Kipp Dawson is a veteran teacher and union activist in Pittsburgh (she also spent a decade as a coal miner, this is one tough lady).

 

She is as as brave and clear-eyed a thinker as I have met. She recently received a form letter from President Obama expressing his new views about testing, and she decided to share her reply. Personally, if I got the form letter, I would ask the President why he thinks it is up to him and Secretary Duncan to tell the public schools of the United States how much time to devote to testing. This is not part of the federal role. In fact, federal law clearly states that no officer of the federal government may seek to influence, direct or control curriculum or instruction. Anyone who works in a school will tell you that testing has a direct influence over curriculum and instruction, especially when high stakes are attached to it and the survival of the school depends on it. Neither the President nor the Secretary was ever a teacher or an administrator in a public school. Why do they think they should tell the nation’s schools how much testing is “just right”? They have neither the authority nor the knowledge to do so.

 

Kipp Dawson writes:

 

 

Dear President Obama,

 

While I abhor the scurrilous racist attacks which have been hurled on you, I must respond to you from the opposite corner of the room.

 

Your recent statements on the over-testing of our children came like salt into the gaping wounds your administration has inflicted on our public education system. I speak here as a teacher, a parent, a citizen, a human on this planet of ours

 

Starting with the unbelievable (I wish) concept that schools and cities should compete against one another for funding for their schools (“RACE to the top,” really?!) to each and all of your DoE’s undermining of our public schools, teachers, and communities — historians will have to put on your “legacy” list the destruction of public education in our country.

 

While it will take decades to undo and turn around the damage, it is not too late to try.

 

Too little, too late, as your “apology” on testing is, is not the best way to leave us.

 

Imagine your two beautiful daughters in the public school system in Chicago, and place yourself alongside the other parents, and the teachers and community members who are giving their all to try to save and really build public schools there. Then say what really needs to be said.

 

It is not too late.

 

Very truly yours

 

Kipp Dawson