Teaching in America

When you look ahead at what is to be, what do you see for yourself? Is it a world where you live on the edge? Do you live in a place where money is in short supply, and are you being told that you are the problem because the system is fine? I live and work in a place like that. I am a public school teacher.

With all changes facing educators today, we have been told by outsiders that the public school system is fine, but you the teacher need to change and not the organization. Here are a few of the issues that we face: raise graduation rates or else; you have no idea what is important to learn so follow these new guidelines; prove with paperwork that your students are progressing. If you refuse to follow these directions, then, you are subject to termination.

I have received email that a certain student or students are only failing my class. The implication is that I am the problem and not the student. If I was a better teacher, then, these students would be passing my class. The days of students being responsible for their learning has long since passed.

More than this is the fact that schools no matter their clientele are being graded using the same rubric. There is a school in the Seattle School District that houses students classified as medically fragile. Many of these school age children are unable to read, write and take care of their basic bodily functions, yet they are required to take the state mandated tests, and if they don’t, their lack of scores are counted as a ZERO against the overall average of the entire school. What an affront to these students and their parents.

Another insult when it comes to public schools are two separate but important issues: vouchers and charter schools. These two entities take millions of taxpayers’ dollars and puts the money in the hands of private businesses and individuals. All the while stripping those monies from the public schools that most need them.

In both of these cases, the aforementioned businesses do not have to follow the same rules as the public schools that they are to replace. There is no teacher training required by the state to work and teach under these conditions. How do I know? I was a private school teacher in the great states of Washington and Colorado without ever having to go through a teacher training or preparation program. 

More to the point, the students being taught under the above situations are not required to take any of the state mandated tests required of public schools. Moreover, teachers in these institutions are not subject to the same ongoing teacher training requirements to be recertified every five years as public school teachers are required to do. This is not sour grapes. These are the facts.

It is Bill and Melinda Gates and their foundation that are behind many of these changes, and they want to tell public schools how and where to spend their money, how they need to evaluate public school teachers and they are the hidden money behind common core, which was developed by academicians and researchers that have never set foot in a public school classroom and practiced what they are selling.

In the 19^th Century, these men and women would be call snake oil salesmen and women. They are trying to pull a fast on over on the public while using Gates money and their personal degrees to leverage their position.

Not only have teachers, administrators and politicians knuckled under to these tactics, but now the textbook manufacturers have given way as well.  By doing so, these publishers have created 10 lb. tomes for our students to lug around full of revised curriculum that has yet to be scrutinized.

As a public school teacher for the past 20 years, I am flabbergasted by these events; not merely for myself, but for all the teachers that will follow me. These phony prescriptive measures are the latest means to disembowel our public schools and federalize a system that demonstrated strength through local control.

Public schools are on a fool’s errand with this new wave of corporatism in the classroom. This is not the way to educate our citizenry. One of the cornerstones of American Democracy is under attack by the elitists 1%. Be extremely wary of that man or woman who is telling you how much better schools will be if only you incorporate their cure.