Teacher Bashing

Did you watch Oprah on 9/20/10?

"Microsoft founder Bill Gates, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and acclaimed director Davis Guggenheim joined daytime host Oprah Winfrey in her Chicago studio Monday for the first in a two-part series on fixing our nation's failing public schools. "

The way to "fix" schools, according to these so-called experts, is to get rid of tenured teachers. The teachers are ineffective, they say. Let's get rid of the ones who can't bring up test scores. Let's get rid of tenure because it's impossible to get rid of ineffective teachers.

H'mmm. The problem with their "cure" is two-fold. They're defining effectiveness by test scores, which have little or nothing to do with actual learning. Second, tenure protects teachers from the whims of administrators like Rhee, who haven't been in some of the classrooms most of the "ineffective" teachers work, and it protects teachers from students who lie. Which is just about all of them.

The only people who got rich on NCLB are the consultants and testmakers. The only people hurting under NCLB are the kids and teachers. Now they want to get rid of teachers? And replace them with what? Inexperienced, untenured teachers who will last a year or two before they quit in despair? Oh, that'll raise your test scores. Not.

The way I see it, the whole media parade of teacher-bashers is aiming for one goal: union busting. They want to decimate the unions & tenure, so they can pay teachers less. Corporate schools hire nonunion, inexperienced (cheap) teachers, make big corporate profits for the shareholders of the corporate school.

Um, like the Walton family, the Gates Foundation, maybe? Surprised? I didn't think so.

What teachers helped YOU with actual learning, and which of them will you thank today?