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Family and Friends is my everyday journal. Captain's Log is where I pontificate on religion and politics.

Friday, October 01, 2010

Someone With A Brain

I'm now a retired teacher. Over the years I've posted ad naseum about the stupidity of evaluating a teacher based on test scores and the other imbecilities those in power have done to destroy the public schools. I have two grandchildren in public school and another one that will start in a few years. They deserve better than what our leaders are giving them.
Here's someone else who understands the carnage happening to our children's future.

Diane Ravich: This is only her conclusion, read the entire article. It's sanity at it's finest in an insane political world.

None of the current remedies now embraced by the Obama administration, the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the GOP, Davis Guggenheim, or other so-called reformers will improve education. Making war on teachers and principals is ridiculous, outrageous. None of the people at the foundations or in the policymaking circles work as hard as the average teacher, face as many challenges every day, for as little pay. None of the pundits who blithely denounce teachers would work 20 years with the hope of getting a salary (today) of $52,000.

No nation in the world—certainly not Finland—has improved its education system by belittling and firing teachers and principals.

People who know nothing about education and whose ideas have no basis in research or practice are calling the shots. Left to their own devices, they will destroy public education. They have already demoralized our nation's teachers. Eventually, their bad ideas will fail, because they are wrong.

Diane Ravitch is a historian of education and author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic Books, 2010).

4 comments:

One Fly said...

I think they want our society to be stupid so they can be manipulated easier.

P M Prescott said...

You're fight.

Yogi♪♪♪ said...

I don't know the first thing about teaching. I had a good friend who had to leave the energy industry for a teaching job during a downturn. He told me later that he had never worked so hard for so little money in his life.

P M Prescott said...

Yogi, your friend is right, but the rewards can't always be measured in dollar signs. When teachers are demeaned and demonized those rewards lose their flavor.