Category: teachers

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New Jersey Politics teachers

New Jersey’s Teachers: The Envy of the Nation

And I ain’t makin’ that up, neither.

In honor of back-to-school time here in the Garden State (I know that schools in other states might have started in August), it’s time for us to recognize the unparalleled job that New Jersey’s public school teachers do year in and year out.

We consistently rank in the top 3 nationwide in student outcomes on most available measures; SAT, AP and NAEP scores, college acceptances (too many graduates go out-of-state, though), writing achievement and overall performance. We have some significant gaps between how suburban students perform and how their urban counterparts score, and that is a sore point both economically and politically.

But even with that huge caveat, we are the envy of other states. How do I know? Because this past July I attended the National Education Association convention in Washington, D.C., and many of my colleagues around the country told me so.

I spoke with delegates from Tennessee, and they told me that their statewide tests dictated their curriculum to the point that they had to jettison most enrichment material from their classrooms to make sure they covered the test material. They also said that for the two months before the tests, they did nothing but review and drill.

And just in case you think this is professional bias, I sat next to a family from Tennessee on the train down to DC, and their daughter, a high school senior from a town near Nashville, told me how ridiculous (her word) the tests were and how they made the teachers stop teaching fun stuff (her words) and worry about the tests. Her parents seconded her remarks, then went out of the way to tell me that they were Republicans, but didn’t agree with Governor Christie’s attempts to impose a Tennessee solution on New Jersey. It’s amazing what people will tell you if you look them in the eye and just listen to what they say.

Anyway, when I told the Tennessee teachers where I was from, they told me that they loved the NJEA because it had a backbone and stood up, as much as it could, to the governor.

I got the same treatment from Idaho. The president of the Idaho Education Association also professed admiration for New Jersey’s public school teachers because she said that Idaho was moving towards a state salary system and that the state had appropriated money that should have gone to teacher’s salaries to pay for a misguided technology venture that has no research behind it. I asked if the teachers had any say in the decision, and of course the answer was no. So much for professional respect.

From California’s delegation, I heard the most distressing stories of administrative overreach, even to the point where an entire elementary school’s faculty was being replaced because two teachers were accused of lewd acts with students. The administration’s rationale? “We don’t want any more surprises.” I am not condoning anything the accused teachers might have done, but where are the due process protections promised to teachers as citizens of the United States? As I spoke to the California delegates about these and other occurrences, they said they thought that this could not happen in New Jersey because of its strong association. I certainly hope so.

Other teachers I spoke with consistently said the same things about New Jersey once I identified myself from the state: They admired and respected the NJEA for standing up for member’s rights in a state where teachers still have strong protections and a unified membership. Even the new tenure law, signed by Christie in the dog days of August, keeps due process and tenure protections for all teachers who earn it, even as it takes longer to procure and streamlines the process of firing a teacher who doesn’t meet local standards.

So as we begin another school year, I am proud to say that I am a New Jersey public school teacher.
I am proud to say that I am committed to educating children and young adults so they can become productive members of society. And I am proud to be a member of NJEA, an organization that has a national reputation as one that fosters a pro-education ethic, and one that has the best interests of its members at heart.

I’ve focused primarily on public schools here, but it’s been my pleasure and honor to have worked in private schools and to have trained teachers who work in a wide variety of educational settings. Colleagues, remember that we do one of the most important paid jobs in the country. We have earned honor and respect and we show it through our deeds and actions. Have a great school year.

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Politics teachers weekly address

President Obama To Congress – Support My Plan To Rehire Teachers

How can we truly say we are the greatest nation on earth when we… well, when Republicans… continue firing Teachers – the people who are for the most part, responsible for our nations future. That was the message President Obama delivered in his weekly address, as he called again on Congress to approve one of his proposals that will put Teachers back into the classroom.

“Since 2009, we’ve lost more than 300,000 education jobs, in part, because of budget cuts at the state and local level,” the President said. “That’s the opposite of what we should be doing as a country.  States should be making education a priority in their budgets, even in tough fiscal times.  And Congress should be willing to help out – because this affects all of us.”

He continued;

That’s why part of the jobs bill that I sent to Congress last September included support for states to prevent further layoffs and to rehire teachers who’d lost their jobs.  But here we are – a year later with tens of thousands more educators laid off – and Congress still hasn’t done anything about it.

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Mitt Romney Politics teachers

Doubling Down on Stupidity Is The Romney Way

I have a sinking suspicion that Romney believes voters aren’t terribly bright.

The main problem with Romney’s new line is that it doesn’t make any sense. “The federal government doesn’t pay for teachers, firefighters or policemen”? Well, actually, the federal government can provide resources to states and municipalities to either hire new teachers and first responders, or prevent layoffs that would otherwise be made. If Washington would do this, we’d see an immediate drop in the unemployment rate, but Republicans refuse to even consider the idea.

What’s more, when Romney says President Obama’s “new idea … didn’t work the first time,” that’s the exact opposite of reality. Obama’s new idea isn’t exactly new — the last three Republican presidents strengthened the national economy through public-sector hiring— and it worked perfectly when Obama protected these jobs in 2009. Here’s a possible follow-up question for Romney: when you say public-sector hiring didn’t work the first time, what in the world are you talking about?

And finally, Romney’s position from Friday hasn’t changed. He sees President Obama fighting for school teachers, police officers, and firefighters, and Romney’s still convinced the economy will be better off if those teachers and first responders are unemployed.

That’s not “completely absurd”; that’s just Romney’s stated position.

[The Maddow Blog]

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Politics teachers

Q. Are We Not Teachers? The Devolution of Education

We seem to have come to a critical point in the education deform movement. No, that’s not a typo: I don’t mean reform, I mean deform, because the people who want to use unreliable and faulty data to evaluate teachers and deny educators their negotiated due process rights are not reformers and never have been. They are out to twist education from a public responsibility to a privatized option whose purpose is to serve the needs of their wealthy supporters at the expense of unions and educators who know best how the system works and how it can best serve children.

It’s high time that policy makers, including Governors, Commissioners of Education (including ACTING Commissioners) and government officials respect the fact that educators know what works in the classroom and that they need to be intimately involved in the decision-making process. If you don’t include the stakeholders, any efforts at improving education will ultimately fail. We need to be loud and clear about what’s at stake, and to call for real reform that benefits parents, students and teachers. Please join me in expressing your concern about the direction that education reform is taking. We are headed down the wrong path.

Every word in this sentence is a link to an article that details the folly of using student standardized test scores to evaluate teachers. Yet, that’s exactly what the deformers want to do.

If what happened in New York City isn’t scary enough, consider this: Under the Value Added Model, teachers will be distilled down to a number and that number will stay with them for every year in which they teach. If the number is considered good, they’ll be OK, but if that number decreases, be ready for a storm that will make Katrina seem like a drizzle. Parents will want the teacher with the 86 rating, not you and your paltry 78. And just why were you a 92 last year but an 83 this year? It will be bad. Teachers will be two-students-who-ate-lousy-breakfasts-on-test-day away from being the teacher that nobody wants for their child.

In New Jersey,  there’s a bit of controversy over a  proposed teacher tenure bill because it would grandfather in all teachers who are currently working in schools. Never mind that those teachers have already been vetted during their 3 year probationary period. Governor Christie believes that New Jersey’s teachers as failing (even when they’re not) and that the NJEA lies about everything.

For the record, I have no problem with my dues money going to pay for advertisements and political action that calls out a governor who knows next to zilch about teaching or education or reforming or being diplomatic or appropriate or how to be a role model for anyone other than your average bully. And in a delicious irony, our bully-in-chief  signed an anti-bullying law that he refused to pay for and that was declared unconstitutional. Of course, there’s money for Christie’s tax cut proposal, but so far the response has been lukewarm at best.

Right now the deformers have the high ground. We know that the education and teacher bashing model is working because morale among educators has reached a new low. And that’s exactly what our society needs in a world of hyper-competitiveness, where education and skills will be the coin of the realm. Having a teaching staff that knows it’s unappreciated by the various elements who want to undermine public education is a sure fire way to keep American students undereducated for the future. And it’s a terrific strategy for  attracting and keeping the smart, creative, energetic, technologically savvy people we’ll need in education now and in the future.

The time is growing short for educators to take the lead and turn the deform movement into an actual educational reform movement. Get involved and let your voice be heard.

Are we not Teachers?

For more, please go to: www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and Twitter @rigrundfest  

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Politics teachers

Education Reform: Baseball Bats to Bad Data

Remember when Joe Clark was the face of educational reform? The former Principal of Eastside High School in Paterson, NJ patrolled the hallways of his out-of-control institution in the 1980s with only a bullhorn and a baseball bat, fighting poverty, gangs, crime and under-performing students as the face of urban education. His tactics were crude and anti-education, but the fact that he was a hero to many spoke volumes about the way in which people saw the problems in our schools.

Today, the people with the bullhorns and the weapons are politicians and business owners who believe that the best way to cure the ills of public schools that have educated the freest, most productive people who’ve ever lived on this planet, is to make our schools just like the entities that led the way towards job outsourcing, unconscionable home loan processes, and a laser-like focus on stock prices that have almost bankrupted the economy.

Joe Clark’s sounding mighty effective right now.

I can understand how many politicians view the public schools. When your political ideology glorifies competition above cooperation and the bottom economic line over investment in the future, you’re going to behave this way.  Of course, it’s easier if you have little contact with the public schools, either becuase you didn’t attend or you’ve decided that even in the great neighborhood that you live, a private school is better. Even the progressive Clintons sent their daughter to a private school. Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter were the last White House residents to put their money where their mouths were. Just so you don’t think I’m contradicting myself too much, I do believe firmly in the right of parents to make decisions in the best interest of their children. Those choices, though, have consequences when you are an elected official with direct influence on public schools.

The main point, though, is that the people pushing for changes in schools now have little, if any, experience working in education and are deliberately excluding those who do.

Here in New Jersey, the person in charge of the program to ensure teacher quality has not one minute of experience in the classroom. Is classroom experience absolutely necessary in order for someone to create a program that will assess teachers? I would say yes. Everyone who works in schools or education should have at least 5 years of teaching experience and preferably even more. How else will you know the pressures and challenges that teachers face on a day-to-day basis? How will you know how to evaluate teachers of students with varying learning styles, academic strengths and weaknesses, and social problems? How will you see the effects that more testing has on the curriculum? Reading articles and interviewing stakeholders (well, most of them) is fine, but there’s something about direct experience that warms the souls of those who will be evaluated. Maybe it’s that we’ll see you as one of us. With some credibility. On education.

That won’t happen. And that’s the point. Without experience, all someone can do is apply the research on teacher evaluation, which is certainly not conclusive, and make assumptions. Governor Christie has not consulted public school teachers about his proposed plans not because he has legitimate differences with the teacher’s union, NJEA, over curricular matters, but because he wants to destroy the union. He isn’t interested in what public school teachers have to say about the issues because they might bring in valid but contradictory evidence that he would be responsible for addressing. His is a political argument, not an educational one. That’s why most teacher oppose them, and him.

But what about merit pay, you say? Don’t teachers want more money? In Washington, D.C., some teachers are earning up to $20,000 extra per year because they’ve been labeled “highly effective” by their supervisors. In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg has proposed a similar system of merit pay for the city’s teachers. So why do many teachers oppose it (listen to the podcast)?

There are many reasons.

Competition, while a highly prized skill in business, works against the interests of schools. teachers need to cooperate with each other in order to educate students. They share lesson plans, teaching strategies and materials. If you force them to compete for money, or tell them that they are competing against other 4th grade teachers for a bonus, it destroys the trust that’s built up between those educators.

It also begs the question of where this extra money is going to come from. Budgets are already tight and spending is capped at 2% in New Jersey. If more teachers earn bonuses than the district has budgeted for, then what happens? Are raises for other teachers sacrificed?

There is also no reliable evidence that shows merit pay for teachers results in better teaching, even if you use the false argument that teachers can be evaluated based on student standardized test scores.

Merit pay is not the only issue that will harm public schools. Among the other reforms, promoting Charter schools is probably the most prominent. Charter schools do have their place as laboratories for innovative programs, but there is no reliable evidence to show that Charters perform better than public schools. They might also be harmful to a district because charters are also publicly funded and take money away from local schools. In the New Jersey suburbs, the blow-back has already begun.

The governor’s educational reform program is on hiatus at this point, but he is going to make it a priority for this year, starting with today’s State of the State Address. If he is serious about making our schools better, he’s going to have to include teachers in the conversation.

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Politics teachers

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Teachers

It’s simply amazing what happens when people get elected to statewide office. They seem to become experts on everything. Today’s Exhibit A is education, specifically in Idaho and New Hampshire, where the legislatures have passed legislation that not only threatens the role of teachers in their classrooms, but also undermines their expertise and reduces them to penitents at the altar of official incompetence.

I’ve been thinking about Idaho for most of the week. Not just because I used their yummy potatoes to make latkes for Chanukah (this should be Idaho’s official dish), but because of a law passed last year that mandates the use of technology in public school classrooms and requires students to take two online classes in order to graduate high school. What’s wrong with that, you say? Plenty, because it was passed with no teacher input and is based on faulty educational premises.

Why would any state pass rigorous teacher certification requirements and observe educators for a number of years to make sure they’re competent, only to ignore them when making key decisions about how to implement a costly program of technological innovation? That’s what happened in Idaho. Teachers had almost no input into the law, and even though the Governor said this was not a first step in reducing the number of teachers in classrooms, that sentiment was contradicted by the online course requirement.

It’s not a leap of imagination to believe that if the online component proves successful, either academically or economically, then the course requirement would be increased. Further, part of the funding for this program would be taken from teacher and administrative salaries, which is usually the first step towards the self-fulfilling prophecy that says since we need computers and they cost money, we need to reduce staff because we’re paying too much in salaries.

The even larger concern is the legislature’s, and governor’s, ignorant attitude towards the classroom teachers. From the article:

Idaho is going beyond what other states have done in decreeing what hardware students and teachers should use and how they should use it. But such requirements are increasingly common at the district level, where most decisions about buying technology for schools are made. 

Teachers are resisting, saying that they prefer to employ technology as it suits their own teaching methods and styles. Some feel they are judged on how much they make use of technology, regardless of whether it improves learning. Some teachers in the Los Angeles public schools, for example, complain that the form that supervisors use to evaluate teachers has a check box on whether they use technology, suggesting that they must use it for its own sake. 

The most effective scenario for any change in the curriculum is to have teachers at the table engaged in the process they will be asked to implement. Educators are the experts in child development, learning theories and styles, and how best to guide their particular classes (which change every year) so that every child has the opportunity to learn at their optimal level. When politicians get involved, you get attitudes like this:

For his part, Governor Otter said that putting technology into students’ hands was the only way to prepare them for the work force. Giving them easy access to a wealth of facts and resources online allows them to develop critical thinking skills, he said, which is what employers want the most. 

When asked about the quantity of unreliable information on the Internet, he said this also worked in favor of better learning. “There may be a lot of misinformation,” he said, “but that information, whether right or wrong, will generate critical thinking for them as they find the truth.” 

First, technology is not “the only way” to prepare students for the work force. Teachers know that technology can be a valuable tool in the classroom, but there are many other skills that students need to learn. Tell me how a computer teaches a student interpersonal skills. Tell me how technology actually teaches a student correct spelling, grammar and usage (and no, a red or green underline doesn’t count). Tell me how a computer teaches someone how to negotiate for their salary. Tell me how technology alone teaches critical thinking skills. Tell me how technology teaches organizational skills. Tell me how technology teaches a student which websites contain legitimate information and which do not.

The truth is that teachers teach these skills. They can use technology as their activity or resource to support and facilitate the lesson’s educational objective, but the technology is not the end itself. So when the governor says that technology is the only way and that computers themselves can teach critical thinking, he’s wrong. And that’s exactly the problem with the Idaho initiative. I applaud its goals. Classrooms should have technology available to all students because not all homes are equipped, but education decisions must include teachers. Even the students in Idaho’s schools get what the state’s leaders miss:

Last year at Post Falls High School, 600 students — about half of the school — staged a lunchtime walkout to protest the new rules. Some carried signs that read: “We need teachers, not computers.” 

Having a new laptop “is not my favorite idea,” said Sam Hunts, a sophomore in Ms. Rosenbaum’s English class who has a blond mohawk. “I’d rather learn from a teacher.” 

New Hampshire’s new law has nothing to do with technology. I wish it did, because it’s even more frightening and potentially damaging to teachers and public schools. This Nashua Telegraph article tells the story, and here is a summary:

Public schools can now be forced to come up with an alternative to any lesson or assignment that a parent finds objectionable.

On Wednesday, the Legislature overturned a veto from Gov. John Lynch on a bill, HB 542, that will require school districts create a policy “allowing an exception to specific course material based on a parent’s or legal guardian’s determination that the material is objectionable.” 

The legislation does not attempt to define “objectionable,” giving parents complete discretion.

So essentially, any parent can’t walk into any public school and demand an alternative curriculum by objecting to any lesson plan they want. As opposed to Idaho, Governor John Lynch vetoed this bill but was overridden by the Republican majority. The effect is the same, though. Teachers will now have to look over their shoulders at every turn and will need to craft alternate lessons, indeed an alternate course, if one parent objects. This not only undermines educational professionals in New Hampshire, but also subjects the schools to even more political mischief in the form of pandering to particular groups and stirring up dissent over familiar targets like sexual references, defense of non-western religions and vocabulary that others find objectionable. All you need to do is read the comments under the article to see what kind of damage awaits New Hampshire’s educational community (Pete Perkins, you are my hero). Yes, parents will need to pay if there’s a cost involved, but replacing a book or video for one child would have minor economic repercussions.

But there’s also the matter of the new national test score craze.What happens when a parent opts their child out of enough lessons and the child doesn’t perform well on the tests? Who’s responsible? Is it the teacher’s job to develop an alternative state test to measure what that students has learned in their curriculum? Will the parent be responsible for the parts of the test that the student never learned (already know the answer here). How can a teacher prepare all students when there are so many potential changes due to parent objections? Who’s thought this one through (already know the answer)?

As a resident of New Jersey, I am used to having politicians with no teaching backgrounds expound on their damaging ideas. Governor Christie is a fan of using test scores to evaluate teachers, but he ignores the research that says how difficult it is to design an accurate evaluation model or the economic and curricular impact of testing every student in every subject every year. He’s also excluded public school teachers from a panel that studied reform ideas that, surprise, concluded that Christie’s ideas were more beneficial.

A recent New York Times article used the Value Added Model to reinforce the idea that good teachers have an impact on their students that reaches far beyond the classroom. What makes a good teacher according to the research? Why, one that raises student test scores. I call this Reinforced Illogical Garbage, or RIG. And right now, the system is RIGged against informed, rational, collaborative educational policies that tap into the enormous knowledge base of teachers, who actually know best how to educate children.

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Categories
BLM Politics teachers

Class And The Classroom

Why does it seem that money matters everywhere but in public education? Corporations spend lavishly to recruit the best workers and provide the most luxurious perks. The best places to live are in the wealthier suburbs that can pay for clean, safe streets. High end cars have the latest gadgetry and safety features.

But public education? In the most important industry we have to promote learning, culture, and democracy we race to the bottom to find out who can spend the least and cut the most, then lament that we don’t get the best people to teach or the highest test scores in the world. Politicians want to break teacher’s unions under the pretense of saving money and are working to create evaluation systems that will use bad data to punish educators and pay them less. And the biggest fraud is the old saw that schools can ameliorate the effects of poverty and raise all students to above average academic levels, a claim that any mathematics teacher will tell you defies the bell curve.

This particular lie is uncovered in the opinion piece, Class Matters. Why Won’t We Admit It? by Helen F. Ladd and Edward B. Fiske in Monday’s New York Times.  The findings should not surprise anyone: 

The correlation has been abundantly documented, notably by the famous Coleman Report in 1966. New research by Sean F. Reardon of Stanford University traces the achievement gap between children from high and low-income families over the last 50 years and finds that it now far exceeds the gap between white and black students. 

Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that more than 40 percent of the variation in average reading scores and 46 percent of the variation in average math scores across states is associated with variation in child poverty rates. 

International research tells the same story. Results of the 2009 reading tests conducted by the Program for International Student Assessment show that, among 15-year-olds in the United States and the 13 countries whose students outperformed ours, students with lower economic and social status had far lower test scores than their more advantaged counterparts within every country. Can anyone credibly believe that the mediocre overall performance of American students on international tests is unrelated to the fact that one-fifth of American children live in poverty? 

George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act was meant to address this correlation, but it only showed how faulty the logic was behind the law. 

As we are now seeing, requiring all schools to meet the same high standards for all students, regardless of family background, will inevitably lead either to large numbers of failing schools or to a dramatic lowering of state standards. Both serve to discredit the public education system and lend support to arguments that the system is failing and needs fundamental change, like privatization.

We’ve wasted billions of dollars trying to achieve results using the wrong measurements and the wrong strategies, from relying on standardized tests to using scripted curricula to cutting money for vocational and technical training for students who do not excel at academic subjects. Then came the devastating budget cuts precipitated by the recession and the rise of Republican governors who don’t understand that competition within schools does little other than to destroy the collaborative atmosphere that enables successful schools to thrive.

What works?   

Large bodies of research have shown how poor health and nutrition inhibit child development and learning and, conversely, how high-quality early childhood and preschool education programs can enhance them. We understand the importance of early exposure to rich language on future cognitive development. We know that low-income students experience greater learning loss during the summer when their more privileged peers are enjoying travel and other enriching activities. 

Since they can’t take on poverty itself, education policy makers should try to provide poor students with the social support and experiences that middle-class students enjoy as a matter of course.  

Of course, you can’t replicate the middle class experiences by implementing policies that hurt the existing middle class while protecting the wealthy, but that’s a minor detail.

As always, though, there’s more.

Another article sheds more light on the relationship between quality education and money in a less obvious realm; the military. That’s right. According to Military Children Stay a Step Ahead of Public School Students by Michael Winerip, children in public schools on military bases are performing better than the general public school population on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and are narrowing the income gap at the same time. 

At the military base schools, 39 percent of fourth graders were scored as proficient in reading, compared with 32 percent of all public school students. 

Even more impressive, the achievement gap between black and white students continues to be much smaller at military base schools and is shrinking faster than at public schools. 

On the NAEP reading test, black fourth graders in public schools scored an average of 205 out of 500, compared with a 231 score for white public school students, a 26-point gap. Black fourth graders at the military base schools averaged 222 in reading, compared with 233 for whites, an 11-point gap.

In fact, the black fourth graders at the military base schools scored better in reading than public school students as a whole, whose average score was 221. 

Now, I’m not saying that a 39% reading proficiency rate is something to crow about, and there is the matter that military people must be high school graduates and pass an entrance exam to get into the service, but the results do show an improvement over other public school children. And they succeed without doing most of the things that busybody state governments want their schools to accomplish. Military base schools do not use standardized tests to evaluate teachers, but only to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses, and the principal can decide how many times to observe their teachers. Average class size is lower than regular public schools and there seems to be a positive relationship between the teacher’s union and the administration.

But the real lesson is that economically and academically, the students get the support from home that they need in order to succeed. All of the families have health care, housing and necessities because they serve in the military, and at least one parent in the household has a job. These are the basic middle class advantages that are missing from many communities across the country, but ones that politicians are ignoring in their race to blame teachers and demonize their negotiated benefits. They are also what Ladd and Fiske refer to as the absolute minimum that less fortunate students need to compete with upper middle class schools.

Excellent public schools must be available to all students, but they won’t be as long as know-nothing politicians and would-be reformers concentrate on the wrong remedies and research that advocates privatization and cuts to social programs. We need to replicate what actually works for children, families and communities.

Find out what else works at www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives

Categories
job creation Politics teachers

Report – 400,000 Education Jobs Will Be Created If Republicans Agree To Jobs Bill

If Republicans do the right thing and work with the President to get the economy going again through job creation, expect to see at least 400,000 education jobs saved or created because of the President’s $447 billion jobs bill.

According to a report from Reuters, the bill contains “$30 billion for state and local efforts to retain, rehire and hire educators, supporting 392,400 jobs, according to projections released by the Education Department and White House Council of Economic Advisers.”

Sounds like a good plan. It is exactly what we need in an economy where job creation is on the back burner of a do-nothing congress. If upwards of 392,400 education jobs are kept or created in this economy, consider it an asset for our kid’s future and beneficial to the economy as more people with jobs translate to more investments into the economy.

But don’t expect to see that happening anytime soon… if ever!

With a Republican controlled House of Representative already deciding that winning the next election is their top priority, doing anything to help the economy will not play into their game-plan. So expect educators to be laid off, expect an uncertain future for our children, thus, an uncertain future for this nation’s economy that will just keep creeping along… hopefully!

Seems that the Republican’s game-plan is in full effect, and it is working just fine thank you!

Categories
Barack Obama Politics teachers weekly address

President Obama – States Will Have More Flexibility In Fixing Education

In his weekly address, President Obama stressed the need for Education as it relates to job creating and maintaining oureconomic edge in the world. The President also spoke of the failures of No Child Left Behind, and detailed his Administration’s efforts to make sure education is a priority for students, and the American people.

While the goals behind No Child Left Behind were admirable, experience has taught us that the law has some serious flaws that are hurting our children instead of helping them. Teachers are being forced to teach to a test, while subjects like history and science are being squeezed out. And in order to avoid having their schools labeled as failures, some states lowered their standards in a race to the bottom.

These problems have been obvious to parents and educators all over this country for years. But for years, Congress has failed to fix them. So now, I will. Our kids only get one shot at a decent education. And they can’t afford to wait any longer.

The President also spoke about the flexibility he’s given to the states, to do what is necessary to improve education in their schools.

And that’s why instead of just pouring money into a system that’s not working, we launched a competition called Race to the Top.  To all fifty states, we said, “If you show us the most innovative plans to improve teacher quality and student achievement, we’ll show you the money.”

Categories
Politics Republican teachers Wisconsin

Wisconsin Loses More Workers Because Of Scott Walker’s Policies

Remember when Scott Walker promised that the only way to get Wisconsin working again was to take collective bargaining away from public employees? Well apparently, even that was a lie, as Wisconsin isn’t working, they’re loosing jobs and Walker’s policies are to blame.

The Associated Press reports;

MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin’s statewide teachers union is laying off 40 percent of its workers as a result of the law pushed by Gov. Scott Walker and passed by the Legislature curbing collective bargaining rights.

Wisconsin Education Association Council executive director Dan Burkhalter announced the layoffs of 42 workers on Monday, saying it was a result of what he called Walker’s “union-busting” bill.

Burkhalter says budget cuts are also being made as a result of the new law, which opponents said was designed to weaken the power of unions like WEAC.

Thanks Walker!

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