The corporate media have been telling us that our schools are failing for years. Now they're giving us a reason for the "failing schools"; incompetent teachers.
I know that a lot of people think that are too many incompetents in the classroom and that they're being protected by a union. I've never thought it was much of an issue. My son is in the 9th grade. He's had 17 or 18 teachers by now. There was only one of these that I had questions about and he was in his first year of teaching. In my own experience, incompetent teachers have not really been a big problem. So, what to make of this AP story in my morning paper ?
The headline reads: Report attacks poor teacher training, incompetence. Here's the first paragraph:
Most states are holding tight to policies that protect incompetent teachers and poor training programs, shortchanging educators and their students before new teachers even step into the classroom, a new national report card contends.
Wow, maybe I'm wrong, maybe it is a serious issue. Let's see who it is that issued this "report card".
Seems it's an organization called the National Council on Teacher Quality, NCTQ for short. The story goes on to say:
In fact, even the top scoring state, Florida, received a C, with most states getting Ds or Fs. A handful of states, including Georgia, Texas and Louisiana, got a C-minus.
This must be serious, apparently no states are doing a good job, all are protecting incompetent schoolteachers. Maybe it's time to look into this serious crisis, perhaps we should go to NCTQ's website.
Let's look at their Advisory Board. I don't recognize many. There's Andrew Chen, he's the President of EduTron a company that sells educational software. There's Michael Feinberg, he's the founder of KIPP Foundation, they do charter schools. There's a familiar name, Michelle Rhee, she's the Chancellor of DC Public Schools, well-known for hostility towards teachers. A pattern is starting to emerge here.
Let's continue with their Advisory Board. There's Wendy Koop, she's the CEO and Founder of Teach for America, they help college graduates become teachers without being trained as teachers. They eschew the traditional certification process. Eric A. Hanushek is on the board. He's listed as a Sr. Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Hey, wait a minute isn't that a conservative outfit ? Uh-oh, they list Frederick M. Hess, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Now I know that's a corporate-funded right-wing propaganda mill think-tank. Something is wrong here, these people seem to be a bunch of conservatives, pro-corporate types, the kind of folks who dislike the very idea of public education, privatizers. What about their funding, that's usually a dead giveaway.
The NCTQ makes it quite clear that they take no government or corporate funding. All their funders are other foundations. We've got some familiar names here, the ExxonMobil Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Milken Foundation.
The B&M Gates Foundation is into education "reform", they have a lot of money and they favor things like paying teachers based on test scores and charter schools, both conservative ideas designed to undermine the public schools. But Milken, that rings a bell.
Oh yeah, Michael Milken, the Junk Bond King. His brother Lowell runs the foundation and put up the money to start up a company called k12. k12 sells "online learning". They would like to do away with public schools entirely and make a profit selling their stuff to homeschoolers. They do business in Arizona as Arizona Virtual Academy, and they're a charter. That is, they get tax-payer funds but are not accountable to an elected school board. Unlike most teachers, these folks are in it for the money, and they are Conservatives. k12 lists their founder as Ron Packard (maybe the Milken name had some sort of taint), but I have one of their brochures from 2004 where their President is listed as none other than "Gamblin'" Bill Bennett, Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan. You can't get more conservative than that.
So here's what I'll take away from all this. There is a propaganda campaign under way to discredit public education by implanting in the public mind the idea that school teachers are incompetent and parents should pull their children out of public schools. The corporate media are taking part in this campaign rather than exposing it, and it's all part of a push for privatization that's been going on since the George H.W. Bush administration.
Do with this information what you will, I still don't think incompetent teachers are a problem.