Take Back
November 6, 2009
For too long teachers have stood on the sidelines listening to the debate that is being waged between politicians and the business community in this state and across the nation. Every week the headlines scream at us with negative, critical commentary about what is going wrong in public education. They blame teachers for everything: low test scores, poor graduation rate, lack of progress, and every other manner of malady that they can conjure up.
They want to fix us! Imagine that! Big business and government want to come into our schools and tell us how to make education better. When was the last time you walked into a corporate office and demanded to review the books and revise the plan? Too presumptuous? Or are you just too busy teaching children every day?
“Ah, excuse me Mr. Banker – we don’t like the way that you are running this bank and the profits are dreadfully low, so move over and we will take command.”
Wait a minute – government and our bailout money just did that out of necessity when the banks failed! Let’s see, why did the banks and lending institutions fail? Market conditions? The weak economic environment? Come, on, are these really conditions that we can believe or are they just making excuses?
Let’s fix the banks! Let’s fix businesses! Teachers and educators could put together an organization that becomes a watchdog, creating buzz and rethinking the very core of their organizations! Then we can throw a tiny bit of money at a few of them and demand that they conform to strict standards while cutting their pay and reducing their benefits.
Yet here we are with the federal government coming up with another program, Race to the Top, which will dump huge sums of money for a limited amount of time on a few states that jump through a series of tiny hoops. The Delaware Department of Education is in hot pursuit of this grant money with the business community, the governor, and the conservative media pushing hard and campaigning wildly. Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, just appeared at a Vision 2015 conference in Newark, Delaware last week to pump up the volume on this debate.
The problem is that the money is not being directed into areas that will have a lasting impact on schools and children. The money is being directed at more, testing, reliance on testing data, and ever restrictive models for curriculum delivery and testing strategies.
Teachers know what we need for children to succeed and we know that all of the issues that surround the schools do not have to do strictly with educators and test scores. Let’s look at pre-school preparedness, literacy in the homes, creating manageable class sizes with big blocks of time to get the job done.
Schools are a microcosm of our society. Students and their families are suffering from chronic unemployment or underemployment, unsustainable living wages, lack of affordable health care, lack of focus on basic reading and writing in the home, and parents who are distracted with the everyday chore of just surviving.
Teachers need to take back the microphone, take back the newspaper editorials, and make our voices heard above the scuffle. We have valuable knowledge that can lead to authentic solutions for our children, our schools and our communities even in tough economic times. In this national and state arena, teachers should summon the will and resolve to push back, reframe the dialogue, and chart a new direction.
