The Education Wars: Hypocrisy by the Administration and the NYT

I hope there would be widespread outrage over what a rogue administrator is doing in Rhode Island, encouraged by an administration which openly despises teachers.

It's exactly like what Ronald Reagan did to the air traffic controllers.

Nonsense in NCLB does NOT overrule teacher contracts.

Snip:

It's crazy. There are about a hundred teachers at this poverty-ridden community school in Rhode Island and if you added their salaries together and multiplied by a hundred you would not be even close to Blankfein's bonus. And even after the school's parents and the teacher's families and loved ones turned out in huge numbers to plead for justice. And even after it has been established beyond all doubt that a perfect correlation exists between a child's economic station and academic achievement as it is measured by standardized tests, these teachers are going to be destroyed.

Destroyed is a strong word but suggest another one for arbitrarily and unfairly taking a working mother or father's livelihood, men and women without stock options and investment portfolios to tide them over until another job comes along. The school's students are living in the most desperate circumstances Rhode Island suffers. But no excuses, dammit! Accountability will be served, as long as you don't summer in a Swiss chalet.

As a teacher in a "failing" inner city high school for 27 years now, I'm as powerless and vulnerable as my brothers and sisters in Rhode Island, but a warning to those hurting people whose only sin is to teach the children of the working poor. If you are making these decisions President Obama, then be warned. If you are making these decisions, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, then be warned. If the oligarchs, Gates, Broad, Bloomberg, are making these decisions, be warned. If the banks on welfare or the men of the Business Roundtable are making these decisions, be warned.