A Sad Commentary on What We Value

A year ago this month I decided to retire. My school system offered an incentive for teachers who were at the top of the pay scale (old folks) and I took it. I wrote a post explaining why I had mixed feelings about retirement. Emotionally I was ready...professionally I wasn't.

Since then I taught one semester at a local community college and didn't like it. I worked in a department where students took courses to improve their academic skills. One of these days I will write about it...for now, it's enough to say, "I didn't like it."

After I ended my short, but unfulfilling stint as a community college instructor, I began volunteering in first grade classes at a couple of elementary schools. As I walked out of the school after my first day of volunteering I felt like I had "come home."

Yesterday, I came across a blog from a teacher who is in the same position that I was last year. As I read her post I could feel the pain she was expressing. I felt it last year. It's a beautiful expression of how much she loves her children...and her profession and a commentary on the damage being done to teachers and students all over the country in the name of "reform."

She isn't ready, though.

Never once in the past 34 years of teaching did I ever want to quit. I even told my husband that if we won the lottery, I’d keep teaching. My students would just have all their own computers, art supplies galore, and any book we wanted to read as a class.

But things have gotten too hard for her.

Maybe it was the rigid schedule the principal passed out for everybody to be doing the same subject at the same time of day, or the new basal reader we have to use that we aren’t allowed to call a basal reader. Maybe it’s the look in my student’s eyes when we’re reading the newly required dry textbook when I’m used to wild and crazy discussions about amazing novels.

Maybe it’s that for the first time, our school didn’t meet AYP because two few English Language Developing students in the entire school didn’t pass their reading benchmarks.

Maybe it was the e-mail I got saying that the department of education in Oregon has raised the cut scores again this year by six or seven points per grade level, even though they just raised them a couple of years ago.

Maybe it was one of the two parents who contacted me in the first few days of school to tell me that their child doesn’t particularly love my program this year. I’m so not used to that. I’ve always had kids achieving highly and loving my class. I’m just not sure how I can use the mandated materials in the required time periods, focusing on the required skills and still get kids to really love it.

Maybe it’s the fact that I lost a third of my retirement when they reformed our Public Employee Retirement System a few years back and now I keep reading about how they want to slash it even more because of the greedy teacher unions and how this is the main reason for the budget problems in our state.

Maybe it’s that I haven’t gotten a real raise in a really really long time, or that we had to cut eight days again this year to solve our state’s budget problems. So I’m taking a big hit again, and nobody seems to notice or care.

I know this story is being repeated all over the country. Good, dedicated teachers are calling it quits because the world is closing in on them, tying their hands and destroying their ability to teach. We need to be fighting back...but not everyone can. Sometimes it's too hard to do anything but quit.

Here are a couple of the comments in response...

What angers me is that this is happening to teachers while our politicians give lip service to wanting to create this amazing education system. How? Obama wants 100,000 of the top students in math, science and technology to become teachers? Not a snowball's chance in hell. Why? To be underpaid and disrespected and told you are to blame for intractable social problems and if you even mention it, you are attacked by people who don't know the difference between an "excuse" and a "reason"?

I just wish our politicians would admit this country has lost the will to provide a decent education and that every kid is on his own.

...and this one...

What a sad commentary on what we value in 21st century america.

No kidding...

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Support the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action! July 28-31, 2011

End the destructive policies and rhetoric that have eroded confidence in our public schools, demoralized teachers, and reduced the education of too many of our children to nothing more than test preparation.

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The Daily Show: Diane Ravitch - Teachers vs. Wall Street

Last night Diane Ravitch was a guest on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Some of her points included:

• Our schools as Test Prep Factories.
• Finland's successful schools without standardized tests, and with fully unionized teachers.
• Low poverty schools are succeeding...the high poverty and racially isolated schools are the ones with poor performance. If you're homeless and hungry learning is more difficult.
• The whole public monologue has been blame the teachers for everything. The focus has been on how to find bad teachers. America is not overrun with bad teachers - it's overrun with children living in poverty.
• We need to make sure that our children all have adequate health care, food, shelter and access to literacy.

The Daily Show - Diane Ravitch
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Earlier in the show Stewart had a segment showing the hypocrisy in the media which claimed that teachers are overpaid, while Wall Street companies bailed out by the taxpayers still needed to give their CEOs and Execs bonuses. One of the contrasts was between the $50,000 (plus about $30,000 in benefits) salary of teachers in Wisconsin - which was presented as excessive, and the reasons why the "poor folks" making $250,000 a year should continue to reap the benefits of the Bush tax cuts.

The Daily Show - Crisis in the Dairyland - For Richer and Poorer - Teachers and Wall Street
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

According to what Stewart presented, Governor Walker (R-Wisconsin) is going to cut $800 million over the next two years...from the education budget in the state. Meanwhile he is pushing for more tax breaks for wealthy people.

I can see the result now...

• Lower taxes have resulted in
• Drastic cuts in education funding, which will result in
• Lower test scores, especially from children in poverty, which will result in
• More public school and teacher bashing which will result in
• Less support, politically and economically, for public schools which will result in
• The continued destruction of Public Education in Wisconsin, and by extension (since similar scenarios are being played out all over the country), America.

Here's a link to Ravitch's book...The Death and Life of the Great American School System

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Closing Schools

Making a decision to close schools is never easy. Schools are not just buildings, they're living, breathing entities with an atmosphere defined by the people, adults and children, who work within.

Last night, our local school board of education voted to close two elementary schools at the end of this year. The closings were prompted by economic troubles. Our school system, like most around the state and the nation, is facing serious economic shortfalls and the board decided that closing some schools would be the best option.

After a series of town meetings, the board agreed to a plan presented by the school board to close six of the eleven elementary schools and change one of the five high schools to a college-prep magnet school. The citizens of the district who attended the meetings were adamant that their local high schools be kept open. The debate, then, centered around which schools to close.

No one wanted the high school in their area of the district closed. No one was willing to sacrifice. The school board, feeling the pressure to solve the economic crisis, decided on closing six elementary schools over the next few years instead.

The administration believes it has a plan which will provide appropriate instruction and atmosphere for all the students. It involves, when it's finally finished, creating "K-12 Campuses" around the district and busing students to central locations. The first closings will occur at the end of this year...and the two schools slated to close will, in a few months, send students home for summer vacation for the last time.

I taught at both of the schools which will close this year...on opposite sides of the district. I started at Monroeville Elementary School in 1976, my first full year of teaching, and remained there for 11 years. A few years later I transferred to Harlan Elementary School and spent the last 19 years of my career there. Both schools were well respected within their own communities. Like the Gallop Poll on Public Education consistently reveals, most people are very pleased with their local schools and the communities these two schools were no exception.

It's unfortunate that these two schools, so important to their communities, have to close at the end of the year. The teachers will adapt. I know from experience that it's possible to change schools and continue one's career...it's hard...but it can be done. The children will adapt as well. I have some doubts about the K-12 Campus configuration that's planned for the future, however, I know the teachers in our school district. I know they will adjust over time and focus on the most important issue, the success of our students.

This solution to the economic crisis in our local district, however, is proof that the national and state legislatures and leaders are not strong enough...not honest enough...not ethical enough, to deal with the real problems facing the nation. The children of our district, just like children around the country are being forced to take the brunt of the damage caused by Wall Street. Legislators and political executives are frantically pointing fingers at everyone else, and schools, teachers, and teachers unions are at the center of the target. No one wants to blame the corporate culture which caused the crisis. Politicians get elected because they take money from those same corporate interests. Once in office, they are obliged to do the bidding of those who put them there.

The people who brought us our current "Great Recession" are still living in luxury while the number of children living in poverty in the US climbs. They still get their millions of dollars in bonuses and tax breaks, while funding for programs for children and schools are cut. The attack on the public schools of America continues because of the greed and selfishness of the super-wealthy.

The closing of our two schools is a local tragedy, and pulls apart the heart of the community, but it is just a logical consequence of the nation-wide attacks against American public schools and the children we serve.

UPDATE: The school board has decided to close 6 elementary schools in total. Four after the 2010-2011 school year and two the following year.

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Jon Stewart Takes on the Teacher-Bashers.

Jon Stewart on Monday's (February 28) Daily Show took on the teacher-bashers.

The Daily Show - Crisis in Dairyland - Message for Teachers
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

In an earlier portion of the show, he admitted that his mother was a teacher. Maybe he could be the next US Secretary of Education. Arne Duncan's mother was a teacher, too...apparently that's a sufficient background to lead the nation's public schools.

You can see the whole episode (contains language some might find offensive) at:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/mon-february-28-2011-howard-stern

Be sure to watch Thursday night when his guest is Diane Ravitch.

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