The Education Wars

If you have the stomach for it, and I don't right now, this link provides a link to an Education Week report on "college readiness," when schools should be spending more time on vocational education rather than encouraging students to go into piles of debt for jobs that don't exist.

The usual privatization/"reform" mob is involved, of course.

The schools will continue to go down a shithole with corporate ignoramuses--or is it ignorami--running the show.

Administrators--not teachers--are the problem, but "reformers" don't have any problem with crooks at the top. After all birds of a feather...

More of the same will happen:

When I started working for a large city school district in 2003 I already had permanent State certification, one Masters degree in my content subject and credits toward an additional Masters degree in Special Ed. The permanent certification is important because there have been scores of teachers who have completed all their schooling only to have their entire license taken away by one of these principals [the human resources crook in my case had planned to strip me of my special education endorsement, but unfortunately for him, I had just received my clear credential at the time I was illegally sacked]. These teachers who have done nothing wrong except that they are needed for their principal’s body counts can’t get licenses in other states because the application asks if they have ever been terminated. Many fully certified teachers marginally employed as substitutes and teachers assistants in suburban district say that teachers should NEVER work in the city; it has a wide reputation for having dangerous schools but losing all your schooling, life savings and being made destitute on completely unjust grounds by an aggressive principal climbing their [sic] way to the top over the bodies is a scarier prospect.

People assume these teachers have been terminated for inappropriate conduct with a child or at least gross incompetence. The state licensures [sic] will never know or care that these terminated teachers are innocent victims who have wrongfully had their years and savings for schooling and their very livelihoods stolen. This is especially tragic when it is done to an older person who went into teaching as a second career [such as yours truly]; those second career teachers having so much more to offer students than those who have never been out of the field of education. There is an emphasis on youth because they want teachers who are wide eyed and naïve and also because these teachers generally have to be paid less. The rubber rooms are caulked full of over 40 twofers who made the mistake of knowing too much, seeing what administration was doing, being perceived as knowing or at least being able to figure out what their administration was doing, or the ultimate crime of connecting positively with their students and being a good teacher. Administrators set up a false system in which really bad students never get in trouble, and good students get in trouble. Like attracts like and immoral, spineless and dishonest students are cultivated by administrators who share their qualities. These students are rewarded for lying about teachers by having their grades inflated or by not getting in trouble for something the students did.


The next thing these "reformers" will do is get rid of tenure, already a joke in most cases, but at least teachers have some sort of recourse against vindictive parents and administrators. Without that there would be even a bigger revolving door in education than there already is.

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