachers have been able to hold on to some due process protections, charter schools do not have that protection. Three weeks into the school year (three years ago), my husband discovered that one of his 7th grade students was accessing pornography on school computers, and had been doing so for at least six months, well before my husband had him in class. My husband reported the situation. Nothing happened to the student, but my husband was fired within two days of the report. He had no protection and no ability to appeal. He was without a job for nearly a year.
About a week before my husband made the report, he told me that at a faculty meeting, the principal had mentioned that there were “too many” staff for the number of students at the school. I think that the charter management company (Academica) used my husband’s report as an excuse to fire someone so that they wouldn’t have to pay severance or unemployment.
When I tell people this, they think I’m lying or something. They say, “I’m a good teacher, so I don’t need tenure.” My husband is a good teacher, too. He has worked for nearly 20 years with kids with behavioral issues, who still call, Facebook, and sometimes even show up at our house. And yet, in an attempt to help secure the school network by reporting this, as well as helping the student get help for an obvious issue, he was fired.
Threatened Out West
I can sympathize with you, having lived 15 years behind the Zion Curtain.
I know from first hand experience that Utah is a “Right to work for low wages” state.
I call it the Right to be Fired, but whichever. LOVE your poetry!
Threatened Out West: your comments, and several of those below, relate actual firsthand experiences. This is not what the self-styled “education reformers” want to hear and consider.
What gets lost in the teacher-bashing is that teachers and teacher unions don’t hire bad teachers. They don’t write the performance reviews/assessments of bad teachers. They don’t protect and enable bad teachers.
Those are functions of management.
My most telling firsthand experience with a “bad teacher” was with someone that ended up being convicted as a child molester; he served three years after being convicted. He was BFF with the AP who essentially ran the school and who wanted to end her decades-long run as an abusive and ineffective administrator by—get this!—‘getting all the child molesters who work at this school’!!!
I can still see the two of them walking down the hall together, arm in arm [yes, during school hours and recess when they both could have been better occupied!] smirking and making faces at school staff, glancing around so as not to let anyone hear what they were talking about. And when one did hear their gossip and harsh words—does the word unprofessional even come close to describing such conduct ion public during working hours in a school?
How did he get caught? It began with a lowly TA. Of course, rocky road at first since suspicion was being cast on the AP’s #1 bestest buddy and the AP was the required contact person at the school for such allegations! In formal terms, no going over her head to higher officials and the school board.
Notwithstanding such “rheephorm” restrictions, justice finally prevailed.
Take away even the slender protections now available and you will have what occurs more and more frequently at charter schools: people having to choose between their livelihoods [in tough economic times] and what that means for all those that rely on them, and the children entrusted to their care.
Why should they even have to make that choice?
Thank you for your comments.
😎
Please highlight the sentence – These are functions of management. To get people outside of education to understand this can be at times difficult ! Just bring up child molesters and now there is every reason to give up every right a teacher has to fairness ? Teaching is a profession where these protections are actually more needed than in others. Teachers are the eyes and ears watching out for their students best interests. The rare bad apple is usually noticed by other teachers long before management has the courage to step out and do something about him or her. Do not blame the teachers for the administration’s job. Thank you Krazy TA for explaining this.
Caligirl,
This sharp distinction between “labor” and “management” is, I think, a barrier to changes in education that would benefit students.
Ryan,
I agree that a less adversarial, more cooperative relationship between administrators and teachers is a good idea. I especially like peer review which seems to work fairly well at post secondary institutions.
Then why do you like charters? It’s only cooperative if the teacher sucks up relentlessly. I have multiple friends who have worked at different charters and routinely relay that they had better “just do what they’re told.” Hardly collaborative. Top down is more like it.
And see that’s the problem. Teachers need to feel secure voicing their opinions to their principals. Get the wrong principal and you’ll need due process protections to ensure that it’s an exchange of ideas rather than an order from on high.
Steve K,
Do you think the faculty of the Walton Rural Life Center Charter School has to do that? How about the Community Roots Charter School?
It seems to me that there are a wide variety of charter schools. Have your friends worked in either of the schools I mentioned?
TE,
I live in Michigan. So, no. Just because you have two examples of charters where collaboration occurs, that doesn’t mean it is the charter school norm. I’m not of the opinion that all charters are bad, I’m just relaying what has been a very common experience among my friends in my locality.
I can tell you that when a teaching position becomes available in my public school, we get swamped with charter teachers who want out of their situation. We have hired three former charter teachers in the last two years. Each one from a different charter school. On each occasion, they have relayed their excitement in having some degree of flexibility in how they conduct their lessons. So, yeah, top down.
I realize my sample size is anecdotal and small, as is yours, but I think that the high rate of teacher turnover in charter schools when compared to traditional public schools says something about working conditions in general.
I agree on peer review (my school does that).
Steve K,
You are right, your sample size is the same as mine. I am not sure why you would want to close the Walton School and Community Roots because some other schools are not living up to their potential. Collateral damage?
TE: The charter management company that fired my husband (see post earlier) runs the vast majority of the charter schools in Utah. So, no, I don’t think that charter teachers are protected.
Threatened,
The majority of charter schools are stand alone schools, not part of any chain. Perhaps the two of you can establish a charter school and run it in the best interest of the students.
Notsure if what you said is “pie in the sky” but assuming you are not a paid troll it is quite a naive remark
When you claim that “tenure”, as you call it, no longer exists in Oregon, what exactly are you talking about?
Are you claiming that teachers in Oregon can now be quickly fired at any time or any place for any reason or for no reason at all?
if so please describe. Thanks.
Yes, we do have tenure in Oregon. It is the difference between a probationary teacher and a contract teacher. Probationary teachers can be dismissed at any time for any “just cause”, and their yearly contracts do not have to be renewed, and no reason has to be given for the nonrenewal. Contract teachers can be gotten rid of, but there is a process requiring poor evaluations and plans of improvement or assistance. (It differs somewhat by district contract.)
Ryan, teachers in Oregon never did have tenure, just due process rights.
I took a grad school class from Vern Duncan who wrote Oregon’s fair dismissal law. I can’t overstate how much I respected Duncan. He was one of the most giving instructors I ever knew.
He was the Dean of the School of Education at the University of Portland after serving as State Superintendent of Public Instruction and as a State Senator from Lake Oswego.
He made this point to his students 15 years ago. Oregon Teachers never had tenure. They could always be fired at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all during their first three years.
Even before teachers were put on rolling two year contracts, “permanent” teachers could be fired.
An administrator simply had to document any problem, and put the teacher on a plan of assistance before dismissing a “permanent” teacher.
That law is still in place today which is why Oregon is being targeted by Campbell Browns “anti-tenure” campaign.
Vern Duncan was a Republican and was endorsed by the union (OEA). I continue to be a member of the Republican Party although I describe myself as a recovering Republican .
Oregon hasn’t had a Republican governor since Vic Atiyeh left office in 1986 and its no wonder when the Republican chair of the senate education committee (Charles Starr) tells constituents to “Run….Don’t walk, to withdraw your children from Oregon’s public schools.”
Reasonable class sizes, a full 190 day school year, and yes, reasonable salaries, should never have become a Republican vs Democrat thing. Supporting those issues is the right thing.
Yertle,
You are correct. Ryan isn’t exactly telling us the whole story. Oregan still has due process.
I agree with Mr. Katz above. The fact that she has a national audience makes it all the more imperitive that she do her research before opening her mouth. Why, if her mother was a teacher, does she have such a misconception about due process?
I’m also bothered by her defense, “I have nothing against teachers; my mother was a teacher.” It sounds suspiciously like a common rational used by bigots of all stripes.
Some of my best friends are black, uh, I mean teachers.
I know..that’s all I hear. I love teachers. I know some teachers. Aunt Betty was a teacher. Blah blah blah…then stab us in the back.
I, too, thought perhaps Whoopi Goldberg was just unschooled in due process protections. I thought maybe she just had a Nancy Reagan “Just say ‘no'” moment. I tried to help her understand by pointing out that, when she makes a bad movie, she doesn’t lose her rights like she’s suggesting so-called bad teachers should. But then I learned that her Hollywood agent is Ari Emanuel. Yes, the brother of Rahm Emanuel who has done more to destroy Chicago public schools than anyone.
Now the question is was Whoopi duped into spewing union bashing propaganda or does she, like her right-wing cohort on The View, really think that Hollywood’s union is somehow special? Don’t they understand that it’s no coincidence the deregulators and privatizers are coming after teachers first? Learn this: As soon as they’re finished wiping out the protections for teachers, they’ll be after your stellar health insurance and pension benefits, too.
My best suggestion now is to introduce Whoopi to some folks who might help her understand. It’s made for TV: Whoopi, meet Diane Ravitch, (or Karen Lewis, or Mark Naison, Melissa Tomlinson, Randi Weingarten, Shoneice Reynolds, Asean Johnson, etc. etc.). Topic: Education Reform. Tawk amongst yaselves.
Good catch on Ari Emanuel. Given that, ignorance is certainly no excuse.
I don’t think we will be able to educated Whoopi about this topic. She has bought the happy little fiction that she is a crusader for the moral high ground, that she’s being a brave celebrity in the fight against bad teachers and pedophiles. (Watch her little facebook video where she shrugs …”bad teachers need to lose their jobs.. there I said it” shrug). She’s enjoying herself. She’s well insulated from ordinary experience. Do you really think you can engage her in a conversation around the complexities and importance of tenure? Do you think you’ll be introducing her to anything at all? Better to put her aside. She won’t believe and doesn’t care that there are teachers (I was one in NYC) who have been forced to teach content that was false, expected to give good grades to illiterate students and under pressure to accept academic and disciplinary policies that were bad for kids.
Tenure doesn’t rely mean anything in Texas schools. The process now to get rid of experienced teachers who advocate for children in this test obsessed state goes like this:
Scapegoating : Administration starts a paper trail of Documentation. Teacher gets written up for exaggerated and fabricated reasons. This fear and intimidation usually causes the teacher to become submissive. If not, then the scapegoating progresses to bullying until the teacher resigns. I have seen so many awesome teachers in Texas destroyed by this dysfunctional process. No college student in their right mind in Texas would want to become a teacher, which has left our children vulnerable to TFA’s and others who use authoritarian Behaviorism as a destructive substitute for authentic teaching. Now, it’s all about “control” and “conformidity”….the poisonous pedagogy of this obsession with performance ratings and data…dark times ahead!
Whoopi Goldberg knows nothing about anything except for what Buena Vista Productions,ABC commercial television, and now-out-of-the-picture-but-still-active-hack journalist-Barbara Walters tell her to say and think.
It is such a tender moment to see a celebrity mouth off about a subject they know little about, but have the amplification of television to make their point.
It’s so teary, in fact, that it’s worth an interview between the fading fake interviewer Walters and her bought-and-paid-for packaged employee, Ms. Goldberg. This time, all the soul seraching, confessions, tears, and blurring lenses won’t help prop up Ms. Walter’s image or that of anyone else on The View.
And whose view is this anyway? There’s no diversity of views on that show on the subject of public education. The show featured Michael Bloomberg, who showed up in a surprise visit top give a globby bouquet of dark red roses (had they been dipped in teachers’ blood?) to Ms. Walters, who was gushing and fawning all over the then mayor. It was like seeing Gidget getting flowers from a human sized iguana. . . . They both may as well have been smooching or on the Newlywed Game.
Ghastly.
As for Joel Klein, he too was a guest, seated right in the middle of 6 women, with Ms. Walters practically flirting with him more intensely than she did years ago in her well known Clint Eastwood interview. I guess she found Klein to have that same rugged handsomeness a single girl can’t resist. She praised his policies, put down the UFT left and right, and praised his efforts to charterize NY City. It was like an interview not between Beauty and the Beast, but between Beast and the Beast.
And yet, with the catty Walters gone, the mouse Goldberg is not playing; she still obeys what Ms. Wah-Wah has taught her, and she’s has lost touch with everyone and everything except her own fragile opportunism.
She’s no Meryl Streep. She’s no Maya Angelou. She’s not even Ruby Dee.
She’s just a celebrity with a cavernous mouth and tiny, walnut sized brain.
Is she related to brontosaurus?
bravo!!
Might any of this apply to Matt Damon too? Or might both Matt and Whoopi have some life experiences that lead them to certain (not necessarily similar) conclusions?
Do your research, Joseph, and find out Matt’s connection to public education. Compare it to Whoopi’s.
Use that PhD noggin of yours . . . . please don’t let us down.
http://www.biography.com/people/whoopi-goldberg-9314384#synopsis
Synopsis
Actress, comedian and television host Whoopi Goldberg was born on November 13, 1955, in New York City. In 1983, she starred in a popular play and in 1985 won a Grammy Award for the recording of skits taken from the show. Also in 1985, Goldberg’s success with The Color Purple launched a highly visible acting career. Since then, she has appeared in more than 80 film and TV productions.
Early Life
Famed actress, comedian, television host and human rights advocate Whoopi Goldberg was born Caryn Elaine Johnson on November 13, 1955, in New York City. Goldberg and her younger brother, Clyde, were raised by their mother, Emma, in a housing project in the Chelsea section of Manhattan.
Goldberg’s father abandoned the family, and her single mother worked at a variety of jobs—including teaching and nursing—to make ends meet. Goldberg changed her name when she decided that her given name was too boring. She claims to be half Jewish and half Catholic, and “Goldberg” is attributed to her family history.
With her trademark dreadlocks, wide impish grin, and piercing humor, Goldberg is best known for her adept portrayals in both comedic and dramatic roles, as well as her groundbreaking work in the Hollywood film industry as an African-American woman. Goldberg unknowingly suffered from dyslexia, which affected her studies and ultimately induced her to drop out of high school at the age of 17.
Big Break
In 1974, Goldberg moved to California, living variously for the next seven years in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco. At one point during this time, she worked as a mortuary beautician while pursuing a career in show business. During her stay in San Francisco, Whoopie Goldberg won a Bay Area Theatre Award for her portrayal of comedienne Moms Mabley in a one-woman show.
Shortly after receiving this honor, she returned to New York. In 1983, she starred in the enormously popular The Spook Show. The one-woman Off-Broadway production featured her own original comedy material that addressed the issue of race in America with unique profundity, style, and wit. Among her most poignant and typically contradictory creations are “Little Girl,” an African-American child obsessed with having blond hair; and “Fontaine,” a junkie who also happens to hold a doctorate in literature.
By 1984, director Mike Nichols had moved The Spook Show to a Broadway stage, and in 1985, Goldberg won a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album for the recording of skits taken from the show. At the same time, she began to receive significant attention from Hollywood insiders. Director Steven Spielberg cast Goldberg in the leading female role of his 1985 production of The Color Purple (adapted from the novel by Alice Walker), a film that went on to earn 10 Academy Awards and five Golden Globe nominations. Goldberg herself received an Oscar nomination and her first Golden Globe Award (best actress).
Here’s part of Matt’s bio. I left out the url but you can easily find it.
Synopsis
Matt Damon’s acting career took off after starring in and writing Good Will Hunting with friend Ben Affleck. The duo won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 1997 for that film. Damon has since acted in a wide range of movies, including the popular Ocean’s Eleven series and the Jason Bourne trilogy.
Early Life
Matthew Paige Damon was born on October 8, 1970, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father, Kent, was a stockbroker, realtor and tax preparer. His mother, Nancy, was an early childhood education professor at Lesley University. Matt has one brother, Kyle, who is three years his senior. His parents divorced when Matt was two.
At 10, he met a guy from two blocks down the road: Ben Affleck. The pair did everything together. They played baseball (both are die-hard Boston Red Sox fans) and the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. They attended trashy movie double-features, and they both attended the pricey Rindge & Latin prep school. And it was here that Matt really took to acting.
Commercial Success
Damon studied English at Harvard but left early to pursue a career in acting. He went on to gain starring roles in the films The Rainmaker (1997), and Good Will Hunting (1997), for which he shared an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay with fellow co-star Ben Affleck.
Joseph, you are as bright as anyone else, but the PhD noggin needs an oil change.
Please don’t cut and paste without doing some real research. You clearly don’t know all there is to know in this instance, and I expect better from someone like you.
Embarassing . . . .
You can do far better than that.
Is this the same thought provoking Nathan who I used to read on this blog?
C’mon, Joe. .. . You’re not exatly making the school choice folk here shine as much as they’d like to, with you as their agent. Remember that you represent others and have a responsibility.
Please be thorough in your research. Google can help you, you know. You’d be shocked as to the amount of even decentl quality information there is out there on the world wide net . . . .
Robert,
What more did you want Joe to find for you?
Whoopi was raised in a housing project in NYC, attended NYC public schools where her dyslexia went undiagnosed, dropped out at 17.
Matt was raised by a college professor employed by a private university in Boston, attended a private school (it is unclear if he ever attended public, but perhaps he did spend some time in a public school), and dropped out of Harvard.
Given this different background, it does not surprise me that the two might have different views about public education.
For once I agree with the normally obtuse and mendacious Joe Nathan.
Your profession does not necessarily mean you’re a dumb or ignorant person; nor does it necessarily mean you’re smart or well informed.
I don’t care what you do for a living, you deserve the right to speak your mind and people have the right to accept what you say or reject it; or to file it away for future consideration.
Right wingers are usually the people saying things like “Who cares what that singer or actor thinks because they’re just an idiot and they should just keep their mouths shut when it comes to anything other than singing or acting.”
I’ll often dismiss the comments of a particular person based on how insipid or idiotic their words were, and/or their history of saying dumb things and advocating for bad causes.
But none of us should be dismissing what Whoopi Goldberg or any person has to say simply based on what they do for a living.
Obviously, none of you have found Damon’s connection to education, and I have 500 pages of educational leadership literature to read and 4 papers to produce in about three weeks. You seem to have more time than me.
Please be more erudite in your research . . . Damon’s connections to public education awareness are common knowledge.
TE, you are glued to your computer probably more than your children, or most humans, at least. . . give it a Google, therefore and discover something that might wire that trapped cranium of yours. Please try and write less robotically and more expressively. Develop a style. You need some style, and maybe some vodka or acupuncture would help you along.
Imagine how those elements may even help you form cogent arguements when you come in to rescue Joseph. Did you wash your cape first? . . . .
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Rindge_and_Latin_School
Rindge and Latin is a public school. It is also where the man who is accused of bombing the Boston marathon went. It is hardly an elite private school: it is a Cambridge public school and, having lived in Cambridge, I can assure you that there are projects there still and a wide variety if nationalities and socio economically diverse students, attend it.
ok, this sent lemonade out my nose.
Why not make lemonade out of nasal lemons?
The “debate” around this is just incredibly bad.
Exhibit A, from Morning Joe:
“Barnicle makes the claim that when schools have layoffs, the younger teachers are cut first, and they are “quite often some of the better teachers.” Boise says, “That’s right.”
I would submit that in no other profession or line of work would these two get away with saying something so ridiculously biased.
Replace “teachers” with some other profession or job, and say this out loud and see if these two would be proudly proclaiming it on television:
“Younger nurses are quite often some of the better nurses”
“Younger pilots are quite often some of the better pilots”
“Younger plumbers are quite often some of the better plumbers”
How about this one, given that neither of these men are young:
“Younger cable tv pundits and younger lawyers are quite often some of the better ones”
– See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/08/summertime-celebrity-education.html#sthash.qfFVyemp.dpuf
“It is this unique ability that enables Boies to handle the large volume of reading required for his work, and that helped him excel in college and law school, despite his poor performance on timed tests.”
http://dyslexia.yale.edu/boies.html
Amazing
Boise would have an absolute fit if someone or other mounted a campaign where people who are not lawyers judged the work of public defenders or prosecutors, and they are public employees.
Let’s look at the win/loss record of public defenders and hire and fire them based on that. Teachers can do the analysis, from a cable tv set. A Harvard economist can come up with a formula on how much “value” they add and the DOJ can mandate it be put in before courts get federal funding.
No one would accept this, because it’s dumb.
Good analogies! I’ve done something similar when people don’t get what the problem is with the “10 Little Indians” song. I tell them to sing the song and replace “1 little, 2 little, 3 little Indians” with another group that has a history similar to Native Americans, of being oppressed, exploited, banished, enslaved, targeted for extinction or otherwise marginalized by the dominant society, and then see how it feels, as in:
1 little, 2 little, 3 little Black kids
1 little, 2 little, 3 little retarded kids
1 little, 2 little, 3 little Jewish kids…
In this case, “younger” alone works for me because I know what it implies. For other people in this society, which tends to favor the enthusiasm of youth over the wisdom of elders, “younger” in itself might not be as effective as “young and inexperienced.”
I wonder if Whoopi would have responded the same way if former teacher Joy Behar was still on the View. IMHO, Joy brought a witty intelligence to the table that is severely lacking now, so I haven’t watched since she left.
“In this case, “younger” alone works for me because I know what it implies. For other people in this society, which tends to favor the enthusiasm of youth over the wisdom of elders, “younger” in itself might not be as effective as “young and inexperienced.”
“Younger” is dumb all by itself. I don’t even know what that means. Where are they getting the connection between “younger” and “better”?
If they’re wondering why people (well, me) believe this has to do with getting rid of more expensive staff and replacing them with less expensive younger staff, they might look at what they say on national television.
Everyone who works in the sainted and holy private sector knows that older workers tend to get paid more and older workers tend to cost more as far as health care. This isn’t a deep dark secret. We even have laws about it.
My suspicions tend to arise when they state that “younger” teachers are “often the better teachers”. Wow. Why is this okay in this context but in no other?
This hits home because the education advisor to the governor in NC is only in his 30s and makes more than any classroom teacher can ever make and our governor said, “well to not pay him well would be age discrimination.” How about use some age discrimination when you hire your advisors? “Discrimination” in and of itself is not pejorative. It’s when you abuse it that it becomes a nasty word. I’d say there is a serious lack of discrimination in terms of age in the reform movement.
Recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another is discrimination. The word is getting all twisted up.
“Discrimination between right and wrong,” for example, is good.
Aren’t car seats age discrimination? And the age when you can drive? and vote? and drink? and be president? and join the military? and drop out of school? and start school? and get your vaccinations? etc. etc.
There is some huge hesitancy to trust age in reformers. It’s like they idolize youth. I don’t get it. I’d ask an old codger advice ten times before I’d ask someone in their 20s or 30s (unless, it’s like about a pair of shoes or something).
Our governor also said, in reference to our recent teacher raise-but not-really, “it’s a good compromise between reform and awarding teachers.”
Most revealing statement ever!!! Reform does not include awarding (or should it be rewarding??) teachers. ? Compensating?
Go read some books, governor. Practice your vocabulary because you are messing with some really serious stuff. People.
Mike Barnicle is a pretty old journalist who had issues himself with integrity. I really don’t give a f#%# what he thinks.
Get off the Morning Sickness show. You’re way too old. We would prefer a young brawny hot guy instead, Mike.
http://ajrarchive.org/article.asp?id=192
Stop throwing around the divisive terms such as right wingers and lefties or tea baggers. You are playing right into the hand of the elite. There are no fundamental differences between any of the two parties. They are the equivalent of diarrhea and a floating turd. They are ultimately two in the same and both are controlled. Stop watching television and letting these idiots rile you up. The mainstream media is owned by a handful of corporations. As few as 50 years ago there were over one hundred corporations that owned and delivered media via television. It’s down to a few. The messages have been bought. The politicians regardless of the phony letter in front of their names have been bought. Whoopi of course has been bought. All of these leeches such as actors politicians hedge fund managers produce nothing of societal benefit whatsoever yet they make all of the money and influence policies nationwide because we the people give them a voice. Stop watching their shows. Stop paying ridiculous ticket prices to see their crap movies. These people have their power because we allow it. Whoopi is nothing but a sellout who has been payed to spew her venom. Why? Because she has an uneducated fan base that will listen to her opinions. I implore you guys to please watch the video below by George Carlin and you will see what many fail to acknowledge. This video is from the 90’s and perfectly describes what is happening today not only to our economy and schools but to our Country as whole. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dY4WlxO6i0
I meant “paid” in the above post not “payed”. These damn smartphones with the annoying auto correct garbage. Lol
Hah:)
Why do we care what actors think? They are paid to suspend disbelief and deliver scripted lines. That may be exactly what Goldberg is doing. The Spew is hardly a place to expand one’s horizons.
I agree with that one.
What is the alternative? Educate her? She clearly doesn’t want to be educated. I think teachers have gotten to a point, where it’s time to fight back against people like her. Who exactly is she? She is a well connected and popular public figure with basically her own media outlet. With great power comes great responsibility. She might be innocently naive, but she is doing a lot of damage.
I have also yet to see her actually attacked. Maybe snarky comments of people rather upset with her, but let’s be honest.
Teachers have held their tongue for a long time in spite of a insulting and demoralizing narrative that has lasted decades. No more holding back, not even for Whoopie.
Just look at the position of superintendent of schools in New Jersey once tenure was removed.
Just imagine the political process that controls the office of superintendent being the process for all educational positions. One word, DISASTER!!!!
Just look at the superintendent turn over in the volatile districts! You can not make the tough decision that will make you unpopular and keep your job.
I long for the days when teaching learning was the priority in education and not the political winds.
But they reach an audience that may not be (probably is not) scouring the web to find real information on education…
This “younger teachers are better” thing doesn’t even fit with my experience as a public school parent. Parents here jockey to get their kids in with certain teachers. I don’t know if it’s valid or not, but they do it. NOT ONE of the favored teachers is inexperienced, and I’m talking about decades. The fact is inexperienced teachers are DISFAVORED among parents who consider themselves engaged and clued in and “in the know”. The assumption is less experienced teachers are less experienced! Rational, that, I would think. I mean, people apply that test to every other job. I don’t know why this one would be different.
This belief seems to be limited to cable television and lobbyists. Where did it come from?
I don’t think this is really a tenure issue. It is a due process issue. The use of the word tenure is misleading.
Here’s why:
Due process is a protection for federal and state employees that they receive a fair hearing. You may want to read this from Cornell University Law School on this issue:
The Constitution states only one command twice. The Fifth Amendment says to the federal government that no one shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, uses the same eleven words, called the Due Process Clause, to describe a legal obligation of all states. These words have as their central promise an assurance that all levels of American government must operate within the law (“legality”) and provide fair procedures. …
An analysis made by the late Judge Henry Friendly in his well-regarded article, “Some Kind of Hearing,” generated a list that remains highly influential, as to both content and relative priority:
An unbiased tribunal.
Notice of the proposed action and the grounds asserted for it.
Opportunity to present reasons why the proposed action should not be taken.
The right to present evidence, including the right to call witnesses.
The right to know opposing evidence.
The right to cross-examine adverse witnesses.
A decision based exclusively on the evidence presented.
Opportunity to be represented by counsel.
Requirement that the tribunal prepare a record of the evidence presented.
Requirement that the tribunal prepare written findings of fact and reasons for its decision
The corporate, fake education reformers, who manufactured the so-called crises in the pubic schools, are using the world TENURE because it is easy to demonize, but it would be risky and possibly suicidal to attempt to demonize DUE PROCESS because it is enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/due_process
Definitions:
Tenure:
give (someone) a permanent post, especially as a teacher or professor
Due Process:
1. a course of formal proceedings (as legal proceedings) carried out regularly and in accordance with established rules and principles —called also procedural due process
2. a judicial requirement that enacted laws may not contain provisions that result in the unfair, arbitrary, or unreasonable treatment of an individual —called also substantive due process
Why do we continue to allow the fake education reformers control this issue by letting them use the term TENURE when public school teachers to not have a permanent post by any definition, but teachers, because they are paid by the state, have DUE PROCESS protection as are all other full-time public employees at the state and federal level and this protection is spelled out by two amendments in the U.S. Constitution?
Teachers do lose their jobs for any number of reasons. For instance, when student enrollment declines, teachers lose their jobs. If teachers had permanent status as defined by the term TENURE, they couldn’t lose their jobs because of a drop in enrollment—and that’s just one example of many. Districts would have to invent jobs for teachers who find themselves without students.
If the corporate raiders succeed in replacing the public schools with private run charters, then teachers will also lose those due process rights if a state’s constitution doesn’t offer due process rights to private sector workers.
Instead of us educating Whoopie or Chris Mathews (did you see his nauseating, ignorant love Fest with Campbell Brown and Boise the other night on MSNBC), why don’t our leaders at NEA and AFT have sit-downs with whoever the head of their union (I am guessing SAG) is and educate him or her about teaching, tenure and solidarity. Then that union head can get a message off to Whoopie, et al: Keep your ignorance to yourself.
Chris Matthews also drools all over Rhee and her perp hubby. Read the latest here. Lock up the kids, the teens and guard the cash in Sacramento.
Rhee returns to scene of scandal http://t.co/6shoK63Nko
http://t.co/a385MzKRAY
It’s that good ole corporate mentality – jump when they say jump, and ask “how high?” – IF you want to keep your job. Experienced, organized, unionized teachers with seniority know better, and they want them (us) GONE! The young ones are disposable. It’s a disposable society. No one is in ANY job – or even career – “for life” – no one is devoted to any one organization – they are all up for the highest bidder – that’s why head hunting is a major factor in the corporate world. Teaching – schools – education – children – have no relation to so-called “market” values of productivity, statistics, and “success”. A teacher’s success cannot be measured from year to year, but from generation to generation. Students are human beings, not data. Look at countries that value teachers and teaching, who pay teachers equitably, who honor and respect the profession, who are grateful and appreciative of teachers – I’ve taught children from other countries whose parents would thank me for teaching their children! Very humbling indeed. Not look at me like I’m a criminal like many other parents whose children were totally unprepared and unsupported educationally by said parents, who’ve bought into the blame the teacher mentality. Administrators who have no business – or ability – to lead schools – and are often brought down by their own criminality. Why would we even dignify the likes of these people in the entertainment industry to defend what we as holders of advanced degrees understand about pedagogy, human development, and the psychology of learning? They could not pack our collective lunches, ever. And the Morning Joe crew are a total bunch of fools and windbags, and accomplish absolutely nothing except to fill up cheap air time in the early morning when everyone else is getting their behinds to work. Please.
Yes!
“…but teachers, because they are paid by the state have DUE PROCESS protection as are all other full-time public employees at the state and federal level…” HENCE the enormous push to privatize education, where employees have no such rights (unless they have union representation) and break public sector unions. Whoopi is just a performer in this circus. Am I wrong?
In California, tenure was a $40,000 payoff to a convicted sexual offender to get rid of him.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/27/us/california-schools-crime-bill/
No, dear, not convicted, just accused. From the article: “The Los Angeles Unified School District found itself caught between protecting children and protecting the legal rights of a teacher who had been ***accused of — but not formally charged with*** — serious crimes against children.” [Emphasis added]
Reading is fundamental.
“cccused of — but not formally charged with”
Hey, just like Kevin Johnson!
[ducks]
Meaning the administrators had not done their job to you know, report promptly and have evidence properly gathered. Oh, and by the way… A CTA supported bill just passed to make it easier for administrators to dismiss child molesters because teachers don’t like these criminals.
It’s baaaack.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w-0TEJMJOhk
Hey, Bill F., you know when the Reformers are launching perverse innuendo, false statements, and twisted insinuation against teachers, they are desperate. Out goes Rhee, in comes Brown. Google, cut, paste, troll, lather, rinse, repeat.
But, hey, maybe alien probes did cause Romney to lose, black helicopters replaced Hillary with a robot, and the subversive socialist scourge is really lurking behind every classroom whiteboard.
One of my few links…
Bill F.,
Have you gotten a chance to answer any of my prior questions directed to you???
You are so incredibly tone deaf. This is why the unions are losing. There was overwhelming evidence he was molesting children, including pictures.
Correct me if I’m wrong, Bill the biased F.—who seems to have ignored my comment about teacher unions and how they are all not the same (every contract between members and their local, state and even the national may be different in some way)—but in the United States, regardless of the evidence, an alleged criminal is considered innocent until proven guilty in court according to the law. If one teacher union, and there are many teacher unions at the local, state and national levels, has a contract with its members to defend them in court until they are found guilty—regardless of the evidence—then that union has an obligation to support the teacher in court until that teacher is found guilty.
I don’t know if UTLA has that sort of a clause in the contract with its members. Do you know?
Please defend your alleged opinion that teachers don’t deserve their day in court for an alleged crime? It sounds as if you are saying teachers have no rights—the same rights the Founding Fathers enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights that every citizen gets their day in court and has a right to be defended when accused of a crime—that’s what’s know as DUE PROCESS.
And teachers have DUE PROCESS rights. By definition, public school teachers do not have TENURE.
Do you advocate removing DUE PROCESS for every American or just the 3.3+ million public school teachers? IF you say yes, would you allow the teachers in private sector Charter schools to keep their DUE PROCESS rights or should we just hang all teachers who are accused of a crime before they have their day in court?
Although, as you claim, there were photos, photos can be doctored, and that’s another reason that an alleged criminal has their day in court so experts may examine the evidence to make sure it is valid and not fake.
One commenter on FB said it best. Blaming the unions for bad teachers is like blaming SAG for bad movies.
The Union doesn’t hire bad teachers. But it does protect them.
Bill F.
You said the union doesn’t hire bad teachers, but it does protect them.
That isn’t what I witnessed and heard for thirty years in the one school district where I taught.
When teachers were accused by students of sexual misconduct, the teachers union—ARE (local)-CTA (state)-NEA (national)–did not represent them, and there was a clause in the union contract with teachers that clearly said ARE/CTA would not support teachers in sexual misconduct cases.
In fact, those teachers were on their own to hire a lawyer and defend themselves in court. If found innocent and reinstated, then the union would step forward and demand back pay, because in every case I was aware of—two that I know of in the schools where I worked and a few other cases over thirty years in other schools in the same district—the district suspended without pay teachers who were accused of sexual misconduct. The union did not represent them in court. Not once.
Of the three cases I remember, two of the teachers were found innocent in court and reinstated by the judge. Then the union represented those teachers to get their back pay, but not until after a judge/jury ruled in favor of the teacher. One of the cases had its sensational day in the national media but the student accusing the teacher didn’t have enough evidence to support her claim and the jury ruled the teacher innocent of the charges. In the third case, there was no physical contact between the teacher and the student, but the teacher admitted to writing the student a love letter and he resigned after working for the district for 25 years. All the student did was turn the love letter over to district administration and when the union rep saw the letter that the teacher admitted he wrote, the union backed off.
In addition, I know of several instances where administrators were using the step-by-step due process procedure to improve or remove teachers that the administrators felt were incompetent. In every case, the local, ARE, would examine the evidence and decide to request legal support from CTA/NEA. In every case I was aware of, ARE refused to support the teachers because the evidence administrators had gathered was overwhelming and there was also the fact that ARE interviewed teachers who worked with and knew the teacher who was being removed through due process.
Several of the teachers retired early soon after the first meeting required by due process. One, who wasn’t qualified to collect retirement yet, because of her age, eventually quit half way through the due process, and left teaching before she could be terminated.
There was no blind, blanket defense of teachers who were entering the due process method of improving or removing them from the classroom. Each case was separate from the others and if the evidence wasn’t there to support competence, ARE never offered legal protection.
There was also a study done by a university professor to determine how many due process cases against teachers. who were considered incompetent. were successful. She studied cases across the country and found that most of them were successful when administration did their job to prove incompetence through due process.
Los Angeles (CNN) — Allegations of lewd acts committed by a teacher on students in a Los Angeles-area elementary school sent shockwaves across the community last year.
But the outrage didn’t end there. Amid a year-long police investigation involving dozens of photos showing the alleged acts, the school district — faced with strict state rules — could not fire the teacher.
The teachers’ union …believes the current system is an appropriate process
Again, from the article: “The Los Angeles Unified School District found itself caught between protecting children and protecting the legal rights of a teacher who had been ***accused of — but not formally charged with*** — serious crimes against children.” [Emphasis added]
Bill, I cannot speak to your Los Angeles example, as I am unfamiliar with the case. In my own district, however, I have seen this play out…once with a sexual misconduct accusation, and once with a teacher who was accused of physically abusing a student. Our union in these cases will arrange for the teacher to have a lawyer…at his/her own expense. In both of these cases, the teachers were immediately suspended with pay while an initial investigation took place. When it was determined that the accusations seemed true, the teachers were suspended without pay while a trial took place. Had the teachers been proven innocent, the union would reimburse them for the legal fees and ask the district for back pay. In both of these cases, the teachers were found guilty and dismissed. I know for sure that one of them had her license revoked. The whole process took about a year, and no students were under their care during that time. It wasn’t the years and years process I have heard tenure critics complain of. The bulk of the time was due to court proceedings. The union ensured due process was followed, but certainly wasn’t trying to protect the jobs of criminals and bad teachers.
Bill can not read and process what doesn’t align with his preconceived notions.
UTLA is affiliated with the two largest national affiliates. The AFT/CFT and NEA/CTA are all dedicated to improving public schools and supporting teacher professionalism.
http://www.utla.net/affiliates
Definition for affiliated:
1. being in close formal or informal association
2. to attach or unite on terms of fellowship; associate
Do you know what the affiliation is between UTLA, NEA and AFT? If not, don’t assume all teachers unions would do the exact same thing UTLA did in this case.
With more than 31,000 members (less than one percent of the national total), UTLA is the second largest teachers union local in the nation and one of the most influential.
UTLA is big enough, due to the size of its membership, to decide on its own to defend teachers accused of sexual misconduct regardless of the evidence, but this doesn’t mean you can smear NEA or AFT or any other teacher union that is only affiliated with the two major unions.
“The Thomas B. Fordham Institute took an in-depth look at the role unions play in each state. The study ranks teacher unions in all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on resources and membership, involvement in politics, scope of bargaining, state policies, and perceived influence. Click through the gallery to learn why unions were chosen as having the most or least influence.”
http://www.takepart.com/photos/5-strongest-and-5-weakest-teacher-unions-country/teacher-unions-how-they-compare
There are more than 3.3 million public school teachers working in about 15,000 school districts in fifty states in addition to the U.S. territories. Teachers are not represented by one union with one set of rules and the actions of one union—for instance UTLA— does not represent the actions of every teacher union no matter how the fake corporate education reformers spin the facts.
You may want to click on the previous link and discover for yourself how diverse, weak and/or strong each teacher unions is and I suggest you use language that clearly shows you are condemning the actions of UTLA and not every union that represents teachers until you have evidence substantiated in court with a verdict that proves that the other teacher unions support your claims and the claims of the fake corporate education reformers who are known to cherry pick facts and misrepresent the truth.
This article (http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_22454531/firing-tenured-teacher-california-can-be-tough) about one case in California, quotes Dean Vogel, president of CTA at some length:
“Dean Vogel, president of the California Teachers Association, acknowledged that it takes too long and is too expensive in California to dismiss a bad teacher. He also stresses the importance of due process and the application of the existing laws by administrators.
“The dismissal cases vary so much from district to district. Of course we want to protect the rights of teachers, but the very first thing is to protect the safety of the students,” Vogel said. “Every situation is different and that’s why we have the process we have. … We have to make the decision grounded on what really happened.”
There is a teacher in my district, who used to teach at my school, who has been accused of having sex with students at the school she went to after she left my school. As soon as the allegations surfaced, she was suspended with pay. She was fired within three months. The case hasn’t even gone to trial yet. Districts don’t play with this sort of thing, because they’d open themselves up for lawsuits if they did.
Threatened,
The case in the article I linked to was not about sexual relations, but about a case where a teacher plead no contest to the charge of misdemeanor child abuse steaming from a 2010 incident in the classroom where the teacher “…pulled a 5-year-old special-needs student from his chair, then kicked him as he lay on the ground.”
The teacher was transferred to another school where she taught until early 2013 when a settlement was reached that required she be removed from the classroom.
The only time the safety of the students is threatened is when admins and admin-favored teachers are on the loose and that has nothing to do with the union. It might take a while for average Union Joe to be fired for molesting children (but he’ll be suspended without pay the whole time), but Sam the Super’s Son will never get fired and he’ll be in direct contact with children no matter how many allegations there are.
Dienne,
This teacher plead no contest to child abuse in a classroom incident in 2010, was transferred to another school (where perhaps the parents were not made aware of the child abuse prosecution), and eventually left the classroom in 2013.
Removal of tenure won’t get rid of the poor teachers who are pretty or who are the son-in-law or niece or whatever of someone in power. They will still have jobs because they will be protected by the powerful. That was the whole point of due process in the first place–to limit nepotism and cronyism. TE, do you want teachers to only be hired on the basis of their relation to the powerful, rather than on merit?
Threatened,
It seems to me you are describing the current situation in public schools. Do you think that private schools, where teachers have no due process rights, are filled with incompetent teachers who are hired based on aspects other than merit?
TE, thanks for the link.
You are overlooking the money quote:
However, what may have jeopardized any Holder dismissal was the district’s failure to perform her 2010 performance review. In her testimony in a civil case deposition, assistant superintendent Margaret Kruse said transferring Holder to another class seemed an acceptable option.
“I think there was a sense that it might be better for her to work in a different setting where students were a little older and more verbal in case there was some kind of problem or situation,” Kruse said.
There was a procedure to follow, but the administration did not follow it. Another question to ask is why didn’t the DA go for, or settle on more serious, felonious, charges?
We might also have here a case of where the district did not want to pursue a firing/dismissal because it could be used as an admission of guilt in a parental civil suit.
While it is comforting to see in black and white, the world is not like that.
Edlharris,
I actually thought the money quote from the article was were the head of the California Teachers Association “acknowledged that it takes too long and is too expensive in California to dismiss a bad teacher”
After the corporate reformers finish destroying the public education system, what will be next? Perhaps the medical system? Computers will now make diagnosis and prescribe drugs? The medical profession better wise up and stand up for children being damaged by thisCCSS reform crap before it gets too them…Oh Wait…..I think the corporate insurance companies may already have their grips on the medical profession as we speak….What’s left to destroy????
Remember that the desired outcome of neoliberal “reformers” is profit-making destruction. Higher education is next on their agenda.
Medicine is being de-professionalized much like teaching. For one thing, PAs can do most of what doctors do.
My advice to teachers (not that any of asked for it!) would be to keep any workplace protections you have, including union representation, because middle class workers in the private sector are treated worse now that at any time in my memory as an adult, so the past 30 years.
It’s way too easy for really privileged people to tell middle class workers that they they will feel “empowered” once they bust loose from the constraints of worker protections.
It’s ugly for middle class workers in the private sector. Our Leaders in government don’t even enforce state and federal law as far as worker protections for the bottom half of the workforce, let alone have them “at the table” when decisions are made.
If you have protections and process at work, keep them. You live in a country where low wage workers now regularly suffer something called “wage theft” where their employers actually rob them of wages. If the employer is caught (fat chance, one in a thousand) they’re fined some ridiculously small amount and they go on their merry way. No harm, no foul.
Just keep that in mind when listening to millionaires blather on about “empowerment”. Not much of that in the private sector, for the bottom half.
I hope you all came across this article by Peter Greene:
It’s Not the Firing; It’s the Threatening
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-greene/teacher-tenure_b_5650530.html
I LOVE those memes and I love the way gentlemanly way he calls her out on all this.
I had this same disagreement with Paul Thomas on his (brilliant) blog post several days ago. http://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/a-call-for-the-next-phase-in-the-resistance/
The essence of his argument was for us to move to a higher level of discourse by leading our resistance against these ‘reforms’ with substance. I believe this would include using the substantive facts of tenure to educate Whoopi.
It’s a wonderfully teacherly idea. The truth, however, is that Whoopi (the child of a teacher herself) knows full well that tenure is not a job for life. She used a considerable bully pulpit, her show, to foster a false narrative (called the ‘Bad Teacher Narrative’). She did this knowing, we should all presume, that tenure is a job protection, not a job for life.
While the job of a teacher is to teach someone who seems not to understand, it is the job of an activist to know when someone is embracing a false argument and engaging in a fight against a straw man that simply doesn’t exist. An activist can tell that our fight to preserve tenure is not a pleasant discourse where folks become educated about what it is to be a teacher. I see this as more of a street fight where teachers turned activists (TENS OF THOUSANDS of us by my last count of the BATs) stand up and say “No. You’re not being honest”. And while I understand that even that is the first step to educating (and while I’d never run my class by addressing a student in that manner), that -calling her out on her dishonesty- is the appropriate step for Whoopi (and the dozens of other stars who are about to go in front of the TV and use the same tired argument).
If Whoopi wasn’t educated on tenure, she should not have spoken out about it to hundreds of thousands of TV watchers. Our job isn’t to teach people like her. Our job is to greet those statements with a disapproving look and a hairy eyeball, then insist that the behavior never happen again.
But I LOVE the meme.
Like most people whose minds are made-up, no matter what the facts actually are, Whoopi needs to have vast numbers of people educate her with the truth. Perhaps, just perhaps, self doubt will set in. IF it happens soon enough, she might say or do something positive. If not, well, at least we tried.
Diane, I agree wholeheartedly that we shouldn’t be bombarding Whoopi Goldberg with negative, judgemental or accusatory messages and that instead we need to be kind and respectful and use the opportunity to educate and inform Ms. Goldberg about the realities of what “tenure” REALLY means.
If your only source of information is the mainstream media you’ve been lead to believe that “tenure” means a “Job For Life Regardless Of Performance”, that it’s granted immediately upon hiring, and that unless you’re convicted of the most heinous crime imaginable you can’t be dismissed from your position. And judging by Ms. Goldberg’s comments, that’s apparently what she believes.
If I make a mistake based on incomplete or inaccurate information—and we all do occasionally—I’m most willing to listen to those who approach me with sincere kindness, understanding and respect.
When I feel like I’m being attacked, ridiculed and insulted, I turn off and cannot hear—or choose not to hear—what those people are yelling at me.
We’re not going to win Ms. Goldberg over, or even get her to consider another viewpoint if we’re going to be rude, nasty, personal or patronizing.
Your post, above, Diane, is a good starting point. It explains in a straightforward, clear way what “tenure” REALLY is and how it would be contrary to the interests of ALL students, parents and teachers if we were to eliminate due process for teachers.
If anything, we should be talking about an EXPANSION of due process throughout our society so that ALL citizens could exercise their rights and speak freely without fear of losing their jobs. This would expand the understanding of what is called “teacher tenure” and help expand public support for it by letting the public know that it is something that should be protecting ALL of us against unfair or retaliatory or capricious firings, regardless of our jobs.
“If I make a mistake based on incomplete or inaccurate information—and we all do occasionally—I’m most willing to listen to those who approach me with sincere kindness, understanding and respect.”
Okay, that’s a good place to start. But what if we approach you with sincere kindness, understanding and respect and then you go on air again and rip up our Facebook comments and call us crazies? What should we do then? Continue to respectfully educate you?
Here’s a gift for you-all, re: Mr. Bois and the rest of the ed reform lawyers:
“A study of all lawyer discipline cases in New York from mid-2008 through 2013 and many cases in earlier decades reveals that the system for lawyer discipline in New York is seriously deficient. Clients are not protected. The cases take far too long, often many years. Sanctions are dramatically inconsistent. There is no statewide effort to reconcile different sanctions in different courts. Many cases do not attempt to reconcile sanctions with those in similar cases from the same court. Secrecy is rampant. In the small number of cases where discipline is public, a prospective client cannot easily discover a lawyer’s disciplinary record.”
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2469758
Love it shall tweet
And to think there is a movement afoot to grant law degrees to undergraduates! Isn’t it lawyers who become judges –and most of the politicians? Hey, why not dumb down the judicial system even more. How about just two year degrees for lawyers? This is a very crude, Philistine, anti-intellectual society that we are living in today.
Reteach 4 America,
Don’t give them any ideas. They might decide to add attorney next to expert teacher for TFA recruits who finish their five weeks of summer training before they go off to put in two years in a classroom as if they are serving in the military with promised rewards of high paying jobs in politics or corporations when they get their (dis)honorable discharge—that is for the 66+ percent who leave teaching at the end of the two years.
It seems that the few who stay teaching in a public classroom usually turn into critics of TFA.
I don’t think Whoopi has any idea how the reformers have and are destroying education and children. I don’t think she has any idea how teachers are quitting in droves, and no one with any sense is pursuing a teaching career anymore. I like Whoopi, always have, but this time, and for reasons I don’t know, I believe she missed an opportunity to make a real difference. She has the platform, and I believe she is open to truth. I hope she takes the time to rethink this one.
Possibly if Diane’s website is brought to her attention, she may give pause to the voices of real teachers, who are fighting daily to make a difference in this world, A difference, I think Whoopi would encourage and support, given more information.
Maybe she has a horse in the race.
Donna,
I think you just hit the nail and drove it home. Maybe Whoopi is planning to join the growing list of famous athletes and entertainers who are launching their own private sector, for-profit Charter schools.
After all, Whoopie is only worth $45 million. Launching her own Charter chain could grow her fortune faster.
In fact, Whoopi may partner up with Eva Moskowitz in New York City. And if she plays her cards right, she may replace Campbell Brown who replaced Michelle Rhee as the media face for the corporate education reform for profit movement.
Who is Whoopi Goldberg? An actress? Was she in that stupid ghost movie? Who gives a ____what she has to say? Is she an expert on education or an intellectual? This celebrity-worship culture in America is just revolting. What a country! Why don’t we ask “The Rock” what he thinks? Why don’t we call Eminem or the Kardashians and get their opinions. This country is a sad joke. At this point in our history, it doesn’t really matter what happens to education, does it? The game is already over as far as “thinking” goes.
She’d be a member of the Screen Actors Guild & should understand something about the rights of workers.
She should also understand that SAG is not responsible for getting rid of bad actors. Directors are culpable, just like principals are responsible for terminating bad teachers.
Doesn’t help when Whoopi calls us “a bunch of crazies” for disputing her comments.
Whoopi Goldberg, on The View, expressed an opinion about taxes. Later, when golfer, Phil Michelson, complained about his taxes. it reminded me of her comments.
If Ari Emanunel is Whoopi Goldberg’s agent, it seems likely that they would bond over their sense of superiority.
I recall Jenny McCarthy described being humiliated, on the job, by a powerful man who punished her for failing to recognize him as a person of importance. She must not have related her experience to that of a teacher. Nor, did she consider, the teacher is the more likely protector of children. She hears a few anecdotes, hyped by hedge fund owners, and using the Rush Limbaugh school of argumentation, applies them universally.
What would we ever do without Hollywood?
We’d be completely lost as a country.
I’m pretty sure if Einstein were alive today, he’d reside in Hollywood because that’s where all the geniuses live.
I am very saddened that Whoopi Goldberg has shown such negativity. However, wasn’t she one of the people (& some others on The View–?) who backed/praised that awful film, Won’t Back Down? Where can we write/e-mail her?
Also–I don’t know why Matt Damon was brought into this argument (& what his background had anything to do with anything), but don’t you all remember that his mother–Nancy Carlsson Paige (if I have that name right) is a highly-respected professor of Early Childhood Education at a renowned college in Boston–and that she spoke at the first S.O.S. March in Washington, D.C., with Diane? AND–that Matt came along and spoke IN SUPPORT of public schools and teachers? (And that–while Arne & the D.O.Ed. didn’t care to talk to any of the S.O.S. leaders, he was MOST eager to privately talk to Matt, in order to discourage him from speaking? {Matt’s response was his refusal to meet with/talk to Arne & be dissuaded from speaking out.})
AND–because MATT DAMON SPOKE, there was SOME coverage of the event. If he hadn’t been there, the MSM would have TOTALLY ignored the event.
Matt is supportive of teachers & public schools–he is a “wuzza” (or in this case, an “Izza”)–you know, all those politicians & others (the ones who really do NOT support teachers, take our pensions, etc.}–“Oh, my sister “wuzza” teacher,” or “My mom “izza” teacher,” said in the sense as if they are supporting or empathizing w/us–but they’re NOT. Matt truly is a teacher & public school (even if he might not have attended one) supporter–he proved that in D.C.
Matt attended public h.s. In Cambridge.
Teachers need to make it clear to parents that “due process” also allows them to speak out about practices that are hurtful to students without fear of being fired, such as unsuitable standards, excessive testing, lack of activities that promote child-development and growth, etc. Until teachers and parents come together on this issue, teachers will continue to be the scapegoats for all that is wrong in education.
As a start, every teacher should reach out to 5 or 10 parents to explain the issues.
“Teachers need to make it clear to parents that “due process” also allows them to speak out about practices that are hurtful to students without fear of being fired”
This includes being able to report teachers AND principals who treat children badly.
As a teacher who has never worked where there was a union, I had to file such reports with the state several times, on both teachers and administrators who used corporal punishment on children ages 2 – 12, in a state where corporal punishment is not permitted, and I had to request that the state keep my name anonymous.
I came very close to losing my job over it a number of times, since I was virtually the only teacher at the school who refused to harm children, so the people I reported figured out it was me. I denied it and said maybe it was parents or neighbors in the community who had seen it happen. I was very lucky that neighbors had called the school to complain about such observations, because a number of parents actually told teachers and administrators to hit their kids. (The behaviors I was aware of included hitting, pinching, ear pulling and a lot of verbal humiliation though.)
Fortunately, the teachers and administrators fell for my lie and I worked there for many years, trying very hard to protect children and educate teachers and administrators on positive discipline strategies. The teachers and administrators were investigated, and got basically a slap on the hand from the state, but the reports did scare many of them into being more open to learning positive approaches.
Reteach,
Your story paints an unpleasant picture of your public school. Thank you for standing up to your fellow teachers and administrators.
Thanks, but I didn’t say it was a public school. It’s a private school but it’s government regulated. And it’s for-profit, so I made minimum wage or just slightly above it for over a decade there, despite all my college degrees and many years of experience.
Reteach,
Interesting that you chose to take such a low paying job and stayed with it for so long.
When you say that this school was regulated, did you mean in the way that all private schools are regulated by the state or was the school contracting with the state?
In my area, all private schools that serve ages 2 – 12 are highly regulated by both cities and the state.
HA! Gotcha, TE!!! I was hoping that Reteach had taught in a charter or private school when her awful experiences came about.
Threatened,
I did assume that Reteach taught in a public school. I have to remember that many who post here teach or have taught in private schools and have sent their children to private schools.
It would be interesting to know where Reteach taught.
I’ve never heard of public schools that accept children as young as 2 years old. That’s why private schools serve them and it’s also why the most jobs for specialists in early childhood are in private schools.
Reteach,
The reason for the public schools not accepting children as young as two is because of the law and has nothing to do with the public schools or public school teachers. If the law or legislation doesn’t mandate it, then that service is not funded. Without funding, there is little that the public schools can do to provide services for children as young as two.
You may want to ask President Obama why he’s waiting until 2015 to ask Congress to approve a $75 billion funded national early childhood education program.
And if you get around to talking to him, ask why he didn’t do this in 2009 when he bribed the states with billions of dollars to sign on to a Common Core that hadn’t been written and developed. It is well known that early childhood education programs work but there was no evidence that supported the Machiavellian Common Core agenda to test kids relentlessly and then use those test scores to rank and yank teachers while turning public schools over to corporations to profit off the taxpayers—Charters that mostly perform worse or the same. And let’s not forget the fraud and other crimes being discovered repeatedly across the country in an opaque industry that the Obama administration literally forced on the nation not through the democratic progress by by using authoritarian methods.
You might be interested this report: The State of Preschool 2012
Pull quote: “Twenty-eight percent of America’s 4-year-olds were enrolled in a state-funded preschool program in the 2011-2012 school year, the same percentage as the year before. This stagnation in enrollment growth was compounded by an unprecedented funding drop of $500 million nationwide. The findings in this Yearbook raise serious concerns on the quality and availability of pre-K education for most of American young learners.”
http://nieer.org/publications/state-preschool-2012
In conclusion, if only private schools provide early childhood education programs than only parents who earn enough money to pay for that service may take advantage of them, and who losses out when early childhood education is only for the highest income earners when most of the children with learning disabilities are found among children who live in poverty?
In addition, here’s another report about early childhood education programs in other countries:
“United States interest in the potential early childhood programs have for improving
outcomes for children is shared by policymakers and researchers in many other
nations. Throughout the world, enrollments in preschool and child care programs are
rising. This article reviews international research documenting how participation in
early childhood programs influenced children’s later development and success in
school. Studies conducted in 13 nations (Australia, Canada, Colombia, France,
Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Turkey, and the
United Kingdom) are included, along with key features of each nation’s provision of
early childhood programs.”
Click to access 05_03_04.pdf
I should have said 2 years old and under as well, because schools that also serve younger ages are typically private and highly regulated by government around here, too –and not unionized.
This is pretty much the same across states, but government regulations differ considerably. Therefore, there are professional associations which accredit schools and have higher standards than many governments. Both private and public schools can become accredited, though that’s typically optional.
Lloyd, You are preaching to the choir here. I mentioned the fact that public schools don’t take 2 year olds only because I had said the school where I worked had ages 2 – 12 but TE assumed it was public. I was also intending that as a response to his question about why I would work at low paying jobs for so long, to point out that early childhood teachers go where the jobs are.
As it happens, there were many low income families where I taught, because programs are subsidized through the Child Care Block Grant. I happen to live in a state that has since established Universal PreK, which is supposed to be for all 3 and 4 year olds and situated primarily in the existing private programs, but funding has been slashed for that. I have worked in a 0-3 program for children at-risk as well, and I think that really needs to be expanded, but those programs are few and far between due to lack of funds, too.
Reteach,
There are many jobs that pay more than minimum wage, but all jobs, actually all lives, are a bundle of of characteristics. If you chose to work for minimum wage, you did so because other things compensated.
Reteach, thank you for clarifying. I think it is shocking and corrupt that all the attention out of Washington DC has been on this Common Core Assessment crap when the focus should have started with a national plan for early childhood education to be available for all children in the US starting as early as age 2 and mandatory for all children living in poverty.
I think having public education partner with public libraries would be the best plan to follow and rely less on for-profit corporations.
Lloyd,
I think that some might take your suggestion that the poor require the state to intervene in raising of their young children to be be somewhat dismissive of the humanity of those that are poor. Did you mean that to give that impression?
You should have said: “I think you are suggesting that the poor require the state to intervene in the raising of their young children and this is somewhat dismissive of the humanity of those who are poor.”
First, the public schools don’t raise the children. Parents and guardians are responsible for that. An early childhood education program would usually mean two or three hours a day during the school year—on average—for children between age 2 to 5, and that program would focus on instilling a love of reading and books especially for children living in poverty who mostly start behind children who do not live in poverty and then stay behind academically. The research and data is there so do your own research.
I don’t think early childhood education programs should have anything to do with replacing the role of parents. However, repeated legislation and court rulings have turned teachers into parents without the power of parents. Teachers did not ask for this responsibility. It was thrust on them by the courts and legislation.
Please answer this question: Who do you think most parents would want to teach their young children a few hours a day between the ages of two and five in an early childhood education program?
A. a transparent public school district that is managed by a democratically elected school board usually made up of parents and grandparents while being guided by legislation and court verdicts. And please keep in mind the diversity of political beliefs among teachers in the public schools. A third are registered Republicans. About half are registered Democrats and the rest are independent voters. You may ask what this has to do with early childhood education. Well, to save you from asking that question here’s the answer—because teachers have due process protection (at last for now), that means if a conservative, progressive or liberal minded teacher doesn’t like what’s going on, she may protest publicly and bring this to the public’s attention without fear of losing her job.
B. a public library that is funded by public money and must operate under the transparency process required of all public run agencies. The same rules apply here when it comes to due process protection.
C. a private sector for-profit corporation that’s usually opaque in how it runs the business and how it spends the taxpayers money that also doesn’t have to follow the laws that apply to the public schools and public libraries that usually require criminal background checks of anyone who wants to work with children. In addition, in a private sector corporation there is little or no due process protection for employees, so out of fear, few would be willing to protest if they saw something going on they didn’t like.
D. A & B
E. None of the above
Please provide evidence and links to sources that proves overwhelmingly that private sector Charter schools are doing a better job than the public schools. The answer will tell you why we shouldn’t trust private sector corporations to help parents raise their children.
Then answer this: Why should parents trust a corporate CEO who doesn’t answer to them or anyone else when they have the choice of a public school or library that must answer to them through a democratically elected school board of parents or former parents?
For instance,
Do you really want the Walton family to be in a position to raise the country’s children?
Do you really want Bill Gates in a position to raise the country’s children?
Do you really want the Koch brothers in a position to raise the country’s children?
Do you really want Michale Milken, a convicted criminal, om a position to raise the country’s children?
Lloyd,
Perhaps I was mislead when you said that we should stat “…with a national plan for early childhood education to be available for all children in the US starting as early as age 2 and mandatory for all children living in poverty” that you meant to require all those living in poverty to send their two year olds to a school while the relatively rich could be trusted with complete responsibility for their children.
Did you actually mean to say that it should be mandatory for all families without regard to income?
TE,
Since you didn’t answer my questions, I will not answer yours. To think that you were upset once, because I called you ignorant in another thread on this blog. The reason I think that you ignorant is because you only ask questions without any indication that you know anything about what you are asking.
In fact, you often ask questions that hijack conversations and change the topic away from something that you appear to no nothing about. From my experience, that is usually the sign of an ignorant person that doesn’t know what they are talking about and doesn’t care.
Lloyd,
There is no shame in saying that you think the poor should be required to send their children to early child education beginning at age two. I am sure that a significant number of people who share that opinion.
Shame on you for not answering my questions before you asked me more questions.
Lloyd,
Your posts are long and very tangential to the conversation, but I will give it a try.
My children went to a daycare center run by my employer through kindergarten (there is no all day kindergarten in the public schools in my district). The director came from Head Start, so little in the way of formal qualifications.
I have no idea what public libraries, for profit firms, none of the above, and the Walton family have to do with requiring poor children to attend early childhood education programs. You will have to explain how they are related.
TE,
Since I retired and I’m not a working teacher anymore, I don’t intend to be your teacher regarding the manufactured crises in public education created by the likes of Bill Gates, the Koch brothers and the Walton family and their puppet stooges. For instance, President Obama, G, W, Bush, Arne Duncan, Campbell Brown, Whoopi Goldberg, John White, and Michelle Rhee among others.
In addition, I taught English, journalism and reading—I didn’t teach political science, history or current events. You might think that journalism is current events but I want to make it clear that I was the teacher and adviser and my job was to teach the journalism kids how to write better and produce a high school newspaper. I didn’t teach them current events. That wasn’t pat of the job description.
Therefore, I will repeat myself on how you may educate yourself about this corporate fed nightmare designed to profit a few and rob from the many.
Read these books if you have the courage to challenge your biased, flawed thinking regarding public education:
Reign of Error
By Diane Ravitch
https://dianeravitch.net/
Diane Silvers Ravitch is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education under President G. W. Bush. She was appointed to public office by Presidents H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools:
The Real Crisis in Education
By David C. Berliner, Gene V Glass, Associates
http://nepc.colorado.edu/author/berliner-david-c
David C. Berliner is an educational psychologist and bestselling author. He was professor and Dean of the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education. Gene V Glass is a senior researcher at the National Education Policy Center and a research professor in the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder.
A Chronicle of Echoes:
Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education
By Mercedes K. Schneider
http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/
Schneider says, “Corporate reform” is not reform at all. Instead, it is the systematic destruction of the foundational American institution of public education. The primary motivation behind this destruction is greed. Public education in America is worth almost a trillion dollars a year. Whereas American public education is a democratic institution, its destruction is being choreographed by a few wealthy, well-positioned individuals and organizations. This book investigates and exposes the handful of people and institutions that are often working together to become the driving force behind destroying the community public school.
The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession
By Dana Goldstein
Note: Goldstein’s book is scheduled to be released by Doubleday on September 2, 2014, so I suggest you start from the top of this list and work down.
Here are a few pull quotes describing this heavily research nonfiction book about public education and public teachers:
“[An] immersive and well-researched history … Attacking a veritable hydra of issues, Goldstein does an admirable job, all while remaining optimistic about the future of this vital profession.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Dana Goldstein proves to be as skilled an education historian as she is an astute observer of the contemporary state of the teaching profession. May policy makers take heed.”
—Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers
“A colorful, immensely readable account that helps make sense of the heated debates around teaching and school reform. The Teacher Wars is the kind of smart, timely narrative that parents, educators, and policy makers have sorely needed.”
—Frederick M. Hess, Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute
“Dana Goldstein has managed the impossible: She’s written a serious education book that’s fresh, insightful, and enjoyable to read.”
—Michael Petrilli, Executive Vice President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
“Why are today’s teachers pictured simultaneously as superheroes and villains? In clear, crisp language, Dana Goldstein answers that question historically by bringing to life key figures and highlighting crucial issues that shaped both teachers and teaching over the past century. Few writers about school reform frame the context in which teachers have acted in the past. Goldstein does exactly that in thoughtfully explaining why battles over teachers have occurred then and now.”
—Larry Cuban, Professor Emeritus of Education, Stanford University
TE, I did not have much choice about where I was employed if I wanted to work in my field. As with many Early Childhood specialists, teaching in public schools was not an option for me because I am not certified. That is because my state did not permit people to earn money in their jobs where they did their student teaching, which meant I would have had to leave my own classroom so I could go student teach in someone else’s class for five months for no pay. I had no resources to support myself for that long without an income.
Instead of pursuing certification so that I could work in the public schools, I pursued a doctorate. That law was not changed until Teach for America muzzled their way into my state by influencing the legislature so that they could place 5 week trained people without certification in classrooms here –for very good pay. Even after that, I tried, but none of the alternative certification programs I applied to were interested in someone who had formal training and experience in education.
Reteach,
If you wished a higher salary, you might have changed fields. There are many jobs that pay higher than minimum wage and require relatively little specialized training.
So this was a job when you were, in essence, an apprentice? Before you were certified?
Lloyd, Fingerprinting and background checks are required in private PreK programs for all people who have any contact whatsoever with children, from the cook to the janitor to teachers and administrators. That does not, however, include executives that are not onsite. That’s probably why Michael Milken is already “raising” a lot of America’s youngest children, since he owns KinderCare, which is the largest child care chain in the country.
Many states have high standards for regulating private PreK programs, including very strict limits on teacher-student ratios, maximum group sizes and specific space and equipment requirements. Those regulations do not apply when the same ages are in public schools.
While I appreciate the idea of partnering with libraries, they are fine for field trips, but for a daily program, they don’t have the facilities or equipment that is needed and mandated for working with young children.
I would like to see for-profits excluded from public funding, especially the chains, though the subsidies they get are often considerably less than the tuition they charge. I think it would mean expanding the number of non-profits. So far, those have not been functioning like the non-profit charters whose execs get outrageous salaries. My greatest concern is that charters want PreK, and since they are virtually unregulated, I invision no-excuses schools trying to make soldiers out of toddlers…
More than just soldiers—-depending on the political agenda of a billionaire oligarch who owns or controls the Charter schools, the odds are that they would push, for instance for the Koch brothers, libertarian dogma and for fundamentalist Christians, literal translations of the Bible that also focused on creationism instead while throwing science out the window.
The closest examples I can think of were Mao’s Little Red Guard and the Hitler youth.
Reteach, your story about not being certified is unbelievable. Massachusetts is requiring all private preschool teachers to have B.A.’s and are assisting them financially. They must be employed in a classroom to qualify. I teach public school. My assistant has an Associate’s in EC. She is now pursuing a B.A. in ECE under one of these scholarships. The program does NOT offer student teaching, so she will not get certified. If it did she could do it in our school while getting paid. Then she could get certified – Pre-k-grade 2 – and become a public school teacher and obviously make a living wage. When she finishes the B.A. her choices will be- continue as an over-qualified low paid aide or a low paying job at a private preschool. She is not going anywhere financially. Ridiculous waste of money for the state.
The MA Dept. of Early Ed. and Care should be focused on preparing teachers for Dept. of Elem. and Secondary Ed. Certification which requires 2 practicum experiences. Then we could have highly qualified preschool teachers in public snd private settings. All children would get a qualified preschool teacher. (I am not saying all teachers without DESE certification are not good. Some are. I just think you have a higher chance of effective teachers if they have done student teaching under a mentor.) EEC is just wasting (taxpayer!) money. Why can’t people in power figure out effective solutions? Why don’t they listen to teachers?! I wrote to EEC months ago about this issue. They are wasting money making private preschools, Head Start and public preschools who receive funding from them jump through silly hoops to “improve quality.” (QRIS) I suggested that the best way to ensure quality is to have well-trained teachers in all classrooms. Never heard back…..
TE, I do not need to hear from one more man how I should have gone and done something else with my life in order to make more money, when teaching is my calling and what I do best. I had two fathers and that is all I heard from both of them for decades. The problem is greedy employers who exploit teachers who are not unionized, not teachers like me. And no, I was not an apprentice. I had three degrees in education and my own classroom with no assistant.
I am still not certified because alternative certification programs did not want me BECAUSE I am a formally trained experienced educator with multiple degrees. You can’t just go back and do student teaching after you have graduated. You have to go through an alternate cert program in my state now. And I am retirement age.
Reteach,
I certainly don’t think you should have made any choice other than the one you made. All I am doing is pointing out that it was a choice. If you had preferred more income, other professions were available. All things considered, you made the choice you most preferred.
Annat, That student teaching component is truly critical. I can’t imagine why your state would not include it.
I did two separate year long practicum experiences in my master’s program in Special Ed, but the state decided they didn’t count towards student teaching because I was teaching full time at the time so I did them in my off hours, at night and on the weekends. such as in a children’s hospital.
TE, Framing the exploitation of workers as a matter of worker choice is so out of touch with humanity –and very Libertarian.
I listened to my fathers and went to work in an office for a couple years. It literally made me ill –both physically and mentally. And I still didn’t make much money because, in those days, young people were only given entry level jobs and we had to work our way up a career ladder in the company. Some choice. I went back to teaching and regained my physical and mental health.
Teteach,
How do you define exploitation?
I don’t have the wisdom to know how much each individual should be paid to do each job, so I leave it up to each person to decide how much they are willing to be paid to do a job. Some would not have been willing to do your job at the wage you were paid, all thins considered, you were. I think that in general people are willing to be paid less when they are doing what they are called to do.
TE, This is the shameful kind of questioning that Lloyd was talking about, and I do not intend to spend any time describing to an economist how paying unlivable wages exploits workers, let alone highly educated, experienced, skilled workers.
Reteach,
Perhaps the more moral thing would be never to have offered the job to begin with.
Sorry, I meant to say that TFA “muscled” their way not “muzzled”. (That organization needs to be muzzled!)
You are a very sick person and I’m all done with you.
Forget TE. It goes on and on always and you get nowhere. Not worth it.
Reteach,
It seems to me that the concept of exploitation requires a standard of comparison. People paid more than this level are not exploited, people paid less are exploited. If a person chooses a job that pays less than that threshold over a job that pays more, should we say that the person is exploited?
Right, Linda. Thanks. I have seen how TE has demonstrated before that no poor people matter to him unless they are Asians working in the fields for pennies a year. Even their relatives who were burned alive in sweatshops were lucky, according to him, because they made relatively higher slave wages. He may use the word “moral,” but he does not know what it means because everything is relative to his own extremely low standards. Pitty the college students who are being taught this nonsense by someone with such a small heart, One can only hope they have more soul and brain activity than this..
Reteach,
The poor matter a great deal to me, but in this case I was interested in the question of exploitation. I don’t think that all who are poor are exploited, and I wonder if you do think all that are poor are exploited.
My foster son earns just above minimum wage in a job that he has grown into. It is certainly the best job he has ever had and his job security comes from doing the job well. If society required that my foster son’s employer decide between paying him significantly more to do this job or not employing him at all, my concern is that his employer would choose to not employee him at all. My foster son and his children would be much worse off if this happened.
Reteach, don’t bother. When TE is down for the count he always throws in a foster son story. It’s his MO….skip it.
Linda,
Once again, rather than talking in abstract terms I like to make my comments concrete by illustrating them with actual examples.
Do you have any thoughts on how we can tell if a person is being exploited in a job and what policies we should put in place to end that exploitation?
Ignoring your questioning merry go round. You are offensive on so many levels but you will never get it. Leave your foster son out of it. Its tiresome
I’m roaring with laughter after reading TE’s latest comment.
TE said, “Once again, rather than talking in abstract terms I like to make my comments concrete by illustrating them with actual examples.”
TE, Please explain how asking endless questions that often divert away from a topic under discussion to something that is usually an utter display of ignorance from you is a comment filled with concrete examples that illustrates what you mean?
How often have you ever done this? I’m sure anything concrete from you that’s filled with examples is as rare as a Sumatran Rhinoceros.
I think it is safe to say that more than 90 percent of what you write here are questions as your go to method to avoid getting involved in a debate with anyone—a way to mask your ignorance of the corporate, profit driven manufactured public education crises.
I’m laughing so hard, I’m going to have to breathe into a paper back to calm down before I pass out from lack of oxygen.
Linda, Great point! (I only read your post and not TE’s, because that’s a waste of my valuable time.)
Only the selfish, who think they’ve somehow been exonerated, keep demanding proof of exploitation and poverty before they will even recognize how pervasively they exist in this country.
If all teachers claimed we are exempt from even CARING about Americans who are exploited and are in poverty because we give at the office every day, it would be a very sad world, devoid of the advocates poor and exploited people need. Fortunately, that is not typically the case. I am reminded of the words of Shelley:
“Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Let your chains dissolve like dew
You are many, they are few.”
Power to the people!
Lloyd, I totally agree. By “soldiers,” I was referring to the no-excuses military-style charters, where they appear to think that kids require draconian measures in order to be kept under control, and they treat mostly poor children of color like they’re incorrigible criminals. I think it’s all about brainwashing and making obedient servants for elites, which they would like to see begin at a very tender age.
I think there could be a case made that this is racism as it is stereotyping children who live in poverty and treating them all the same.
Minnesota Ted Kolderie has a column in today’s Star Tribune, the state’s largest daily newspaper that you might want to read. In it, he points out that WW II was won when major goals were set by by people like Churchill and Roosevelt, and then leaders listened to the people who were fighting the war – and empowered them to use their ideas:
His supports empowering people working directly with youngsters to create programs, schools and opportunities that they think will help youngsters: http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/270539711.html
I agree.
Good piece. To touch on a few of the common sense ideas mentioned:
For instance, age-grading: “Learning should improve for all students as those who need more time get more time, and as those who can go faster do go faster.”
There’s evidence that this is already happening but in spite of the assembly line, rank and yank method being pushed by the Bill Gates funded Machiavellian Common Core assessment agenda.
For decades, on-time high school graduation rates have fluctuated between 75 to 80 percent but by age 25, more than 90 percent have earned a high a school degree or its equivalent because some—for a variety of reasons—go slower than others.
I also want to focus on the boss/worker model of school. Teachers should be treated like other professions are treated. Finland does it with their teachers and the world see the results every time there’s an international comparison of education by country.
In addition, national teacher training should follow the year-long residency with a master teacher.
And there should be a national early childhood education program designed to foster a love of reading and books. The people in charge should be certificated teachers who went through year-long residency programs with a master teacher.
Programs like TFA should be abolished and people like Michelle Rhee investigated and then possibly spend time in prison for her lies and crimes to juggle the books and look like a winner when she was a loser.
In my experience, it’s very common for alternative certification programs to reject formally trained, experienced educators. Those programs, including TFA, appear to be for the purpose of bringing in people from other fields and many actively discriminate against those who majored in an area of education and have teaching experience. When there are so many people in Early Childhood Education (ECE) across the country who are not certified because of situations similar to what Reteach and Annat described, I believe this is a terrible injustice and huge mistake. And yes, it is exploitation, because then there is a highly educated ECE workforce condemned.to minimum wage jobs in private schools, many of whom have student loans to repay. Consequently, there is a high turnover of faculty at those private schools.
In my experience, the only way for ECE teachers to earn more in private education is to get a job at the few grade schools for elites which have PreK programs, or take more courses and climb the ladder into administration. At the for-profits, however, in both chains and smaller private schools, ECE administrators are often paid less than what first year public school teachers are earning in my city, including TFAers.
So true, ECE Professional. After my horrendous experiences at the for-profit schools (I worked at a few), I went to work at non-profit private schools and was able to increase my salary. However, that prosperity was short lived, because it occurred when the non-profits were allowed to accept a master’s degree in education instead of certification for teachers in the state funded PreK programs that the city Board of Ed contracts out to private programs.
Today, most of the non-profits around here have contracts with the Board to run state funded PreK programs and now they are required to have certified teachers. So, I became an administrator at some non-profit schools, and yes, I took more courses in administration. However, even with that and all my experience, I still made less money than first year public school teachers in my district.
Lloyd, Most are highly segregated schools and I think those practices are racist, too. Sadly, civil rights leaders have been bought off by Gates et al. and look the other way.
There is an old saying that everyone has a price. It seems that Bill Gates is willing to pay whatever that price is to build the world he wants to build (emphases on he but without a capital letter because he is not God but probably thinks like one).
Imagine the list of historical characters who were willing to do anything to achieve their agendas.
Here’s three names to start the list:
1. Hitler
2. Stalin
3. Mao
Lloyd, You wrote, “And there should be a national early childhood education program designed to foster a love of reading and books.”
Young children need programs that promote the development of the whole child, including children’s language and cognitive development, physical development, social-emotional development, aesthetic and creative development –not just academic areas such as literacy.
And you wrote, “The people in charge should be certificated teachers who went through year-long residency programs with a master teacher.”
Great, so your program would not include non-certified educators with degrees and decades of experience like me either. I went through two separate year long practicums and was mentored by master teachers in my graduate programs. I also happen to be considered a subject matter expert in ECE and I train undergraduates to become teachers, as well as graduate level practicing teachers who are pursuing master’s degrees, but I would not be qualified for your program. Annat’s assistant and many other degreed and experienced ECE teachers across the country would not qualify either.
Reteach 4 America,
You have all this education but you don’t have the certification to work in the field you want to work in. What’s the roadblock? I don’t recall that it was all that difficult or time consuming to earn a credential to teach. It can even be done part time and that’s how I earned my MFA in writing—by going to night school for several years, and the first two years, I taught full time while working thirty hours a week nights and weekends part time in a private sector job.
Setting reasonable goal, one step at a time,and working toward that goal is the best way to achieve whatever you want to.
For instance, what about an accredited teacher credential program that allows you to take most of you classes on line with a limited on-site residency program? There must be a few that would be acceptable in your state unless your state is already owned and controlled by the corporate movement to profit of kids and get rid of real teachers.
Lloyd, please read above, as ECE Professional, Annat and I already explained the road blocks extensively. I am retirement age and I have already taken all of the coursework in four degree programs. I am not about to got back to school for another degree. And no, it is not possible to just get into a program to complete student teaching. I already tried to do that many times and those programs are for people out of field, not for degreed, experienced educators.
It sounds to me that you are a victim of the corporate war on public education.
Lloyd,
It seems to me that Reteach is the victim of the licensing procedures that are designed to keep unqualified teachers out of the classroom. Extensive licensing requirements are not usually thought of as part of what folks here call the “corporate war on education”. Actually I think the orthodox opinion here is the opposite.
What do you think of urban residency programs for teacher certification where the teacher spends a year full time as an intern with a master teacher in the classroom?
Lloyd, You are absolutely correct. It goes back to when alternative certification programs were first established, which was around the time that TFA got off the ground in the early 90s. Those programs were developed to serve as a shortcut to certifying people and filling teacher positions with outsiders, i.e., people who majored in virtually anything but education.
ECE is recognized as a field requiring specialized training in a lot more areas than just academic subjects. So alternative certification programs like TFA have typically brought in mostly secondary and middle school teachers, not ECE teachers. Not long ago, TFA recognized that ECE teachers needed specialized training and they began to include a special program for training ECE teachers in some locations. I don’t know of any other alternative certification programs that have done this, but still, alternate cert programs like TFA are not for people who already have that training.
Reteach,
I have some sympathy with the certification process required to teach in public school. I have taught introductory economics for a quarter century but am not “qualified” to teach AP economics in public schools.
I do think it odd that the group that is typically blamed for allowing absolutely any one to teach is blamed here for prohibiting someone from teaching.
I have supervised student teachers in the field and I would like to see that period of time extended, provided students can be paid for doing it, because even one semester without pay is very challenging for many students. And that doesn’t count all the other hours that students are required to spend observing and working in classrooms before they get to student teaching.
In the 1975-76 school year, I was a full-time, for a complete school year, paid intern in my master teacher’s 5th grade classroom. The poverty rate was above 70 percent for the schools in that area. Until recently, I thought that all teachers went through similar programs to certification. I had no idea that most teachers in the United States don’t get anywhere close to this type of support.
I was paid by the hour with no sick days. I can’t remember what that hourly rate was, but I think it was more than minimum wage but not by much. That sure helped me get through that year.
I’m still friends with my master teacher and her husband, who was also a teacher in the intermediate school that I ended up teaching at for my first full time under contract job as a teacher.
I’m sure that the reason why I survived for the next twenty-nine years was because of that internship and my master teacher.
Ha! A corporate “reform” supporter who has no clue that TFA and other corporate “reformers” are all about deprofessionalizing education and trying to prove that people don’t need to study education to be teachers. What a joke! Of course they don’t want genuine educators in their programs. LMAOROTF
Victorino,
I would think that allowing anyone to teach would be the goal of deprofessionalization , not restricting some from being able to teach. But I tend to think rationally about these things.
Lloyd, The minimum requirements vary by state and college, as many colleges exceed state requirements. In the programs where I’ve taught, students are required to have many hours of clinical experiences in schools, which are usually spread throughout their first three years in the program, prior to a full semester (five months) of student teaching with a master teacher in their last year. They are not paid for any of that.
TE does not understand what deprofessionalizing education means, and he is not thinking rationally if he thinks that the very people who are trying to prove that no one needs to major in education would welcome education majors into their programs with open arms.
Victorino,
I understand the difficulty if fitting everything into the narrative. The easy way to make this consistent with the narrative is to decide that the reformers want to allow everyone to teach in public schools EXCEPT poster Reteach.
Add anyone to the exception list as they come up.
TE you make no sense and you are not rational. Please end this post.
Linda,
I Dmit to being confused. “Corporate reform” is accused of allowing anyone to teach and “corporate reform ” is accused of prohibiting poster Reteach from teaching at the same time. How do you reconcile this with the orthodox narrative of this blog?
TE,
The fake Corporate education reform movement is not one person or one corporation. There are several factions at work. If we drew a Venn diagram and filled all the different cells, I’m sure they would all overlap on some common ground but also have areas that they did not agree on.
1. neo-liberals
2. neo-conservatives
3. libertarians
4. fundamentalist Christians
5. hedge fund billionaires
6. billionaire oligarchs
7. corporations
8. etc.
They are like sharks or vultures. They smell blood or possibility the stench of death and they gather waiting to pounce on the carcass so they can tear it apart.
Can anyone thing of any other factions out to do in the public schools besides these six.
Lloyd,
The “corporate reform movement” decided that poster Reteach was the unique person not qualified to teach when absolutely everyone else is qualified to teach?
Interesting and revealing.
Maybe you need to persuade TE of the virtue of letting people who never studied economics teach in his department.
Dr. Ravitch,
Do you agree that poster Reteach should never be allowed to teach I a public school because, dispute the four degrees, poster Reteach is not qualified?
TE, I don’t know enough about Reteach to declare him/her qualified or unqualified.
Dr. Ravitch,
Apparently the local government found poster Reteach unqualified to teach.
The interesting point is that the group that is routinely accused of allowing anyone to teach is here accused of not allowing poster Reteach to teach.
READ fool! Those programs are not open to people who majored in education, not closed to just one person.
This is perhaps the dumbest professor I have EVER come across!
Great thought, Diane! OK, Let’s start an Economics for America program, give people 5 weeks of summer training, get them a job in TE’s department and prove that no one needs to study economics in order to teach it. Of course, this would mean that we could not possibly accept economics majors in our program.
This is not about me. I’m due to retire next month. This is about the many ECE teachers like me who have education degrees and teaching experience but could not pursue certification, such as Annat’s assistant.
Reteach,
Do you think that the forces that are accused of allowing anyone to teach are behind the efforts to uniquely prevent teachers like you from teaching?
STOP TE with your merry go round never ending questions. Move on. You are now perseverating. Take a break.
Linda,
I will take that as a yes. Nothing must interfere with the narrative being constructed here.
Diane, Please don’t accept TE’s interpretation. His brain exercises selective thinking. I explained it above so you can read it yourself.
Reteach,
I think the maritime is pretty clear. The “corporate reform movement” is in favor of having no standards for teaching with the notable exception of teachers like you.
Linda, I think you just nailed him! Great call!! He’s a perseverator. Possibly OCD, too. And he puts words in people’s mouths, which I absolutely detest, so this is me leaving…
I love Sheldon on the Big Bang Theory.
Reteach,
Nice ad hominem, but it does pale in comparison to the poster who called me an “Ann Rand Rug Sniffer” and “Koch Sucker”. I had no idea that sexually demeaning insults were tolerated here, but the internet is what it is.
I understand how disorienting it is to have the narrative disturbed. You might consider that the narrative is inconsistent with the world.
Just when I thought this troll could not be more dense, he went and proved me wrong!
Victorino,
It would be more effective to explain why poster Reteach is the unique person corporate reformers find unsuitable to teach.
Maybe you should consider why you refuse to hear that Reteach and others have said here that there are many people in ECE in a similar position. I happen to know several myself. Maybe the reason why you don’t hear that is the same reason why you have taught at a college with tenure for decades and they do not consider you to be tenure material.
Victorino,
I certainly hear Reteach and others. What I disagree with is that the ‘corporate reformers” who are blamed here for allowing anyone to teach are blamed now for not allowing Reteach to teach. Sort of dammed if you do, damed if you don’t.
There has long been a concerted effort to exclude people who have gone through education programs from participating in alternative certification programs. Wendy Kopp planned TFA for non-education majors when she was in college, obtained seed money from corporations and described herself then as a “corporate tool.”
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/03/wendy-kopp-princeton-tory/
Similar alternate cert programs have sprung up which, like TFA, exclude education majors.
I’m not interested in engaging in any more of your whacked out discussions since you are completely incapable of comprehending anything that does not shine a positive light on your deities of corporate “reform.”
I know literally thousands of ECE teachers who are not certified because I taught them for many years in ECE programs that did not lead to certification. Those programs are very common and they are designed for people who are already working in the field, in private schools, where most PreK kids are served and certification is not required. If they want to teach in public schools, they will have to get another education degree in a certification program.
Students in the certification and non-certification tracks typically take the same core ECE courses at most colleges, so it used to be fairly easy for them to switch tracks. However, ever since all the education reforms that have been implemented starting in the 90s and through NCLB and RttT, subsequent changes in state requirements for certification and the accreditation of teacher education have made it virtually impossible for non-cert students to change tracks. Since teachers working in private schools often change their minds about what road they want to take, I have seen many hit the road blocks mentioned previously.
If there is one thing that stands out most to me about the methods of corporate education “reform,” it’s that the path has been slicked for non-educators wanting to get into public education by decreasing regulations for them, while regulations for educators have been regularly increasing.
Just my final two cents. (I will not be responding to inane questions posed by the troll.)
Interesting, but it seems to me that if it is easier for non-educators to get into public education it should also be easier for non-certified educators (who are officially grouped as non-educators because they are not certified as educators) to get into public education.
So economists who studied economics in the Business School are the real economists, and the ones who studied economics in the College of Arts and Sciences are non-economists?
Of course they are all educators, including to.reformers, who don’t make distinctions between people who have formally studied education in different teacher education programs (unless it’s sponsored by other reformers, which they see as more worthy).
ECE students in different tracks usually take the same courses, often in the same classes with the same instructors, unlike economists from Business Schools and Arts & Sciences.
Such ongoing ridiculousness. No wonder people don’t want to see or answer your silly questions.
Other,
It is the state that determined Reteach to be unqualified to teach in public schools for apparently silly reasons. Would allowing uncertified teachers like Reteach to teach in public schools be part of de-professionalizing education?
Actually, to be more specific, it was my school district’s interpretation of what the state would accept, not a decision that was made by the state. The district also figured out a way to hire me anyways, so I worked for them for a few years and the pay was decent, though in that capacity I didn’t qualify to join the union.
Not all states permit an arbitrator to decide teacher dismissals. School boards do. Even if school boards and teacher contracts would rather delegate that decision to a neutral third party, some states don’t permit such contractual language.
Additionally, various states have PROCEDURAL but not SUBSTANTIVE due process. That is to say that if school management provides timely staff evaluation, written notice of dismissal, and a hearing where the teacher can tell his/her side of the story, the school board can still dismiss a tenured teacher for any reason the school board deems appropriate and REGARDLESS of the merits of the teacher’s job performance. (School boards cannot legally dismiss teachers as a result of discrimination based on race, gender, etc.)
Tenure doesn’t protect incompetent teachers, but incompetent school administrators can. Tenure laws provide a written recipe on how to dismiss faculty. The whole process can be completed in 30-40 days in some states unless both the administration and the teacher mutually agree to extend timelines. The process is not that difficult unless a school principal or department chair can’t read and follow directions.
This is the same woman who backed Cathie Black for chancellor. Sorry Whoopi, but if you are going to comment about bad teachers, don’t blame tenure. Your mother should have told you it’s the job of the principal to rid schools of bad teachers. However principals would rather keep ineffective teachers who don’t make waves than excellent teachers who question mandates and bring forth violations of the contract.
Whoopi attacked teachers after Twitter went wild. Maybe she should have taken a step back and found out why we were so upset with her unfounded remarks.
I like your comment about principals wanting to keep the ineffective teachers who don’t make waves. That’s true for weak principals, and I’m seeing that now. But… in my 30+ years as a primary teacher, I have had some very good principals who welcomed the passion of teachers who questioned mandates and stood up for their rights.
…from community members who don’t want teachers to mention evolution, climate change, or certain literary classics.
Or that Earth is 4.56 billion years old. Or that homosexuality is a condition of nature and not a sinful deviance that is eroding civilization.
I am so enraged that the charter school loving, mega-millionaire, right-wing Republican gubernatorial candidate in Illinois, Bruce Rauner, has inundated HULU with political propaganda ads.
Earlier this year, Rauner said that he wanted to LOWER our state’s minimum wage. Now he is claiming in multiple HULU commercials that his plan is to “get rid of corporate welfare” and “stop corporate giveaways,” No doubt, he his selling water from lake Michigan, too.
I’m not thrilled with the neoliberal Illinois Democrats or Governor Quinn and I absolutely detest his running mate Paul Vallas, but the last person on the planet that I would ever vote for is this uber-wealthy liar who represents the 1%. You really ought to be able to sue politicians for false advertising!
I will stop watching HULU now, just as I stopped Netflix due to the charter loving Reed Hastings’ avowed aim to eliminate democracy from education.
Whoopi immediately became defensive. She did not want to listen and learn from the teachers that contacted her, many in a very straight forward, respectful way. She obviously thinks that she is smarter and knows more because she is a wealthy celebrity after all.
Betsy,
I think it is likely that her opinions about public education are influenced by her experiences growing up in a housing project in New York and attending New York Public schools that were very different from schools like PS 29 and PS 321 more than her current status as a rich celebrity. The biography that Joe posted mentioned that she dropped out of high school, in part because her dyslexia remained undiagnosed. It must have been incredibly frustrating for her.
Yes, TE all ignorance, bias and hatred leads back to the bad public schools and their no good horrible teachers.
Linda,
I much prefer the word “some” to “all”, which is why I don’t use the word “all” very often, and certainly not in my post here. Do you think attending NYC public schools as a poor, black, undiagnosed dyslexic student in the 1960s and early 1970s did not have an influence on her perception of public schools?
Very little was known about learning disabilities (LDs) when Whoopi attended school. If diagnosed at all, LDs were often referred to then as “minimal brain dysfunction.” In 1963, Samuel Kirk coined the term Learning Disabilities However, it took awhile for LDs to be commonly accepted, since special education laws varied by state and special ed was not mandated nationwide until the Education for All Handicapped Children Act was enacted in 1975 (now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or IDEA).
Until that time, many districts did not accept or provide services to children with a wide variety of disabilities. The most common classification for which specialized services were delivered to children with disabilities in public schools in the 50s, 60s and early 70s was speech disorders.
Reteach,
I think that is correct, but I also think her time as a student in New York Public schools likely influence her thinking about teachers, teaching, and tenure.
Personal experiences as students influence many people’s perspectives, but since her own mother was a teacher, I would think she’d have a broader understanding.
Yeah TE…I’m sure she’s intellectually incapable of making the clear connection between her underprivileged background growing up poor in a housing project and the underfunded “Nobody Gives A Crap About The Students” schools she attended. She needed to actually do some simple research about this one before she spoke. Instead, she chose to talk about “Good vs. Bad” teachers, on national television. She completely deserves the backlash for her ill informed comments.
Maybe her best teaching “knowledge” comes from Sister Act 2….hey, if you only had a better teacher, you’d straighten these kids right out….
When her remarks appeared on Facebook, I did just that! I told WHAT tenure really was and how the critics misunderstand how it works. I got no response but then she is busy.
What concerned me about the tenure discussion of The View was not only a misunderstanding of the definition of tenure, but there was also a provocative blurb about “tenure” for teachers being an issue in the presidential campaign. I wrote to ABC and told them that it’s not a federal issue at all. Tenure rules and laws are the purview of the states.
Off topic watch the latest show me the money Perry blabber. He got the @ss part right
“I don’t have conversations with kids. I’m a grown ass man.”
This IS America’s Most Trusted Educator http://t.co/Ao5mGV0M72
Agree with reaching out to her. We have a lot mod work to do to help people through the deliberate confusion our opponents are spewing here (tough it would have been far better had she investigated a bit before throwing her very public hat in this ring). As live noted in Facebook, we should point out to her that she, herself, portrayed a teacher who personified the need for the kind of due process teachers need. In the (inspiring) film, “Sarafina,” Whoopi Goldberg plays apartheid-era South African teacher, Mary Masembuko — as one review puts it, “an inspirational township teacher who abandons the authorized syllabus to teach her high school students their true heritage.” In this film, this teacher plays the ultimate price for the ultimate lack of due process. (I recommend the film and show it to my students; we should recommend it to Ms. Goldberg.)
In an earlier comment in this thread, Ari Emanuel was identified as the agent for Whoppi Goldberg. I found a reference at “charterschoolwatchdog” heading, “Christmas in July”, that led me to a Jan. 2014, Chicago Sun-Times article, “Landlords for 2 Proposed Chicago Schools Have Ties to (Rahm) Emanuel.” The Hobby Lobby part of the story was interesting.
Ari Emanuel’s agency probably represents half of everyone in the entertainment business.
Including . . . Matt Damon! Nooooooo!
Up to Linda, TE, Betsy & all talking about Whoopi’s experiences in school, & being undiagnosed. So was the late producer, screenwriter, t.v. writer (“The Rockford Files,” “21 Jump Street”) & author of 17 books–Stephen Cannell– dyslexic–in fact, extremely so. He’d failed 3 grades, but, as an athlete, garnered a football scholarship, but failed in college. Rather than publicly whining, however, he highly praised a college professor who saw his gifts, encouraging him to write. He, in fact, became an advisory board member for the International Dyslexia Ass’n. I met him at a bookstore–in the audience were many families–parents who wanted their children to meet him, as well as teachers who had brought their students (a field trip!). He spoke to all individually and with great respect, giving each child (& adult, if they wanted one) a personalized (NOT pre- autographed) picture, which he signed w/a silver pen. When I introduced myself as a sped. teacher, he said, “AH! I LOVE you teachers–you really care about kids!” He gave me a picture that I had asked him to autograph for our school–it says, “To the students at xxx–work hard, and NEVER give up!” My students were thrilled, & it went up in the room next to the list/pictures of “famous” dyslexic adults–Henry Winkler, Tom Cruise and–yes–Whoopi Goldberg, among others. The kids were very encouraged/inspired. Today, Stephen’s picture hangs in the school library.
I’m sorry that Whoopi had it so hard, but blaming others and bitterness (especially when one is as successful and, now, blessed, as she is) is inexcusable and harmful to others. It is also ignorant and, ignorance being the basis of prejudice, just as bad.
Again, where do we write to her?
To add to the list of “famous” dyslexics: http://dyslexia.yale.edu/emanuel.html
Thanks for posting this, FLERP! For anyone/everyone who has read his brother Ezekiel’s book, “The Brothers Emanuel,” that information about Ari’s ADHD & dyslexia is in there. But–what is ALSO in the book–& not mentioned in your link–is that Ezekiel gave the very highest praise to a now retired PUBLIC school teacher
(whom he named in several pages), thanking him profusely for helping Ari so much (& this was in middle school, I think–when our students are often the most difficult). This teacher was Ari’s favorite. And now, this teacher–retired–is one of all of us retired teachers here in ILL-Annoy–fighting to keep our pensions! (Aside from tenure–because, after all, we PUBLIC school teachers are so greedy & incompetent and DON’T help any students–especially those with dyslexia &/or ADD or ADHD!
{BTW, there is a distinction between the two} or any type of special needs.)
Thanks to Ezekiel, for praising said teacher in his book. No thanks to the article linked above by FLERP!, where–from what Ari stated (unless he was edited or misquoted)–he praised only his mother, “She put up with all my teachers telling her I’d never graduate from high school, let alone college.”
Sounds like Whoopi.
I tried to do exactly that, and I sincerely hope that she opts to use her microphone to assist in precisely the endeavor you describe, sir. http://www.kdreeves.com/responding-to-whoopi/
You insult her by calling her ignorant. she is a part of the machine or she wouldn’t be there. Some one said she should be forgiven because she lived with a single mother. Are single mothers against tenure? Just look at her gross children’s book called “Manners” with cheap sexual innuendoes. Why is she dumb and Campbell Brown smart?
This posting seems very racist.
Sorry to those commentators for actually addressing the posting, rather than some other intellectual self inflating agenda.
Huh? Whoever said that Whoopi was dumb or that Campbell Brown was smart? Who posted a review of Whoopi’s book, characterizing it as “gross” and having “cheap sexual innuendoes”? And who made this into a race issue? No one but you.
As with so many of your obscure posts which demonstrate only that you read a lot more into people’s words than exist, I think it is this post that falls under the category of “self inflating agenda.”