Clifford Wallace and Leigh Wallace, a father-daughter team of professional educators, lambaste state officials for their relentless attacks on the state’s public school teachers.
They begin:
Leadership matters. It has the potential to influence student outcomes. Clearly, there is a lack of leadership in Frankfort. Kentucky State Education Commissioner Wayne Lewis is taking pages from the flawed and unsuccessful playbooks of his neoliberal, pro-privatization counterparts in Louisiana, Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin. From no longer requiring master’s degrees for teachers to maintain certification to promoting privatized for profit “charter schools” as the panacea to save the “failing public schools” – our “commissioner” is helping dismantle our public schools – and the teaching profession – in Kentucky.
Lewis continues to disparage professionally prepared – and experienced – educators through diminishing the significance of the complex work they do on a daily basis, insulting their commitment and expertise, threatening their pensions, and cutting programs and budgets. Recently, in addition to painting a negative narrative around our public schools and the professionals that work in them, he proposed a “pay for performance” incentive for Kentucky Public School teachers as a means to motivate them to “work harder” and ensure every student has access to a “quality public school.” While this may sound promising on the surface – especially if you have not read the numerous studies conducted by scholars on this practice over the past 30+ years – it is a failed solution.
Bevin and the Koch’s are attempting to destroy institutions for the common good.
Bevin exposed his kids to chicken pox. If one of them had died or developed encephalitis, child endangerment would be his problem.
“Bevin exposed his kids to chicken pox….”
Rather than get the vaccine? Exposing kids to chicken pox used to be a normal way of getting it out of the way early rather than later when kids tended to get sicker.
This guy is just like Dr. Bennett and his disparagement of teachers in next-door Indiana, my home state. That wretch practically called teachers the enemy of education.
On principle, I think nevative campaign ads on TV often oversimplify complex issues, and they typically focus on a misleading sound bite or other rapid-fire information. But this guy sounds like he deserves a TV ad that paints him the enemy of teachers. If negative labels fit, use them.
Since Nashville is the capital of Kentucky, you would think they would know that pay for performance does not work. Oh, wait. I forgot that the only reason Lamar Alexander wanted that experiment back in the 1980s was to keep from having to pay rural and inner city teachers more money.
You mean Frankfort, right Roy? You listening to the Grand Ole Opry?
It is an old joke of mine. Nashville is so oriented toward the Bowling Green area and the swelling population between there and Nashville’s northern rim that there is often more news about Kentucky than there is about our southeastern portion of Tennessee.
It is geographically more than that, being the medical hub for a broad area that includes a large part of Kentucky. Educational ties to Vanderbilt brought such notables there as Jesse Stuart, teacher turned writer who studied under Robert PennWarren there in the 1930s. The Grand Ole Oprey you mentioned was very much influenced by the fine Kentucky fiddling tradition that came there early to find a wide audience.
The two states share the geographic characteristic of being long and thin, although Kentucky has more formidable borders in it like mountains and the Ohio River to the notrth.
Big public education monopoly jobs, more important than children. These people are just puppets for the greedy teachers union. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Matt Young, you should show respect for teachers. Shame on you.
They teach for low salaries.
In Kentucky, they get a pension but they don’t get Social Security.
Who will teach when teaching is a guarantee of poverty after retirement?
You are a selfish pig.
On the off chance that you are not just the garden variety troll, let me suggest that you go back to school and study what a monopoly is. Bone up on your research skills while you are there and research your contentions. We’ll be waiting for the credible sources you identify for your rant.