There is this superintendent in a small district in Texas who is brilliant. His name is John Kuhn. He speaks like a giant. He writes like a dream. He says what teachers everywhere are saying, and he says it better than anyone I know.
Read this and thank John Kuhn for being a hero of public education, a hero of teachers, and a hero of students.
I will write about this every single day from now until October 17.
Please write your thoughts about what needs to change in federal education policy and send a letter to President Obama by that date.
You can write it now and follow instructions here.
Anthony Cody, experienced middle school science teacher and fabulous blogger, has offered to coordinate our campaign to write President Obama on October 17.
We call it the Campaign for Our Public Schools.
Our campaign is meant to include everyone who cares about public education: students, parents, teachers, principals, school board members, and concerned citizens. We want everyone to write the President and tell him what needs to change in his education policies.
Tell your friends about the Campaign. If you have a blog, write about it. Wherever you are, spread the news. Join us.
Here are the instructions:
You can send your letter to Anthony Cody or to this blog.
Or you can send it directly to the White House, with a copy to me or Anthony.
Anthony will gather all the emails sent to him and me and forward them to the White House.
1. Email your letters to anthony_cody@hotmail.com.
2. Or submit them as comments to this blog. You can respond to this post or to any other post on this blog about the October 17 Campaign for Our Public Schools.
All letters collected through these two channels will be compiled into a single document, which will be sent to the White House on Oct. 18.
In ADDITION to this,
3. You can mail copies of your letters through US mail to The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 20500
4. You can send them by email from this page: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments
If you choose to write or email the White House, please send us a copy so we can keep track of how many letters were sent to the President.
One more thought: when you write to the President, also write to your Senators and Congressman or -woman and to your state legislator and Governor. Send the same letter to them all.
Let’s raise our voices NOW against privatization, against high-stakes testing, against teacher bashing, against profiteering.
Let’s advocate for policies that are good for students, that truly improve education, that respect the education profession, and that strengthen our democratic system of public education.
Let’s act. Start here. Start now.
Join our campaign. Speak out. Enough is enough.
Diane
In this post, Glen Brown asked me to set up a category called “pension reform,” so that teachers could exchange information about raids on their pensions. I decided to create a category called “pensions,” as what is happening doesn’t look like reform.
Many states think that the way to recover from the economic crisis of 2008 is to reduce teachers’ pension and benefits. As Glen points out, many teachers cannot collect social security, so a raid on their pension is a deadly blow to their retirement security.
In an earlier post, a parent expressed frustration that her child’s teacher never explained how awful the testing is, how it was stealing time from instruction and was of little or no value.
Many teachers wrote to say that without tenure, they can’t take any risks, can’t upset administrators, can’t speak up without endangering their jobs.
This parent has a different take. I wish Arne Duncan would read this and realize that he is destroying teacher morale and professionalism in schools across the nation. His policies are misguided at best, deceptive and harmful at worst.
I spoke to the teachers at my sons’s school. They are EXHAUSTED. They hate the testing, they are fearful for their jobs but they are even more fearful that their beloved principal will be replaced if they don’t follow these crazy mandates. They are on a watch list now due to NCLB mandates ( special ed failure rate had dipped). This is the BEST school in the whole district- national ranking for newspaper, mock trial, debate, the highest SAT scores in the district, the highest number of AP passing exams score in the district and is ranked in the country. These fantastic teachers, who are dedicated to special needs students and needs of special students, are being crucified by the weekly lesson plans, the state oversight by under-aware and under trained ‘professionals’. These teachers HATE the tests being implemented by this VAM measure that is their prize for winning RTT. They are ridiculous tests that have no merit but the teachers who give their all to the kids in the class and before and after are flat out EXHAUSTED by these VAM measures.
Burning out teachers, who are seasoned and fantastic professionals, for no educational reason at all. That is why parents don’t know.
State after state is imposing new teacher evaluation systems that have never worked anywhere else; new pay structures that no one understands; eliminating collective bargaining rights; removing tenure to make it easier to fire teachers.
All of this is allegedly to “improve” the teaching profession.
But this is what is happening on the ground. Bill Gates, if you are reading this, can you please explain? Arne Duncan, this is what you brought about through your Race to the Top, perhaps you could explain.
Can anyone explain how these measures improve the teaching profession?
I’m a first grade teacher in Indianapolis. We cannot even get anyone to explain to us what the new pay structure is for our school district. We know we will no longer be given pay increases…..we’ve been told nothing about bonus pay, or starting salaries. Our union has no power since our legislature stripped it in this last session. I understand that we want to hold teachers accountable, but I think it is not unreasonable to expect that I be at least told what my pay structure will be so I know what to work towards. I’ve earned a masters degree, two separate certifications and have 16 years of experience in inner city schools. I do what I do because I love it and I make a difference. I’m tired of being demonized and demoralized in the press because I want to know whether or not I am going to be able to continue to support my family. These new evaluation systems are so complicated and at the same time vague and ambiguous. I’m in the process right now of writing my state approved forms for my administrator for part of my evaluation and I’m overwhelmed by what I must now do. People believe all of this paperwork and bureaucracy is going to make better teachers, but in reality it is driving people from the profession. College enrollment in education programs has dropped dramatically over the last 5 years. Who would want to be a teacher in this climate? I don’t know about Chicago and DC, but in Indianapolis, we are all frustrated and worried about the future of our schools.
This parent in Connecticut is furious that teachers didn’t tell her that the testing had gotten excessive. They didn’t tell her what the overuse and misuse of testing was doing to her children. She understands that they were just doing their job, but she wants them to stand up and shout that what’s happening is wrong. This is a terrific letter. Once the parents and the students begin to understand what is happening, there will be a grand alliance to take back our schools and rebuild education for the benefit of students and our society:
With all due respect to teachers–I’ve been hearing whispered rumblings from educators for at least 8 years (since my oldest entered public schools) that teachers knew/know these tests are a load of crap. Teachers SHOULD have been speaking up louder a long time ago. Look what silence/fear/going-along/intimidation has resulted in for a generation of our children. Instead of hearing whispered, whimpy rumblings, parents should have been hearing forceful denunciations of these useless tests a long time ago. Parents are not in the classroom every day. Parents have no idea how bad these tests are unless teachers make them aware. At least where I live (Connecticut), that wasn’t the case. In fact, the few times I’ve tried to bring up the subject in the past I got averted eyes and a changing of the subject. I get it–this is your livelihood and you have administration to worry about. But these are our KIDS we’re talking about here. Water under the bridge now, I suppose. But now is the time to make up for lost time. Now is the time to speak up forcefully and DEMAND a change to better practices. And if your unions aren’t supporting you in this THEY SHOULD BE. Union management works for YOU. If they aren’t leading the fight in this, hold them accountable!
A reader writes in response to an earlier post:
I too started with degrees in physics and engineering (and later an M.Ed. that you will hear about). By choice, I walked out of an engineering job, and a few days later into a high-school classroom several hundred miles away as a full-time science teacher (they probably wouldn’t let me do that nowadays). I never found the job hard, just fun and exhausting. That first year they gave me five classes and four preparations. The other teachers in the science department looked at me strangely when I told them that – I was the new guy, I had never taught before: two preps were desirable, three was considered the maximum and difficult, four was tantamount to suicide. They waited for me to collapse. It took until February. And I was designing the curriculum for each course that I taught on a day-to-day basis: Physics Level I, Physics Level II, Chemistry Level I, and Chemistry Level II. I was out for a week with flu probably brought on by exhaustion. After that I learned to pace myself a little better. You see I was also taking a course at night toward earning my M.Ed., which was a requirement in my contract, and when spring semester had started at the University I was hosting student interns into my classes so they could earn their teaching certificates! I did that because I could earn enough tuition credits to pay for my M.Ed. I continued teaching for another 15 years at all levels (elementary through college), including teaching a graduate-level course to elementary school teachers at the University on how to make computer-based instructional videos with software I developed on the fly. This was about 35 or 40 years before Khan Academy… there’s more, but you get the picture. Now, I have some advice for people who want a single-point statistic to measure teacher performance …………. I’m sorry, they won’t let me print that in a nice blog like this.
John White, the State Commissioner of Education in Louisiana, has low regard for experience. After all, he became a state commissioner despite never having been a principal or a superintendent or having any other notable administrative experience. He did, however, teach for two years as part of Teach for America.
Acting on his convictions that experience doesn’t matter, he appointed Molly Horstman, a 27-year-old with two years of TFA teaching in New Orleans to take charge of teacher evaluations for the state of Louisiana. Horstman graduated from college in 2007 and now she will be in charge of deciding how to evaluate teachers who have been in the classroom as long as she has been alive. The fact that she has no experience evaluating teachers is irrelevant.
Critics note that Horstman allowed her teaching certificate to lapse. Experienced teachers are outraged. This is just one more insult–although some call it the ultimate insult– hurled by state bureaucrats at people who have made a career in the classroom. What more can the Jindal administration think up to discourage and insult the state’s teachers?
Jersey Jazzman, one of the best bloggers in the universe, read this story and he was incensed. Read his take, which is as usual spot on.
If you ever want to know what is happening in Louisiana, this is the blog that gives the inside scoop, written by Michael Deshotels.
A county judge in Indiana has ruled that the autocratic State Superintendent of Education Tony Bennett could not impose a standard contract on every district in the state that would have violated all existing contracts.
From the story:
“A county judge has ruled that a state-pushed standard teacher contract form that would have allowed Indiana school districts to change or increase their hours without paying them more is illegal.
Marion County Judge Patrick McCarty permanently barred the Indiana Department of Education and state Superintendent Tony Bennett from using the standard forms, which all school districts would have been required to use. He said the department doesn’t have any legal authority to unilaterally contradict existing contract law.
“The regular teacher’s contract form drafted by Dr. Bennett is unconscionable in that it gives school corporations the authority to unilaterally modify the number of days and hours that a teacher must work, but it does not require the school corporation to pay for the additional labor or any other additional consideration,” McCarty wrote in the nine-page ruling issued Sept. 11.”
It is nice to remember from time to time that we live in a nation of laws, not men.
Diana Senechal wrote an important book about the world we live in now, a world of buzz and noise, with no time to think, reflect, day dream.
This is a review in a magazine for Canadian teachers.
Teachers and parents will enjoy this book.
Diane Ravitch's blog 