The answer is to ". . . destroy the power of the teachers' unions, and turn the public school system from a public trust into a new market for corporate development."
But let's start with what isn't going on. In virtually the same words used to sell No Child Left Behind in the early years of Bush II, the attacks on teachers are phrased in terms of "closing the achievement gap." In fact, the first paragraph of Newsweek's "Why We Can't Get Rid of Failing Teachers" story concludes: "Within the United States, the achievement gap between white students and poor and minority students stubbornly persists-and as the population of disadvantaged students grows, overall scores continue to sag." It would be nice if Newsweek were suddenly worried about how race and class affect student success. But these diatribes against teachers are not based in a commitment to equity.
No, if closing the achievement gap were the goal, we would see demands for adequate, equitable resources and funding for every student in every school-demands, for example, for quality early childhood education programs, full-time librarians, robust arts and physical education programs, mandated caps on class size, and enough time for teachers to prepare and collaborate. We would also see a renewed commitment to affirmative action in university admissions; a drive to recruit and nurture teachers of color; a commitment to ensure that students come to school ready to learn because their families have housing, food, medical care, and jobs; and an end to zero tolerance discipline policies that criminalize youth.
President Reagan was among other things, the union busting president. He was most famous for busting up the flight controllers union. Remember all the closed airports? Okay you may be too young, but Reagan fired all the flight controllers when they went on strike because Reagan refused to negotiate in good faith. The President then used the law to fire them, replacing them with military flight controllers.
The blame is placed on the "tenure" system. But tenure is not about keeping bad teachers. Tenure is really about keeping good and great teachers. How? For starters tenure enables collaboration, so that teachers do not have to compete against each other to stay employed. Who will give collaboration more than lip service if they are competing with the people they are supposed to collaborate with to remain hired? Without tenure teachers are forced to do not what is best for the students, but what is best for their immediate bosses, which may be nothing more than mouthing platitudes. As the article states:
Tenure is protection against shortsighted or vindictive administrators. Tenure is what enables teachers to collaborate with each other instead of competing, to speak up for the rights of students, and to fight for justice in the classroom, the school community, and the larger community that the school serves.
So where are we headed? Charter Schools? Charter schools do little than make the public schools less viable. Eliminating schools and privatizing them does nothing but cut parents out of the picture.
The bottom line is, we need a robust public education system. Yes there should be testing, and testing can be helpful to helping students. Better teaching is the answer and part of that is smaller class sizes, better pay for teachers, teacher tenure, and teacher unions.
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