My wife sent this on to me. She's an elementary art teacher working in a low-income, primarily Hispanic school district. In spite of the wonderful experience she has of helping children she also gets to experience the full scourge of the move to discredit and emasculate our public school systems that is occurring today in the name of greater accountability and standardized testing.
The letter she passed on - Education Reform - A Letter To Barack Obama - composed by (I assume since she's the lone cc at the bottom of the page) Linda Darling-Hammond of the Stanford University School of Education is on a site where people can electronically add their signature before it's delivered. I proudly added mine and encourage anyone else on here to do the same.
Here's an excerpt:
Of all human drives, the need to satisfy curiosity, to learn, to understand, to make sense of experience, appears earliest in life and is more powerful than any other. That the current thrust of public education reform has not moved us significantly closer to meeting that deep human need is now apparent.
Consider: Standards have been imposed. Art, music, recess, history, civics, geography, and other "frills" have been eliminated. Students and teachers have been shamed, intimidated, pushed out, fired. Vast amounts of money and instructional time have been spent on corporately produced tests and test prep materials. "Bars" have been raised. Students have been sorted, labeled, and retained indefinitely in grade. Distrust of educators has been publicly demonstrated as politicians, business leaders, and other non-educators have replaced professional educators in positions of authority.
The letter ends with:
But attempts to manipulate what teachers and students actually do must be entirely abandoned. The inherent complexity of the task, its dynamic, constantly changing nature, the importance to its success of imagination, flexibility and creativity, and the gross inadequacy of presently available standardized measures of performance, make centralized control of the classroom dangerously counterproductive.
Let us help you build a system of education we can believe in.
I think the author or authors of this letter have astutely put into words the frustrations my wife comes home with daily and is a marvelous appeal to the man who I feel will be our next President. George Bush became the worst President of our time for two full terms because voters and citizens of this country were uninformed and clueless. Education is the first step in removing that danger in the future.