Education Bits

I get so sick of the nonsense about this degree or that degree is any kind of guarantee of a job. There certainly isn't any low unemployment for teachers because the market so oversaturated and there are layoffs galore.

A degree in order to get a job is a waste of time and money.
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Because the Obama administration is anti-public education, it feels it is perfectly all right to circumvent state officials who rejected an application for a charter school:

The application says that the families served by the New Brunswick schools, which are predominantly black and Hispanic, support the Hebrew charter, even though school leaders and the local N.A.A.C.P. chapter do not.

Since March 2010, community volunteers from Highland Park, Edison and New Brunswick have been battling to stop the school from opening, arguing that it would drain resources from traditional public schools in order to provide a free Jewish education that should be the responsibility of private schools.

For each child who leaves a district to attend a charter, the charter receives 90 percent of the district’s per-pupil spending allotment. In modest-size communities like Highland Park, with a district of 1,500 students, that can take a substantial bite out of a school budget.

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The WSWS has a commentary about the Mary Thorson suicide. She was the teacher who killed herself after going through administrator abuse:

At a December district school board meeting, it became clear Thorson was not alone in feeling threatened by the school administration. Teachers admitted that they are intimidated by school officials, afraid for their jobs and dare not speak openly about the conditions they face. More than one teacher spoke about being harassed for taking sick days. Another teacher noted the irony of having an anti-bullying campaign in the school while the teachers are being bullied.

At the meeting, school administrators pushed back, blaming teachers for not speaking up or citing specifics. School board President Joe Sherman said, “If you guys would have come and brought allegations and we didn’t address it, then you would have every right to say what you need to say.”

Intimidation is a tactic in a nationwide strategy to de-professionalize teaching, as a precondition for the dismantling of public education and the selling off or leasing of its related assets. The so-called educational reforms, begun under the Bush administration and expanded by President Obama, have largely been couched in the highly confrontational language of “accountability,” which implies that teachers are overpaid and undeserving of professional status. This has accompanied a frontal assault on the workplace gains teachers struggled to win throughout the 20th century.