Seth Sandronsky and Duane Campbell respond to an article in The. Sacramento Bee that blamed Democrats and public school teachers for urban riots and uprisings.
They write:
“Public schools, teachers and their union lobbying efforts at the state Capitol are unable to address what really ails low-income households. There are too few jobs with livable wages in California. Nearly 1.3 million adults are officially unemployed, while California’s poverty rate is tops in the nation.
“At the same time, the Golden State also leads the United States in the number of billionaires – 131, up 23 last year, Forbes reports. We have an oligarchy amid broad-based poverty and inequality. Is this the fault of public education?
“Deindustrialization of Oakland, like that of Baltimore, creates a group of citizens who have no place in the mainstream. Police and prisons are their bitter fate in our new Gilded Age.
“Why are public schools, teachers unions and Democrats to blame for that?”
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article20776800.html#storylink=cpy
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Peter Greene understands who (or what) is responsible for unrest and uprisings: http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/05/whos-listening-in-newark.html Love the Patrick Henry quote at the end.
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Talking about Oakland, California. Oakland has a large public library that is open seven days a week. I belong to the California Writer’s Club branch that holds its monthly meetings at that library on Sunday afternoon and when I arrive shortly before the doors open at 1 PM, the crowd waiting outside is clearly mufti cultural spanning almost all ages. It is a very busy library with it’s own large children’s section in the basement. I think the library has three or four floors. I’ll count them today.
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What’s next? They’ll blame cellulite and the Kardashians on unions?
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Poverty is a big deal in North Carolina as well. This op-ed came out in Winston-Salem this morning – http://www.journalnow.com/opinion/columnists/stuart-egan-teachers-are-not-the-root-of-the-problem/article_2cd9c780-f9a4-11e4-9fa3-3fde506a82e1.html
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Great article! Thanks for the link.
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Who should be blamed when kids are passed from grade to grade without ‘mastering’ basic skills at each level as mandated by state standards? Poverty isnt going away, bad parenting isn’t going away! Those of you who chose teaching K-12 as a profession seem to have bought into a system crippled by years of concessions granted unions by well intended school boards with little school management expertise and even less skin in the game. History shows more money isn’t enough to make a difference. Guess what’s left?
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Mr. Harris,
State mandates are magical thinking. Children don’t work that way. Neither do adults. We as teachers have to deal with a child on his/her level. If the child is not ready, he’s not ready. No legal mandate can change that, and to pretend it does it ridiculous.
Do we blame doctors for illness? Firefighters for fires? Policemen for crime? Work with me for a month in my lowest level classes and then blame me for poor test results.
If poverty and bad parenting aren’t going away, you have just identified a huge part of the problem. Do you not see how parental neglect, hunger, poverty, and homelessness might possibly be part of the problem?
I do, I deal with it every day.
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Exactly “7th grade”
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[I apologize in advance for the length of this writing, and its delay in being posted. It began merely as a reply to Kent. Hopefully, it is worth the read for all of you.]
Money ALONE won’t make the difference in improving education; it has to be used appropriately–and in many cases people disagree (and battle) over what’s appropriate.
However, Kent, your implication that unions are to blame for social promotion is misplaced. I used to favor retention, but after seeing that the research doesn’t support it (as Dienne points out in her reply to you), as well as observing that 10th graders reassigned to a class of 9th graders largely fail to improve, and often are a bad influence on the 9th graders, I changed my view.
It is not the teachers’ or the unions’ decision to allow children to fail academically all the way through 8th grade and then hold them accountable for passing in high school. We teachers take them as we find them, and do the best we can with them. But to me it is absurd to expect a child with 3rd grade-level skills to show proficiency on 9th grade-level work. Nonetheless, that is what we are mandated to do, and then we are criticized, blamed, vilified, and sometimes even removed when such miraculous academic growth does not occur in one school year.
Until there is a movement for students to genuinely learn rather than simply attend school and take tests and graduate (with teachers under great pressure–and sometimes threats–from administrators to ensure high school graduation), things will not change. In California, for example, the Math and English sections of the High School Exit Exam, first administered in 10th grade, each require a scaled score of 350 to be considered passing (“Basic”). For English, this amounts to a raw score equivalent to about 60% on material no higher than a 10th-grade level. For Math, the percentage required for passing is only 55%, and the material tested is mostly middle-school math, with some Algebra 1. I’ve never understood why that level of achievement is either worthy of celebration or sufficient for high school graduation.
My own idea for education reform is to give students diagnostic tests at the start of the school year, then tailor their academics to their actual needs rather than to an arbitrary grade-level standard. Then use formative assessments to monitor their progress, and assess them at the end of the school year to determine placement for the next year. When students have completed their 12th or 13th year, provide each of them with a certificate stating their proficiency levels in various academic subjects and other skills, so that a prospective employer or higher education institution can see a more accurate picture of students’ strengths and accomplishments than what our current high school diploma actually provides.
A few days ago, I asked one of our seniors, who will attend a top university in the state this fall, what made the difference compared to others at our inner-city school; the reply was, “Parental support and encouragement.” Many low-income students do not have that support, for a number of reasons: (1) a high number of single-parent households results in less attention paid to children when the parent works, in some cases multiple jobs; (2) sometimes students have to work to provide family income, and this interferes with their academics; (3) even 2-parent households may have both parents working; (4) a significant minority of children are living in foster homes, group homes, or with relatives other than their parents, where an individual child may not be a loving priority; (5) parents and guardians who do not speak English and may not be available to enroll in English classes are helpless in assisting children with their schoolwork; (6) Illiterate or undereducated adults likely are not reading to their children from a very young age–thus putting students at an academic disadvantage even before they begin their formal education; (7) teenagers who become parents before they themselves have finished high school may not have the time, energy, or ability to complete their academics. [I probably can list more reasons, but this suffices to make my point.]
What appears to me to have happened over the last 10(?) years is an increasing reliance on public-school teachers to provide both tangible and intangible things for students that used to be expected from parents. With the decreasing proportion of 2-parent, nuclear families and the ever-swelling gap between the cost of living and the ability for many to afford that cost, the burden somehow has fallen on teachers to fill the parental voids & lapses that result from low-income parents’ and guardians’ having to work whenever it is available.
The issues that are being labeled as public education issues are not limited to public education. These are societal issues, and we, as a country, need to create societal solutions.
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Conversely, state after state has slashed education budgets, or they have chosen to ignore lawsuits they have lost about under funding public schools. Do the states not bear any responsibility to meeting their obligations? Add to this, loss of funds due to charter school expansion, and you have many impoverished public schools. While money alone is not a solution, there is a point of diminishing return. Under sourced large classes of poor students is never a recipe for success.
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My comment pertains to Kent’s assertion that throwing money at the problem won’t solve it.
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Who and what?
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Schools and teachers can only provide access to equal opportunities when those opportunities exist. They do not magically make them appear.
“What’s left”? How about an oligarch class that is so detached from the realities of daily living that they won’t endorse policies that generate actual economic growth instead of simply increasing accumulation of capital into their own hands?
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Again, Kent, in addition to the very polite responses you’ve received here, your oh-so-original points have been addressed time and time again on dozens of other threads. But you either haven’t bothered to read them, or you haven’t bothered to listen, and I doubt you’ll listen this time around.
BTW, what’s you solution to the “problem” of kids being “passed from grade to grade without ‘mastering’ basic skills at each level as mandated by state standards”? Are you a fan of retention? Even though every single shred of research shows that retention has hugely deleterious effects on drop out rates? Or did you have another solution in mind?
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Retention should be used only as a last resort and primarily as a credible threat to motivate improved parental interest in resolving the problem. A much better solution would be interventionn with mandatory help sessions after school and on weekends. These supervised sessions to use technology assisted instruction funded with money provided jointly by students parents/guardians and the schools gifted student program. By require parental support for half of rehabilitation cost, the school can exert pressure on them to inspire their to ‘catch up’ as quickly as possible. By requiring the ‘gifted children’s program’ pay the other half the school serves notice they expect community leaders to try harder to find funding for this critical need elsewhere.
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Threats do not motivate. They only antagonize, which is only going to make the problem worse.
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@Kent, where I taught in a rural district, most failing students would not stay after school because of transportation issues. Some had bus rides of over an hour. We could not make them stay after school for extra help unless they wanted to, and parents could arrange for a ride home. You make it sound like its so easy . . . But if the student doesn’t care, doesn’t have the motivation, when the parents don’t care, teachers can only do so much.
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Kent, your idea is fine and could certainly help a subset of kids who don’t have to be working, or babysitting for parents working, and who have transportation to make it happen. There are definitely motivated families who would take advantage of the opportunity. Such a program can and should be funded, and why not extend it into a month of summer as well. But its practicality is limited to famiilies with the time/money to do it, which leaves out the poorest who are supposedly our greatest concern. I say ‘supposedly’ because in fact it is the poorest, state-managed inner-city districts from whom excess per-pupil funds have long been funneled away from classroom and crumbling buildings into bureaucratic schemes & salaries & outright corruption.
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Intervention is fine. Why not address the issues requiring intervention in the first place? Poverty, lack of good jobs, health care, child care, mental health, learning disabilities, truancy, transience. Education must be the only enterprise where free market conservatives argue less money produces better results. It is like telling shareholders of a corporation “we want you to buy our stock, but we are going to keep cutting the price as it doesn’t matter”.
Threats from schools are meaningless if parents and students are dealing with bigger threats outside of school.
Parents without money for food and housing do not have money to fund extra school activities. Why target gifted programs, already candidates for cuts?
Some parents do not care about education. Some do, but do not have the background or ability to help. For example, a parent going through chemo is focused on survival. Private schools have parent contracts or rules demanding participation or you are out. We saw this in Battle Creek where the diocese expelled a girl at the end of the year for having cancer. Would you advocate that for public schools?
I am glad you are thinking about issues and solutions outside the insular bubble of conservative/libertarian thought usually producing only knee jerk reactions and magical resolutions.
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Thanks for your ‘thoughtful’ reply “MathVale”. They’re rare on this this site! Of course there are many issues that make change difficult. Your comment that many “families don’t respond to ‘threats’ from school when they’re dealing with bigger threats outside school” is a great way to summarize the real problem we must address.
Although poverty and poor parenting have much to do with kids being ‘passed’ through our K-12 systems without achieving minimum standards, there’s little schools can do to mediate these factors. Realizing this, we can encourage rapid intervention into the lives of disadvantaged and neglected children so the can catch up with their more fortunate peers.
In order to do this we must somehow make the ‘threat of failing at school’ more important, more pressing to the children and their parents that “bigger threats their currently dealing with outside school”. Many here prefer the kinder, gentler way of dealing with problems, considering threats as unproductive…even barbaric!
Of course threats are unproductive if they aren’t threatening and if we allow the unfortunate situation endured by the parents and child at home to overshadow the importance of a decent education to the child “we” have lost the battle before we begin! If the child rides a bus, his parents have to be responsible for picking him/her up after a special help session. If the student has football practice after school, he has to miss it. If a child has a job on weekend, he has to tell his boss he has to quit until he gets his grades up. If the family likes to travel somewhere on weekend, they have to postpone the trip until Johnny gets off ‘detention’ Saturday’s. Of schools and their boards don’t stand up for every kid’s right to get a proficient education, they’ll continue to be failed by the ‘system’.
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I had a student taking care of a dying mother, father gone, next door was a sick Aunt, and none had jobs but the student after school. Yet, he was trying. People in poverty are on the edge looking at the abyss behind them. One step back, they are lost. Punitive measures without understanding the situation simply plunge the family into disaster. Penalizing mom by forcing her to pick up the student after school will probably cost her a job.
Like I said, intervention is great. It does cost money. What frustrates teachers is the lack of political courage by our leaders to address the conditions causing the need for intervention. It is far too easy for politicians and business leaders to blame teachers, then ship jobs overseas or destroy the rights of workers.
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What does it say about you, Kent, that everything for you is about power and control? Why is it that you want to make life even more miserable for people who are already struggling just to get by? Is poverty not degrading and abusive enough for you? You have to pile on even heavier?
Don’t come here whining about how you get treated when you’re throwing around “threats” so that “those people” will “shape up”.
And anyway, aside from being barbaric, threats are, indeed, unproductive. At best, they can elicit temporary compliance (with a side of resentment and “attitude”). But what is needed is long term personal commitment from individuals, families and communities. That will take buy-in, not threats. Working with, not doing to.
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Unfortunately, your method of getting kids what they deserve from school by appealing to the intellegence and good nature of disadvantaged and arrogantly self serving parents hasn’t worked. You know what they say about people who continue to do thing the same way and expect different results?
When schools, school boards and government officials start putting the interest of kids ahead of teachers irresponsible parents, then things will change. You continue to embrace a failed system, claiming all you need is more money. Kids should be the priority and all other interests should come second. If a mother is dying, the district should find a way to provide care and still require the child attend special help sessions. Come on, don’t you see that’s your job?
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You are one sick puppy, Kent. A kid’s mother is dying and all that’s important is that he pass the damn tests. But then, you’ve already revealed your true colors.
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Dienne, you’re a great flagbearer for whats wrong with K-12!
Passing the ‘test’ isn’t the objective. THE OBJECTIVE MUST BE putting the child’s learning ahead of all other competing distractions. Yes, a parent dying is a terrible thing, If the student has been sitting with his/her mother because no one else is available,,the school should take the time to find a neighbor, or relative, or social worker to fill in for the time it takes to come to the help session or ‘take the test’.
To do less is to send the same signal the child has been getting his entire life. The message that learning is less important that everything else!
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Kent,
Nothing you’ve said here appears to make sense to anyone but yourself. If kids and their parents don’t care, how will “threats” make the situation any better?
The “solutions” you have proposed have a zero-percent chance of success and are not realistic. What would happen if they didn’t go to the “mandatory help sessions”? Nothing. And now you’re back to square one.
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Matt–Of course there have to be consequences for the kids (and/or their parents) who consider themselves above the law, so to speak. If they really don’t care if they graduate or even remain in school, chalk them up to a lost cause.
If they they really think ‘taking a test’ or showing up for a mandatory help session is optional, tell them their wrong and kick the student out of school until they do what’s asked.
These are called consequences. If the ACLU sues the school, fight it saying an education is only a right so long as the student complies with school rules.
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The principal who insists on no more than a 10% fail rate and who tells teachers that the lowest grade you can give is 50, even if no work is given, in a non union state.
The parents who don’t pressure they children to do any work.
Let’s start there.
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Kent,
Where are you? Would you like to come down to my school in Newark tomorrow?
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Why should we blame someone to begin with? Does it make you feel better to do so?
You said something that reminded me of what my grandfather said many years ago: “Good soldiers on the field do not blame others for the situation they are in. They do the job they are told to do. Only the ignorant public with ‘no skin in the game’ get the privilege to act so high and mighty.”
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Morrigan–your comment reminded me of what Lt. Calley said when he permitted the massacre of a village of Vietnamese, “I only did the job I was told to do”. When the job you’re doing is allowing a lot of your class(s) to move on without achieving proficiency, are you simply doing the job you were “told to do”?
Have you ever thought it might be more ‘honorable’ to organize a teachers boycott of your district until the board gave your school the ‘conditions’ needed to do ‘do right’ by your student than it is to keep on doing what you’re doing?
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Kent Harris,
Back off on the strident rhetoric. Comparing teachers who are doing their best under intolerable circumstances to soldiers who committed mass murder at My Lai is outrageous and insulting.
More such and you are out of here.
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And I was starting to think some on the Ravitch blog could respond thoughtfully..without throwing out outrageous, inaccurate comments! Diane, Apparently you didn’t read my comment in context. I know many on this threat can’t ‘read with good comprehension’ but I thought you were old enough to do better. My comparison wasn’t to the violence at Mi Lia! It was in response to a rather bold comment that teachers shouldn’t be blamed for less than optimum results because they only did their job as instructed.
MORE IMPORTANTLY, I went on to say could it be MORE HONORABLE to be an activist, getting every teacher to boycott the school until conditions in their classrooms change ‘enough’ TO DO RIGHT by their students (get them the education they’re promised and deserve). Now is that so shameful…….deserving of being banned from the blog?
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Kent, I am 76, I think I am old enough to read with comprehension. The defense at My Lai was not “we were just following orders.” That was the Nazi defense. I still think it is insulting to teachers to compare them to either My Lai or any other atrocity. Why would you want to do that? Teachers want to teach. Of course, they should be activists. I support that. But they also have a job to do, and it does not involve harming children, it is about doing the best they can under intolerable circumstances, with hordes of non-educators telling them how to do their job.
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One more time Diane……please move past my apparently insensitive comment about Mi Lai and read my latest response to Dienne.
Much as a strike is the only way to deal with unresponsive management, the same might be the only was to convince a school board teachers have to have more than money and benefits in order to come to work every day…..in order to do their job! They need an environment where competing special interests are ‘controlled’ in order to do their work properly. This must include limiting the disruption of overzealous parents and their attorneys, motivating apathetic, disinterested parents/guardians and supporting accountability for students by enforcing consequences for inappropriate action or inaction! Is that unreasonable?
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Kent
You continue to prove an important point. Even well meaning adults who have NO experience teaching, especially in high needs schools, have NO business meddling in situations that they cannot possibly understand. So thanks, but no thanks. Why don’t you stop wasting your time here and spend it volunteering in a local school. Excuse the rudeness but armchair educators have already inflicted enough damage with their baseless reforms.
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Diane – Farbeit for me to tell you how to run your blog, but I have to call foul on Kent Harris’ comment. Comparing teachers to the man responsible for My Lai is below the belt and beyond the pale.
And this from one who whines about how he is treated around here. Figures.
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Dienne, quick before I get kicked off ‘the blog’! How can you come up with critism that “I whine a lot” and I compared “teachers to the troops at Mi Lai”…….read again with “better comprehension “.
I compared teachers to Lt. Calley, the one who allowed the killing (NOT THE ONE WHO SHOT THE RIFLES) in Vietnam. Big difference….school boards, administrators, parents and their lawyers have destroyed the K-12 system!!!!!!!!!!!!
Theoint I’m trying to make is you people (teachers)have hung in there too long trying to make do with everyone else pulling in different directions. Special interests have destroyed the Political System in D.C. just like special interests have screwed up the education system. No system has the time or money to make everyone happy. It’s time to do what’s necessary to make schools put kids first!
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Due to the mention of the Mi Lai incident during the Vietnam War and the fact that I fought in Vietnam as a field radio operator (that radio on your back sets you up to be a desired moving target) in the Marines in 1966, I have to hop in here. It also helps that I was a teacher who worked for thirty years in schools with high ratios of children that lived in poverty (70% or higher) and those schools had a single digit white student population.
Anyway, comparing teachers to anything that has to do with combat in a war zone is TOTALLY WRONG. There is NO comparison to the stress a teacher faces in the classroom even if a student physically attacks them and what the troops face on the ground in a hot combat zone. The unit I was in during its stay in Vietnam had a 50% casualty rate by the time the war ended.
Classrooms in urban schools that have high ratios of childhood poverty can be extremely stressful for teachers and have been linked to high burn out rates and even PTSD—something that I think I know a lot about—but there is no comparison to what combat does to the troops.
War is hell (look up what General Sherman has to say about it) and living and fighting in the middle of that hell does things to your mind. To survive, many of the troops that see combat change drastically. Bring too civilized and humane can get you killed really fast, because the same changes are taking place in the troops on the other side.
Those troops who were involved in the Mi Lai slaughter were victims of war as much as the Vietnamese peasants they killed.
To be clear, teachers who have PTSD caused by the stress of the classroom have different PTSD symptoms than combat vets, and I don’t think that classroom stress leads to dehumanizing teachers like it does to combat vets. Most teachers are empaths and that empathy toward children who are suffering contributes to the stress and the PTSD that the stress causes. Teachers want to see the children they teach succeed and learn and the stress comes from the struggle to achieve that.
I think what problems and challenges that exist in some of the public schools in America are caused more by politics and greed from outside of the schools and classroom than anything else. Even in schools with the highest ratio of at risk students, if the government would get out of the schools and let the teachers work together collaboratively with the other involved stakeholders (parents, children and teachers), we would see significant improvements over time but that could take years—not overnight.
The very fact that the U.S. does a better job than any of the other OECD countries working with its most at risk children says a lot—for instance, teachers are doing something right. So let’s recognize that and stop trying to destroy a system that works, but could be improved.
If anyone challenges what I claimed in the previous paragraph, then I refer you to this Stanford study: Poor ranking on Internationale test misleading about U.S. student performance.
>>>>>”There is an achievement gap between more and less disadvantaged students in every country; surprisingly, that gap is smaller in the United States than in similar post-industrial countries, and not much larger than in the very highest scoring countries.”
>>>>>”Achievement of U.S. disadvantaged students has been rising rapidly over time, while achievement of disadvantaged students in countries to which the United States is frequently unfavorably compared – Canada, Finland and Korea, for example – has been falling rapidly.”
>>>>>”U.S. PISA scores are depressed partly because of a sampling flaw resulting in a disproportionate number of students from high-poverty schools among the test-takers. About 40 percent of the PISA sample in the United States was drawn from schools where half or more of the students are eligible for the free lunch program, though only 32 percent of students nationwide attend such schools.”
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html
Not only does the U.S. have more children living in poverty than all the other OECD countries, it also tested a higher ratio of those children on the PISA. I think that was deliberate. It would be nice to come up with evidence (an email, a memo) that would prove Arne Duncan had something to do with that error—that Arne manipulated the PISA test by making sure more children who were eligible for free lunch programs took the test to depress the average score.
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Wow, My Lai. Never seen such one in any apologist website. Definitely in top 5 of Underworld International Scapegoating Content.
He must be one of those educated at Kafka school, I guess.
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Ken, you clever banter baffles me but I hope you recall the old saying claiming those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.
Everyone’s apparent desire to sensationalize a comparison of teachers and Lt. Calley miss the point that both sat by and watched while tragic acts were committed. Calleys inaction resulted in deaths. Inaction by Americas teachers has resulted in million of disadvantaged kids being condemned to lives of dependence over the last 20 years. I may not have your sensibilities, but I feel the genuine tragedy of both can be compared.
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Kent, if you want to bring some important historical lesson as a reference to the situation surrounding teachers, perhaps you should quote George Santayana (“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”) –instead of My Lai. I don’t see any meaningful reference other than cover-up, disregard of humanity, racial inferiority, etc. It’s one of the worst horrendous events that drew despicable, unforgivable consequence the troops from your country brought.
Did you know that such national embarrassment was exposed worldwide by a Japanese journalist Katsuichi Honda, while many domestic American journalists didn’t make a thorough report on that? What a great embarrassment.
It’s really tragic neither US nor its ally Japan has ever learned how national leaders’ horrible choice for war has led to the consequence of humanity loss in WWII. Too bad Japan’s current strong-arming behavior to suppress critics over its national problems(including historical past) is indeed a spin-off of American imperial politics in Asia-Pacific.
Anyway, if you want to take swipes at those you have an issue with like over their actions, perhaps you are pretty much in the same level-playing field with some apologists-like minded folks–including some privileged Americans residing in my home country(!)–who spend the days slamming Chinese, Koreans, and other foreign residents for national plight (e.g., 20-year-long economic recession, false alarming report on increasing crime, shrinking population, lower wage, etc.)
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You seem to be free from the obligations of teaching in today’s public schools, where the poverty rates are appallingly high, as many as 150 different languages may be spoken by students who are in attendance, and teachers are working under absurd mandates not from unions and school boards but from federal officials who are not teachers and who think if you just put in 1950s management and enough “tool kits” and enough tests in place…then poverty can be overcome, all kids can master English in no time, and every kid can ace every item on every test, on time, at grade level.
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I can’t imagine anyone saying “poverty can be overcome”, what would happen if your district decided the only language spoken at your school would be English? If sued by the ECLU, file a counter suit claiming you can’t comply with Federal and State mandated requirements and accommodate up to 150 different native languages spoken by students attending your school.
Might be an interesting case if you have the guts to do it and the a war chest large enough to fight the good fight.
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Oh, good, he shows his xenophobic stripes too! Keep going, my man!
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Typical example of magical thinking–shifting all the blame of poverty on education system–conveniently ignoring the fundamental structural problems grounded in social inequality that divides rich and poor for over a century. It tastes a bubble-gum–juicy at first, but loses sweet in the middle, and eventually spits it out of mouth until it becomes completely tasteless.
Welcome to the Underground World Scapegoating Contest! I bet anyone like you from US joining in the contest should be in Top 20 by competing with apologist-like minded representing other nations.
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He wants to seat a commission, weaken teachers’ unions, and invite private operators in to start schools to replace the existing schools.
Of course he likes this solution. It demands nothing from anyone in the broader public or government.
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Today on the internet news an item appeared in which the rich are hiding their money in tax havens. Nothing new here. Books have been written about it.
BUT
the millions of dollars in tax revenues which would help alleviate poverty and fix our roads etc etc are withheld and accumulate for the very rich.
Our schools are not causing the problem. WE know that but the media does not adequately report on this and other vitally important problems affecting our children, now and future generations.
We must educate not only our children but the communities in which we live. We should NEVER become merely spokespersons for a government controlled by special interests, the plutocrats.
If enough of us would inundate our media with letters and our politicians something MIGHT happen. Until that happens and we fight intelligently back things will only get worse as has been happening for the last several decades, since “A Nation at Risk” came out.
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A while back Reuters released an analysis that $31 TRILLION is stuffed away in tax shelters. By now, that could be $100 trillion.
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Even God does not have that much money. I know I talked too Him.
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Raj,
“I don’t remember talking with you about my finances.”
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Duane,
You are losing it in your old age. I remember clearly talking to God about you.
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“Bill Whalen of the Hoover Institution” is the source of this “blame the teachers and publich schools” piece in the newspaper.
The Hoover Institution is home to scholars and journalists, and former federal officials who believe private enterprise and market discipline will solve almost every problem. The Hoover Institution is a super-conservative belief tank, eager and able to command the press and provide talking points, “research-based,” for any occassion, including testimony before Congress.
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Hoover’s specialty is vacuums.
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Hoover Institute’s specialty is vacuous.
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My comment was actually meant to cover both types of Hoover, since vacuums are vacuous.
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I might have to steal “belief tank”. There’s certainly no thinking going on in those things.
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I am partial to “stink tank” myself
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I’m very disappointed in Diane putting out this article.
For decades, I have been told and have believed that I, as a public school teacher, now Nationally Board Certified for 6 years, have been the cause of children’s and families’ poverty.
I thought I had SO much more power than those legislators who design and enforce our tax codes and those billionaires who make 245 times the salary of their average employee. I was superbly convinced that I made such a difference in how schools are run and how well children achieve, much more so than the billions of dollars in American corporate profits housed offshore and that will never, by law, come back here to contribute to the infrastructure. I thought the lack of a national single payer healthcare system was an impotent component compared the super human powers I had in causing poverty and riots. And the amount we spend on the military pales in comparison to my capability to directly and indirectly impoverish children.
I have always been inculcated on the importance of wealth and opportunity inequality and how my profession has enjoyed a monopoly on making sure that status quo not only remains firmly entrenched in our culture, but grows ever wider. I have been on this power trip, therefore, for years, thinking that my little rinky dink profession would yield such acute and profound societal influence.
In fact, as far as I knew, I have been impoverishing families and their children for 23 years.
At least I thought I was. You mean, I’m not?
I thought I had the power to cause, sustain and even grow poverty, which has, from one perspective, kept me employed.
Now I’m told that teachers are not the cause of poverty?
Really?
Well, then, I want my tuition money back from the college I attended to attain my teaching degree. What a ripoff. I thought I was going to go out in the world and make a huge difference for impoverished children by ensuring they would remain poor and that their poverty would rapidly spread to others.
Now, I have been demoted and divested of my powers. Do you have any idea what that feels like?
Now, I am finding out it’s a set of other factors and not mainly or ever remotely me? It’s like being told and treated as though I were the king, and now I turn out to be a low life servant.
This is the epitome of feeling demoralized. I feel deceived. I’ve been duped.
I have been reduced to a lousy highly effective educator . . . .
Doctor Ravitch, I’m sorry, but this was insensitive of you . . . .
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BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
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You are now perfectly qualified to become a politician or a satirist. Go forth to your new vocation and good luck.
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Oh, I thought we did, along with the economic crisis, the war on Iraq, the Ebola pandemic, salmonella, and every other problem plaguing the world.
Just burn a big, red “R” on my forehead–for “Responsible.”
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I stubbed my toe this morning. I blame you.
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Yes. My Bounty quicker picker upper paper toweling dissolves and does not hold its own when I wipe the kitchen counter. That’s YOUR fault, you . . . . you . . . . You TEACHER, you!
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You guys might be interested in this:
http://gradnation.org/report/2015-building-grad-nation-report
I won’t pretend to be able to judge the reliability or credibility of the information presented in this “report”. Honestly, I can’t tell the difference between marketing and information anymore with these ed reform groups. It all looks like a political campaign to me. I know the Obama Administration is pushing the grad rate increase and I know they work closely with the ed reform “movement” ( well, “closely” is an under-statement- in many cases it’s the same people) so a “report” that attributes the grad rate increase to school closings makes me a little wary 🙂
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Why are these “journalist” time and again equating everything that ills with world with politicians kowtowing to unions? Its disgusting lies. How ridiculous. There is only one comment on the original post. Shameful.
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“Why are these “journalist” time and again equating everything that ills with world with politicians kowtowing to unions?”
Ask Kent Harris. He’s pretty good a blaming union thug teachers for everything.
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“Union Thug Teachers”? You can do better than that can’t you Duane?
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No need to. It’s succinct while getting the point across.
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Exactly Donna, and moreover when lately has ANYONE kowtowed to unions?!
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Up to Robert Rendo, @ 8:34 PM 5/17–doesn’t Koch Industries manufacture Bounty (maybe it’s Brawny–whatever…)?!
But, right, blame us for their failures, as well.
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The more spills you make the more money the Kochs make.
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Brawny, Sparkle, Dixie, Mardi Gras, Zee, Quilted Northern, Angel Soft,
Vanity Fair, Soft n’ Gentle…those are just the consumer brands… Is everyone noticing all of the institutional Koch Industries ads running on the Sunday morning shows? Maybe the negative PR IS having an impact?
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I only buy paper towels at Costco. I also avoid Dixie Cups.
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I’ve had students who were on drugs and didn’t give a rat’s ass about passing my class. I’ve had students who just didn’t care about school. I’ve had kids tell me they liked me very much but they didn’t care about doing any work in school. I could work with kids who tried hard but were still having difficulty. I could give them a reasonable grade. Yes, I say GIVE them a grade. It was all up to me what the grade would be. I’ve had administrators come to me (and other teachers) and say that too many students were failing my class and that I had to make class more “kid friendly” (read – dumbed down). So what is a teacher to do? We are caught between a rock and a hard place. Anyone who has never taught in this crazy system has no idea what teachers face. Soon there will be no teachers left and your children will sit in front of computer screens for 8 hours per day. It will be ok because they will have a computerized curriculum and computerized tests which will show you what kind of robots they have become.
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Students will get a robotic curricula designed by billionaires who will be the gate keepers for what the proletariat will be permitted to learn. Maybe it’s time to move to Scandinavia.
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