Peter Greene has an important message for Betsy DeVos. DeVos said that those who oppose her are afraid of change. Greene says, “Au Contraire!”
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos spoke today to a gathering of Magnet School folks, and opened up by suggesting that “some people” are “hostile” to change.
Greene writes:
“I just want to be clear. I am not hostile to change. In fact, there are some changes that I would love to see.
“I would love to see a change in the rhetoric about failing schools. Instead of declaring that we will “rescue” students from failing schools and offering lifeboats for a handful of students, I’d like to change to a declaration that where we find struggling and failing schools, we will get them the support and resources that they need to become great.
“I would love to see a change in how we approach the communities where those schools are located. Instead of pushing local leaders aside so that outsiders who “know what’s best” for them can swoop in and impose decisions for them instead of letting them have control of their own community.
“I would love to see a change in how teachers are treated. Instead of trying to bust their unions, smother their pay, ignore their voices , and treat them as easily-replaced widgets, I would like to see teacher voices elevated, listened to, respected, and given the support and resources that would lift them up. I would like to see them treated as part of the solution instead of the source of all problems.
“I would love to see a change in how we discuss race and poverty, treating them as neither destiny nor unimportant nothings.
“I would love to see a change in how we treat public education. I would love to see public education treated like a sacred trust and not a business opportunity. I would love to see us pursue a promise to educate all children– not just the few that we deem worthy or profitable or best reached by a sensible business plan. Every child.
“I would love to see a change in the status quo. Because at this point, the status quo is a public education system that is being smothered and dismantled by people who lack expertise in education and belief in the promise of public education. The education “establishment” has been pushed out and replaced by well-meaning amateurs, profiteers, scam artists, and people who have no desire to maintain the institution that has been the foundation of a robust and vibrant democracy. Reformsters are the status quo, and that is a status quo I would love to change, because they have had their shot, and all of their promises have proven to be at best empty and at worst toxic.
“I would love to see us change from test-centered schools, data-centered schools, and revenue-centered schools to schools that are student-centered, that steer by the children at their center.
“And all of that is because I welcome the change that I have always welcomed, built for, worked for– which is the change of young humans into grown, fully-realized, awesome, grown, valuable, living, breathing, completely individual and fully capable adults, the change of each child from an unsure rough draft into the version of their own best self.
“No, Secretary. I am not hostile to change at all. I embrace it, welcome it, hope for it and work for it every day. There are many of us out here, and if you imagine we are hostile to change, that is one more thing about public education that you do not understand.”
Peter nails it again.
Unfortunately this attitude in ed reform isn’t limited to DeVos. Duncan didn’t listen to a word the NY parents said about the Common Core tests and pronounced he had read their minds and the “moms” were afraid. Obama said people had to be “dragged, kicking and screaming” to ed reform.
There’s this assumption that any criticism is due to either ignorance, fear or narrow self-interest. It leaves absolutely no room for debate.
The opposition to testing was interesting to watch. First the parents and teachers were completely ignored then they were actively vilified as “coddling” kids or fearful of competition. It was only after sustained opposition and a direct threat to national data collection that ed reform admitted there might be a problem. The parents and teachers were right. There was too much testing and it was driving schools to teach to the test. The people who had to be dragged “kicking and screaming” were ed reformers.
DeVos is like the rest of drumph’s picks … UNFIT to serve.
I am not afraid of changing our secretary of education
I long for the halcyon days of yesteryear when teachers were part of the decision making process about education, and education was not a business or a political ping pong ball. The path we are currently on is madness.
Those halcyon days ended with the turn of the century.
Diane,
There is an article in the Akron Beacon Journal today outlining Gov. Kasich’s new plan for teachers. It is astounding! Please read this and share it! If this is where teaching is headed, heaven help us!!! I would like to see the comments and thought on yet another bizarre and useless idea to torture and belittle teachers.
http://www.ohio.com/news/local/kasich-wants-teachers-to-learn-another-job-or-lose-theirs-1.747817
Sek2149, what I would like is for Kasich and other politicians to spend a week or two as substitutes in public school classrooms, and I am including poor inner-city schools, poor rural schools, special education classrooms, and classrooms with a lot of English Language Learners. Maybe then they would appreciate exactly what it is that teachers do. I can almost guarantee you that after one or two days in one of the special education classrooms that I taught in (that included very severely involved students), they would have run screaming from the room.
And before I retired from teaching, I knew a whole lot of teachers who worked in diverse summer jobs to make extra money. Myself included.
Besides, I did not think that the only reason for schools to exist was to turn out “job ready” kids. Yes, being able to get a job, get additional education or vocational training, is important, but even more important is educating well-rounded citizens who are ready to take their place in society as critically thinking voters, as well as workers.
And not just unthinking worker-bees.
trying to paste a great cartoon of betsy…don’t know if I can make it work.
Betsy DeVos did her research
BY Steve Greenberg | PUBLISHED Feb 16, 2017 | Greenberg’s View
cartoon-devos-cmyk
Phooey….Will send it to Diane…too accurate to waste this cartoon.
DeVos is the one afraid of change. She has never known anything but private and voucher and charter schools. Make that Afraid to Change.
I would love to see a change to an emphasis on civics education and – importantly – to an emphasis on democratic citizenship and the values on which it is based: popular sovereignty, equality, justice, tolerance, freedoms for all citizens, and promoting the general welfare of the Republic.
It certainly does seem that we are in dire need of such change. As Aristotle in ‘Politics,’ “the character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy; and always the better the character, the better the government.”
John Goodlad observed more than three decades ago that the pedagogical structures, practices and policies employed by schools are the means by which they “implicitly teach values.”
The anecdotal and empirical evidence is mounting that we are teaching the wrong values, dumbing-down the quality of schooling, and undermining the citizenship education mission of public education.
Isn’t it clear what the road to real change looks like?
Check out this link:
http://www.thedreyfussinitiative.org/
Actor and Freemason Richard Dreyfuss, has started an initiative to strengthen civics education in government/public schools.
I think this is a terrific program, and I wish more NGO’s and philanthropists would partner with public/government schools.
I’d like to see a data change: lower the school hours per year from 1100 hrs to the Finnish 600 hours.
If needed this can be accomplished in two steps. First lower the yearly hours to the international average of 700 hours, and, once we see the happier, brighter kids, there will no problem to push down another 100 hours.
No, don’t lower pay, in fact, increase pay, since teachers will teach better, more enthusiastically, and test scores will soar, even though by then (5 years from now?) we couldn’t care less.
Added benefit: conservatives’ negativity about education could be heard only in their churches, since outside kids’ and teachers’ happy chatter will mute the haters.