Mercedes Schneider opened her blog to an important post by educator James Kirylo. Schneider notes that Kirylo spent many years as an education professor at Southeastern Louisiana University. He is the author of The Thoughtful Teacher: Making Connections with a Diverse Student Population. Kirylo currently resides in South Carolina, where he is watching the race for state superintendent of education with grave concern. The candidate of the Trumpian right, Ellen Weaver, seems likely to prevail and to turn the state’s schools into a laboratory for her extremist views, ignoring their desperate need for qualified teachers and adequate funding.
Kirylo writes:
Make no mistake, this [teacher] shortage is a symptom, a manifestation of a metastasized malignancy: the eroding of the profession itself through a political climate that disrespects educators.
Instead of attentively responding to the alarm bell and working toward building up the profession, policy makers all over the country have intensified the problem by questioning whether educators actually need a college degree; have relaxed state certification requirements; have long encouraged speedy, minimal training before one enters the classroom, exacerbating the attrition rate; have allowed for dictatorial, mayoral control of school systems; have appointed unqualified, unprepared, and unfitindividuals for U.S. Secretary of Education; have allowed the persistence of overcrowded classrooms and outdated facilitiesto persist, disproportionally affecting the poor; and have fostered the politicization of education in such a way that attacks teachers, ultimately threatening the future of public education.
I often wonder of those who have worked to decay the teaching profession if they would rationalize having an underqualified, and-not-yet an MD performing major surgery on one’s child, or employing a non-licensed, inexperienced attorney to take the lead in a grave legal proceeding, or requesting the services of a fast-track-schooled, unproven mechanic to work on the faulty brakes of an automobile.
Consider the upcoming November general elections in South Carolina when voters will elect a new state superintendent of education, one of few states in which this is an elected position. Ellen Weaver, who appears to be a leading candidate, holds no degree in education, has never been a teacher or school administrator, and does not possess an advanced degree that is required by law to be SC state superintendent. She is literally unqualified. Enter in historically controversial Bob Jones University where she hurriedly enrolled in April and just a few short months later, Ellen Weaver purportedly will have a master’s degree in hand by election time.
Weaver’s campaign coffers run deep with support from very wealthy philanthropists. She refers to herself as a “Rush Baby,” meaning as a child she listened to the late conservative radio host, Rush Limbaugh, who influentially indoctrinated his large audience by manipulating truth, spreading disinformation, and irresponsibly promoted conspiracies.
As part of her platform, however, if not ironically—with a fear-mongering tone—Weaver aims to make sure schools are not places of indoctrination, rejected mandated mask wearing during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, ardently supports the public funding for private education, and purports a desire to listen to the voices of educators.
While all politics is local, national implications always hover. Educators across our country have spoken loudly—for years. Time after time, whether it is in South Carolina or any other state, educators are tired– very tired– of the hubris that rationalizes, whitewashes, and make excuses for the non-qualified, non-credentialed, inexperienced, unproven, and unprepared to teach our youth, to lead our schools, and to lead entire systems.
It is that hubris that has led us to the teacher staffing crisis our nation faces today.
If South Carolina elects an unqualified, politicized state superintendent, who knows less about teaching than any teacher in the state, the children and teachers will pay the price. And the state will sink lower still in its capacity (or lack thereof) to educate the next generation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Mercedes blesses us again with real wisdom.
As for a question she says she has wondered: “..often wonder of those who have worked to decay the teaching profession if they would rationalize having an underqualified, and-not-yet an MD performing major surgery on one’s child…”
I have a perfect answer:
Those who work for the decay of instruction see it as a way to advance their personal agenda. They are perfectly happy for most people to have poor instructors so long as their own tribe has good ones. They are satisfied if the public school in their zip code provides good education, but funding other zip codes is not something they want because it will raise their taxes for the good of a competing tribe.
Same for doctors. It does not bother them that people from other tribes have poor doctors, so long as they get to have good doctors.
These people defend their attitudes by condemning the other tribes for lassitude. If they just worked, they could have it all. They are this absolved of guilt they may feel for the hoarding of goods and withholding of a fair wage
THE KEY POINT: They are satisfied if the public school in their zip code provides good education, but funding other zip codes is not something they want because it will raise their taxes for the good of a competing tribe.
Roy Turrentine
I watched a show on television about plant biology this weekend, so I should be put in charge of preserving the wildlife in all our national parks. Derp!