Angie Sullivan manages to write a regular eloquent letter to every legislator in Nevada.
She teaches young children in a high-poverty school in Las Vegas.
Here is her latest:
I think the Nevada State School Board is moving in the wrong direction and causing a lot of issues in CCSD.
My priority would NOT be reform.
Reform is code for: HATE THE TEACHER.
It does not work and it makes us mad.
Reform is “teacher hate” bought by millionaire and billionaire eduphilantrophists. It is also known as union busting. We do not need another well-funded group that hates the people in the classroom. You have abused us for a couple of decades and nearly ruined your school system. Enough.
Reform has a bad taint across the nation because it is associated with disruption and destruction. Nothing of value replaced the chaos. It is not enough to starve and destroy – you still have 320,000 students. Most districts are abandoning failed reform systems which were expensive and not research based in the first place.
Reform is a disguised attack teacher working conditions and due process. The assumption being teachers caused the issue – when the administration was failing. Wrong target. Hit the right place next time.
Business management is not education leadership.
Leadership creates synergy and productivity. Management makes everyone scared and sad.
Reform means mandates, demands, and crushing job tasks for teachers. Regressively taxing teacher time and money. Driving thousands from their education careers by using excessive burdens.
Leadership should include folks with actual public school experience. Someone who has studied education preferable. This seems logical but we have not had someone like that – for awhile. And it shows.
Reform means leaders with a background in communications are paid well to attack teachers in the media. If you ask reformers for their background – it is not often education. It is usually sales. Or marketing.
Those who are associated with reform – are usually not educators, lead from the top instead of gaining labor buy-in, and misuse the funds.
Reform means expensive computer programs but less staff to care for children. Computer software is not capable of replacing a human being.
We do not need to buy anymore $500 million systems. A corporation should not be allowed to control the district.
Reform means money changes hands in dirtydowntown and numbers are dark to keep it covered.
We do not need more testing. Testing is not instruction. Testing is not learning.
Reform means authentic care and learning are ignored while schools focus all resources on testing. Kids are more than a score.
We do not need to attack Vegas neighborhood schools.
Reform means takeover and turnaround for public schools in minority at-risk Vegas instead of actually addressing the real failing schools (Rural and Charters – both are predominantly white). Brown folks are easier to attack. Enough with the racism.
We do not need or privatize or sell our schools to for-profit corporations.
Reform means $350 million in Nevada Charters creating the worst performing, non-graduating, for-profit corporate, and bankrupt system in the state.
We do not need any more consultants.
Reform means young folks imported from Tennessee, Chicago, Oakland to preach to old grizzled teaching veterans. A nice suit does not mean you know a thing. And they open their mouths and it is confirmed – nothing. I am sure they are paid well.
We do not anymore reformers. They just do not know what they are doing. We tried it their way for a couple of decades and millions of kids suffered.
How about some good old education leadership?
Clean the house of corruption. Void bad deals. Cancel bad contracts. Review leases.
Shut down the charters.
Get the finances in order.
And hire a fully prepared, skilled and dedicated teacher for every classroom – who is then retained by good working conditions. Supplies. Reasonable class size.
Teaching needs to happen. Not junk science bought by someone on a ship while drunk.
It’s not exciting. It works.
The Teacher,
Angie.
PS. Nevada State Board Memers should not be given $10 million contracts. We should make a law that puts folks in jail for that. But would we have a board left?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Nailed it.
My monthly plug for the satire, “Adequate Yearly Progress” (am I the only one here to have read it?). Hits same points.
I never consciously connected “Ed Reform” to “Teacher Hate,” but upon consideration, I think she’s right.
Diane: Add “teacher hate” to “technology alone can save the world,” “what counts is counting money,” and “away with history and social studies” and VOILA: you have a “Trump Supporter.”
Like most librarians, I think teachers are finally realizing their political importance–of maintaining a democratic way of life. I am assured by it. CBK
Viva the grizzled teachers!
“You have abused us for a couple of decades and nearly ruined your school system.”
That abuse has been going on much longer than a couple of decades!
They started abusing “us” since 1983 when President Teflon Ray-Gun published his fraudulent, misleading, lying “A Nation at Risk” report, and every president starting with Ray-Gun had continued to support the abuse and torture of public classroom teachers.
That’s almost 36 years of continued, persistent abuse of public school teachers and their teachers’ unions.
I know because I taught for thirty years 1975 – 2005 and I lived through the abuse that started soon after that fraudulent report was published.
Before 1983, teaching was a different experience. We were always short of money and had to spend our own money to buy supplies for our classrooms and students but before 1983, we weren’t the victims of repeated attacks to demonize us and blame us for everything that’s wrong with the United States:
the increased prison population (that was started by GOP President Nixon when he declared war on recreational drugs that were not legal like alcohol was and still is)
the crime rate
the murder rate
the unemployment rate,
the illiteracy rate
illegal drug use
teen pregnancies
teen suicides
teenage prostitution, et al.
Over the decades I’ve read all that through the media and most of those false allegations came from Republicans running for office at the state or federal level.
They hate the teachers and the kids.
The charter school crows loves money, wealth and power a lot more than the hate they feel for teachers and children. The only reason they hate teachers and children is that those teachers, children and the parents are fighting back making it difficult for more greedy freaks to join the gold rush to start a charter school and get rich.
They detest anyone or anything that gets between them and their evil plot to monetize public education.
DETEST is a word that travels along a two-way street.
What is worse than detesting someone — that’s where I’m at regarding “Them”?
Lloyd,
Despise? I couldn’t hear the State of the Union because I was disputing every sentence out of his lying mouth.
I did not tune in to listen to the Dump’s State Report of Endless Lies.
In fact, I don’t follow the Toxic Orange Thing’s Twitter feed. If I read anything about the Orange Garbage Dump, it is before Noon so I have about ten hours to become calm and relaxed before I turn in to get some sleep.
Dump craves attention.
If everyone including most of the media refused to pay attention to him, he’d probably shrivel up and turn to dust.
I think they’ve got it. Reform is nothing but a power grab by noneducators and privateers. Vegas has the worst treatment of their teachers and low pay in a high rolling, gambling state. They’re a step lower than education in California.