Whitney Tilson received many comments on our dialogue. Many were positive. Others were not.

 

Here is a comment he received from a teacher who is disgusted with the attacks on the profession. She plans to leave. I showed her comment to a veteran teacher in NYC, who found them offensive to teachers like him who make a career of teaching. What he took from her comment was, “what does that make me? Lazy? Incompetent? Uncreative?”

 

I hope Whitney and his readers and fellow reformers learn from her comment. She is their ideal teacher, an Ivy League graduate, the “best and the brightest.” When even their favorites say “Enough is enough,” they should listen. The reform attacks on teachers–the test-based evaluations, the paperwork, the BS rubrics, the data-driven analytics, the litigious efforts to eliminate all job protections– are crippling teacher recruitment and retention.

 

 

She wrote to Tilson’s blog:

 
“So glad that you opened dialogue with her and acknowledged the nuances of the union challenge.

“You powerful rich people who have so much say over our daily lives scare the crap out of us teachers who have so little say over our own lives. =)

“It’s nice to hear you sound a bit more nuanced and respectful in your language.

“As a teacher who will probably quit soon, I just would add that the harder we make teaching and the more disrespectful we are to teachers, the more we lower the bar for what standard we hold teachers to. If ed reformers’ language about teachers and ideas about teachers continue to make more people like me quit (I’m a Yale grad, and I know of at least 6 Stanford grads and one other Yale grad who are all leaving the classroom at the end of this year), the only people who stay will be people who have little ambition, don’t really care, aren’t very creative, and don’t mind the constant indignities or the pervasive denial throughout the whole system. No offense, but you’re not going to make awesome teachers out of them. You need us.

“And this is an indictment of the WHOLE system, not public, not charter. Because let’s be honest: the public v. charter debate is just a giant distraction from the fact that we have a segregated school system and no one is doing anything about it. The only reason we have charter schools is because white people are so relieved they don’t have to integrate their kids with the poor kids of color… what white person wouldn’t support charter? It’s separate but equal! (Please forgive the sarcasm. But no one seems to be talking about the real issue any more).

Sincerely,

 

XXXXXXXXX

“A disillusioned, intelligent, innovative, caring, competent, and excellent urban public school teacher who is not going to last much longer”