Tim Slekar is dean of education at Edgewood College in Wisconsin and a veteran teacher educator. He has watched and fumed and protested and spoken out as Governor Scott Walker and his puppet legislature wage war on public education and on teachers.
He wrote an angry letter protesting their latest plan to introduce “flexibility” into the credentials of teachers. He says they are using Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” to create a crisis, then step in and impose solutions that make the problems worse. They are both creating a teacher shortage and establishing the conditions to ruin teaching as a profession. What the legislature and the governor really want is to cut the cost of education by driving away professional teachers.
Here is a part of his letter; read it all.
Dear Teacher Education Colleagues,
I cannot support any license changes until the conditions causing teachers to leave the classroom and the conditions discouraging young people from entering the profession drive the policy discussions.
There is absolutely no evidence that changing license developmental ranges will do anything to stop the exodus of teachers or make teaching more attractive to our students. This situation is a perfect example of Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine and allowing the so called “shortage” narrative to drive policy in this manner is shortsighted and, ultimately, harmful – and it must stop!
We (teacher educators) must advocate for what’s BEST for our children and our communities. Changes in certification and license structures is a distraction at best, but much more likely it is a deliberate move to deprofessionalize teacher education.
We should not be complicit in this action despite the urging of some K-12 administrators and their desire for license “flexibility.” In fact we should remind our K-12 administrative colleagues that school principal licenses and superintendent licenses are under siege in other states. Pennsylvania has already created a “pipeline” into the superintendency that allows lawyers and MBAs to bypass state administrative license requirements (ALEC inspired).
Also, as academics we also have an obligation to use evidence and research to drive decision making and the evidence is clear: creating a deregulated pathway to the classrooms of our most vulnerable children will create even more inequity then we have now.
We should also revisit our friends over at ALEC to understand that deprofessionalizing teaching is model legislation being pushed across the country in an effort to weaken our public schools.
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/03/13054/cashing-kids-172-alec-education-bills-2015
Attacking Teacher Credentials and Teachers Unions
In addition to directing money away from public schools to private and non-union institutions, ALEC’s efforts also make running those schools a lot cheaper for the corporations and private entities involved. ALEC has been engaged in a relentless attack on teachers, their credentials, and the organized voice of teachers–unions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Last sentence sums it up.
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In Philanthropy Roundtable, Frederick Hess, of the American Enterprise Institute, co-wrote with, an external affairs manager of a Gates-funded group, an article that quoted reformers, “We’ve got to blow up the ed. schools.” It doesn’t get more obvious than that threat. The P-H article’s title, “Don’t Surrender the Academy”, implies the rich own American universities.
Wisconsin legislators and ALEC are destroying the opportunity for economic growth, in communities and states, by creating a system where the for-profit, schools-in-a-box product, an investment of Bill Gates/Mark Zuckerberg/Pearson, will take money from the poor and middle class..
When the economic multiplier effect of local education dollars, spent locally, is eliminated, real estate values, retail revenue, etc. plummet. The legislators’ strategy concentrates oligarch wealth at the expense of their constituents. I’s like the situation where Walmart heirs take more revenue out of the community than they put in and, they pay their employees so little, the community must absorb social costs, like medical care and food for the employees’ kids. The legislators are getting 30 pieces of silver to destroy America.
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AEI is funded in part by the DeVos family and the Walton Family Foundation.
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Unfortunately the only way to stop this assault is to be willing to make the ultimate economic sacrifice. It is something that most teacher or even workers in general are prepared to do.
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should have read: Is it
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Some states have “boot camps”, where an individual with a Master’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, and other shortage fields, can get certified to teach in 6 weeks. This is a great idea, which I wish more states would emulate.
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Charles, no one learns to teach in six weeks. No one learns to practice medicine in six weeks. No one learns any profession in six weeks. You are obnoxious today.
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Thank you, Diane!
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Charles,
Being a master at anything does not make you a good teacher. Albert Einstein might have been a horrible high school physics teacher if he didn’t know how to communicate with high school students. He was a brilliant physicist but that does not translate into skill as a teacher of children.
I have a friend who was an award winning journalist. She had masters degrees from two colleges. She tried to teach high school English in a very good public school. She failed. She couldn’t communicate and she didn’t know how to control the class.
But then you know everything.
Why don’t you start your own blog?
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The Commonwealth of Virginia, has an excellent program, to assist people with advanced degrees, and with credentials in certain shortage areas, to “careerswitch”. This program helps bring people with backgrounds in certain fields, like STEM, foreign languages, hearing/visual impaired skills,etc.
No one is going to be a teacher in six weeks, but this program is fantastic, in bringing excellent people into the profession.
see
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/teaching/educator_preparation/career_switcher/index.shtml
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I have advanced engineering degrees who left to go teach at a private school because I thought I knew what teaching was. I was so wrong, but at a private school with kids who are easy to educate, my lack of skills went unnoticed. Then I became fully certified , taking the ed classes and am a MUCH better teacher for all of my students. I cannot fathom how we would think that sending someone with little knowledge of how people learn should set foot in a classroom as a teacher!
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If you stand up for public education and the rights of teachers, you are not only likely to lose your job but your career as well. I can’t name an industry or profession who looks kindly on whistle blower types, no matter how much sense their protests may make. Anyone who airs dirty little secrets is not likely to be welcomed back into the club. It really takes a group effort–a large group effort–to affect a change that does not destroy its proponents. It’s too easy to pick off problematic individuals without any consequences for the powers that be.
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So importantly recognized: “What the legislature and the governor really want is to cut the cost of education by driving away professional teachers.” Once the confusing dictates of NCLB hit our low-income inner-city school, it was shocking how quickly teacher blame forced our district’s low-income-school literacy teachers of all ages and all levels of experience together into humiliatingly undifferentiated meetings where we were then treated like incorrigible children. As a well-educated adult employee, I never experienced having a supervisor actually shake her or his finger at me while publicly chastising until “test-score” school reform came along.
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You have perfectly captured the insults foisted on professionals in teaching.
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cross posted at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Tim-Slekar-to-Wisconsin-Le-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch_Education_Educators–Teachers_Grading-Teachers-170412-748.html#comment654421
with this comment , which has EMBEDDED LINKS YOU SHOULD GO TO!!!!! LIKE THIS ONE
Read about Jo Scott Coe, the teacher at point blank range http://www.perdaily.com/2010/11/teacher-at-point-blank-by-jo-scott-coe.html
For 2 decades,I have been writing about the war on the INSTITUTION of Public education. My most important essays can be found at my author’s page,
http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html as I explain how a ‘magic elixir’ is so easily substituted for professional practice when it comes to LEARNING
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
NOTICE: I always talk about LEARNING not ‘teaching,’…that is ‘their conversation.!’ http://www.opednews.com/articles/Learning-not-Teacher-evalu-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-111001-956.html
Bamboozling the people with fake news was so easy, and to this day, is not recognized for the destruction it caused. http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
With 15,880 districts in 50 states, http://www.opednews.com/Series/15-880-Districts-in-50-Sta-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-140921-34.html still hidden is the plot to end our democracy (which depends on shared knowledge) http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/hirsch.pdfand at the same time the road to income equality, which the deep state knows depends on education for all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
It began in the late eighties with its major assaults against the experienced professionals, removing their voices, so the billionaires of the EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX https://greatschoolwars.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/eic-oct_11.pdfAlso http://https://dianeravitch.net/2015/10/24/the-educational-industrial-complex/ who own the media, could spread false news about ‘those bad, incompetent, tenured teachers.” it was a tsunami of abuse addressed at teachers.
Over one hundred thousand experienced, educated, dedicated and successful teachers (including me) met their doom and disappeared, as the school systems* collapsed; local systems which cared about the population were replaced as state legislatures took over the schools, with nary an educator on board.* and with them the VOICE of the professional who knows WLLL — my acronym for What Learning Looks Like.
The conversation was shifted from one about LEARNING, to one about teachers, and then with the foul NCLB act , the conversation became one about testing. Now we are in the end game, where our nations’ children are supposed to learn from machines.
If you are tired of fake news about the schools then for goodness sakes, follow the Diane Ravitch blog. Put vouchers, or charter school fraud , or privatization, into the search at the bottom of each post. Here is a great one about A Slick Campaign for Privatization, and one about the cost of all the testing
Then, I posted this piece about teacher letters. , because only with the teachers gone could they foist such crap on the public.. and callout choice. It is 1984!
…and…If you have never visited the site that Lenny Isenberg put up when they took him away from his classroom in hand-cuffs http://www.perdaily.com/2010/02/yesterday-i-was-removed-from-class-in-handcuffs.html for blowing the whistle on Social promotion, now is the time!
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/social-promotion–lausds-prime-mover-for-continued-and-predictable-student-failure–do-they-really-w.html
He has chronicled the swamp that is LAUSD, the second largest school system in the 15,880; he explains that for every tenured teacher fired, or any teacher not allowed to reach tenure, the district saves 60,000 in benefits. With the budget about to be overwhelmed by budget obligations, instead of funding public education, the Eli Broad backed bureaucrats and corrupt politicians in LA, figured that thy could fabricate charges and remove teachers willy nilly, with clear civil rights violations –which they did as the media ranted about bad teachers.
I have introduced you before to Lenny Isenberg, who began Perdaily over a decade ago to chronicle the END of the school system in LA. All these years later, when charter schools and this new virtual learning is eating taxpayer dollars, because the schools failed, take a look at Perdaily.com
If you have never visited the site that Lenny Isenberg put up when they took him away from his classroom in hand-cuffs for blowing the whistle on Social promotion, now is the time. http://www.perdaily.com/2010/02/yesterday-i-was-removed-from-class-in-handcuffs.html
He wrote about Carroll years ago: FORMER CTC ATTORNEY KATHLEEN CARROLL LAYS OUT UNHOLY ALLIANCE BETWEEN UNION AND PUBLIC EDUCATION PRIVATIZERS http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/former-ctc-attorney-kathleen-carroll-lays-out-unholy-alliance-between-union-and-public-education-pri.html
It is all about money
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/06/lausds-treacherous-road-from-reed-to-vergara–its-never-been-about-students-just-money.html
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And let me be very clear about this… I was a celebrated NYC teacher, at the top of a forty year career, and the NYS Educator of Excellence (NYSEC award) and the cohort for the Pew Nationals Standards research. My practice was shown to teachers around the nation, one of six of 20,000 who were studied for the research… so it was impossible to charge me with incompetence… at least until they demolished my reputation.
So, they began by saying a child said I cursed, and that this was ‘cor[oral punishment,’ and with no charges being put forth,and no hearing, I ws ‘found guilty.”
I was in th ‘rubber room’ removed from my famous practice t=with no explanation, six months earlier.
The nYC UFT rep sat by as this ‘verdict was read.’ When I asked to see the investigation of students, A,B,C,D,E & F. (stop laughing) this failed human being told me to be quiet.
I walked out, hired an attorney and 25 thousand dollars later, I was back in the school, not int he famous practice where I taught the entire seventh grade (my students were at the top of NYC every year on all tests, BTW).
Now in a closet, teaching a few ‘pull-outs’ with o curricula and materials.
The 1000 book library that I had purchased with my now funds, had been distributed to the classrooms, and 8 years of materials that I I had created for the curriclum that attracted the attention of Harvard, and Pew, had been trashed…. and that was not the end of it.
You see, even here I was successful and it aggravated them no end that I was still there, so they said I threatened to kill the principal, and sent me back to the rubber room.
MY husband, distressed when my blood pressure reached 180, called Randi Weingarten, who got me a medical leave. While on leave, they put out charges for incompetence!
Randi got me into arbitraion… where I was arbitrated out of my career, and into retirement… with at least my benefits. Thanks!
Go to my author’s page at Oped http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
where this essay tells what happened to tens of thousands o f NYC teachers
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
and this is how they destroyed NYC, the largest schools system in the 15,880, before they went on to devastate LAUSD!
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