On the day of a mixed-results, off year election for Democrats - a day when the President perhaps should have been in DC declaring victory and perhaps kicking a few asses, he was in Madison Wisconsin, making a speech on education. I did not hear the speech, just the highlights. As a teacher of eleven years, they made me a little sad. And a lot pissed off.
Obama continued the education memes he’s been pushing for months now: unions – bad, teachers – bad, vouchers – good, charter schools – good. Oh, and over four billion dollars available in grants IF you agree to fire “bad” teachers, piss off the unions and open charter schools. All things which will, in my state, put the final nail in the coffin that the Bush Administration tried so hard to bury public education in for eight years.
By the way, those were eight years in which about a billion dollars that used to be in public school districts has been put in the pockets of the private sector, in the form of payments to testing companies. The goal of NCLB was not to make every child in America succeed. If it was, they would have funded it. It was to destroy public schools, and put ALL of the cash that school districts get in the hands of the private sector (because Wall Street does not get enough of our money already). National private education is what NCLB is designed to accomplish, just like our military operations have been at least partly privatized by companies like Blackwater.
Let’s look at Obama’s main points, and rip the shit out of them…
Beat down the teachers’ unions
Yes, the hallmark of a Democrat – attack organized labor? What is it about teachers’ unions that have become anathema to Democrats in the last few years? Are you going to have at the firefighters’ union if a house or two burns down? The police union if crime is not at zero percent?
I don’t hear anyone say that more structures would be saved from fire, or that crime rates would be less if we could just bust the firefighters’ and policemans’ unions. These unions watch out for their members’ safety, wages and benefits. To assert that the unions had a significant impact on fires or crime is stupid. It is just as stupid to assert that the teachers’ unions are ruining public education.
I understand that the argument is that teachers unions stand in the way of education reform. To which I say, fuck yes! Where that reform has an effect on working conditions, safety, wages or benefits they should work as hard as possible to block education reform. That is what I pay them for!
Labor unions are just that – labor unions. They are not child advocacy organizations. I pay around $1000 per year in dues to my union to see that they look out for my interests. I expect them to go to work with a baseball bat if necessary to get me the best deal they can.
The fact is, in Washington State (where I teach), the unions have already given in on several key reform measures, including the elimination of tenure and site-based hiring for principals. We teachers have performance evaluations annually, and, can be removed from a building if a principal does not like the job we are doing. It happens frequently. We, as a labor force, have largely been rewarded for this with scorn and contempt by media, politicians and district administrators when it is convenient for them to score points at election or negotiation times.
The real problem is that the education pie is too small, and unions have to fight for our fair share. That is what they are fucking supposed to do! So why trash them so much?
Could the fact that the floor of the nominating convention was almost 10% NEA members have an impact on Obama’s apparent distain for teachers unions? Did this threaten corporatist Dems the agenda of their private sector masters? And, instead of helping a solid block of supporters, you want to spurn us because we don’t have piles of corporate cash to shovel into campaign coffers? Think about it.
By the way, what do teachers’ unions want? Decent wages and benefits for their members, and the best public education possible for our nation’s children. What do corporate donors want? The elimination of all impediments, no matter what the harm to the commons, to maximize profits. Way to pick ‘em, Mr. President.
Bad Teachers
Yes, there are bad teachers. There are also bad firefightes and bad policemen. I don’t hear a call for the total assault on their professions. In fact, if we remember recent history, we have had a bad President.
The question is, how do you measure bad teachers? I work in a school that is in its fifth year of being “in the penalty” according to NCLB. And, I can tell you, that no staff has worked harder than the one I belong to to improve student achievement.
But I can tell you this also: we will not meet the 100% mark by 2013. No way. It won’t happen by any rational measure.
And this is not because I don’t have high expectations for my students. I believe fervently that America, and my school district, has the best public education to offer in the world. I am taking migrant students from the fields and putting them in college. They come back to visit. And these college students did not always meet standard on the day they took the state’s NCLB reporting test. But they are on the road to becoming America’s leaders today.
But if you just look at the test results, you should fire me now.
You should fire me now because the student who came from Mexico 18 months ago, and reads at a second grade level (in middle school) will not pass the state-mandated test. You should fire me now because the student who has been in three foster homes in the past six months wasn’t able to fully focus on her math, science or social studies. You should fire me because the student who slept in a car for several weeks, and still caught the bus to school every one of those days, didn’t get homework done. (God damn these kids are awesome! How dare you call them failures!)
Yeah, fire me and maybe, just maybe you will find someone who will do better. But I doubt it. But you will find many hard-working, caring, professionals who DO have the HIGHEST expectations of every student who enters our classrooms, yet who fail by the measure of a date-specific, standardized test. Now, show growth, and I will rock your world.
There are, I’m sure, bad teachers. But they will be few and far between. We are mostly a profession of mostly white, mostly middle-class practitioners who could mostly have gone into business or much more lucrative careers, but sought a career in public service instead. We do this to make a difference for our community and our country, along with a decent living (thank you, teachers' unions!).
Vouchers? Seriously?
I am not sure I even heard this right…vouchers? I sure as shit hope not. Vouchers are a death-knell to public education. They will be used by affluent and middle-class parents to put students into schools that they regard as superior to public schools. They will take public money and, in defiance of the First Amendment, give it to religious institutions. Oh, and the corporate schools, like Edison Schools.
Yeah, Edison Schools, a publicly traded school-corporation where, in 2002, in Philidelphia, trucks came to load up all the books and computers because the company’s stock price slid to under a buck.
If you are stupid enough to risk our nation’s education system to the whim of market forces, or the doctrine of religious institutions (in the 21st century, where science will be the economic growth engine), then I can’t even continue a conversation with you. Go back to Medieval, or Elizabethan times where churches or wealthy patrons were the only way to get an education. Do we really long for these times?!? It makes my head hurt!
Charter Schools
Perhaps the most reasonable-sounding, and most insidious of all the proposals.
As public education stands today, I hate charter schools.
I totally see the appeal. I understand the desire of public school teachers who band together to form these (often) high-performing schools that buck the system. I could easily see myself as a member of a charter school staff, innovating and achieving at high levels.
Oh, and cherry-picking students and families from the public education pool.
Of all the charter schools I have seen, they all share one particular, deal-sealing advantage over normal public schools: opt-in.
Charter schools are opt-in programs that only exist because there is a school like the one I teach at down the road to take the students who don’t meet the requirements. And mine is the failing school?
But what charter schools don’t advertise is the fact that EVERY child in America is guaranteed a FREE public education…period! Charter schools contract with students and families to meet certain academic and behavior standards. If students fail to meet those standards, they are gone! Where do they go? Well, to the schools like the one I teach at.
And…
Schools like the ones I teach at are the best schools in the world. Case closed. No more debate necessary.
We are the best because we take EVERYONE. We don’t care about your race, religion or income. We send a bus.
We send a bus to the fields for the migrant workers kids, and to the homeless shelter. We send busses to the trailer parks, and the housing projects.
We send a bus for kids with severe behavior disorders, autism, downs syndrome and the over-diagnosed ADHD. You think China and India do that? Fuck no!
We are, God dammit, the BEST PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM IN THE WORLD because we take locally generated funds, no matter how poor the community, and send a bus for EVERYONE. And we send ‘em to college. Not as many as we like, but we don’t quit on any of them until they are out of the system. Or until they are so demoralized by the lack of economic opportunity in their community that they quit on themselves.
So…
You wanna’ do more for public education than any other President? Raise the minimum wage to over $10 per hour, and tax the rich more. Give poor families a chance, and back rigorous federal standards with fat wads of federal money. This will do more to enhance public education than any union-bashing, teacher-firing, charter-schooling and private vouchering program could do to destroy it.
Or, keep hammering away at teachers, administrators and organized labor, and then “tut, tut” when the result of using the hammer is a broken system. Give us too little money, and sit back and watch teachers and administrators fight over the scraps, and then say how horrible our unions are for robbing kids of an education. That is what is happening now.
We are a system under siege. We need your help, Mr. President, not your scorn. When you look at my students’ test scores this spring, you will say that I am one of the “bad” teachers. You will say “look, there are teachers who show two years growth in one year.” But NCLB does not measure growth. And, I show two years growth all the time. The problem is, many of my students need four and five years growth in a year to meet the NCLB benchmarks. And for this, our school will be called a failure.
Don’t get me wrong, we need improvement. But until you are here to help, Mr. President, please get the fuck out of our way.
