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Taking on 'reformers'

From Dave Waltz, Commerce Township:

Pick up any newspaper these days and teachers are being portrayed as lazy and incompetent (people) who couldn’t care less about their students. Nothing could be further from the truth. By and large, teachers are extremely hard-working individuals who go the extra mile to help their students in and out of the classroom.

What is true, however, is that people such as Gov. (Rick) Snyder, President (Barack) Obama, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan believe that market forces should dictate which schools are “good” and which schools are “bad.” They feel that competition, mainly based on standardized test scores, should dictate which schools survive and which schools go bust. What they fail to realize, however, is that a neighborhood school is often the backbone of a community and that schools should not be treated as retail stores which close down because a politician deems it as “failing.”

Republican governors and other so-called school reformers, such as (former Florida Gov.) Jeb Bush and (former Washington D.C. Schools Chancellor) Michelle Rhee, are part of a nationwide effort to dismantle public education. It is up to the residents of our great state and country who have a vested interest in preserving public education to begin to take note and prevent this from happening.

3 Responses to Taking on 'reformers'

  1. Michigan Mark

    July 7, 2011 at 1:17 pm

    Hello: Why should we prevent this from happening? Everything is graded on something. What should schools be graded on if not test data? It is our tax dollars at work. The people directing those tax dollars are suppose to be our locally elected school board. Unfortunately, the values of the local people have been removed from the equation ever since we started having state and federal funding in addition to local school taxes. Now our local voice as to what we want our schools to do has been swallowed up. Also, why is it fair to force my children to go to a public school? I don’t see what is wrong with me making a local decision for my own child; I should be able to send them where I want. But public school believers seem to think it isn’t right for me to have a choice on deciding what I think is right. Is it because too many people will use freedom of choice to go to a non-public school?

    • Resident

      July 7, 2011 at 8:45 pm

      Dang Michigan Mark….. Dunno who you are, but both of your comments in the SC this past week have been “spot on” on what the problems have been and are in this state…. And for far far far far to long !! LOVE IT, and please keep up the awesome, well thought out and 110% accurate replies !!

  2. turksanderson

    July 8, 2011 at 9:56 pm

    Hi Michigan Mark,

    I’ll tell you why this shouldn’t be happening. First of all, the overuse of standardized tests narrow the curriculum, and many times will force teachers and schools to “teach to the test”, and ignore other subject areas such as science, reading, math, the arts and even physical education. These subjects are all part of a well-rounded, public school curriculum. Take the No Child Left Behind Act, which was signed into law back in 2001. NCLB states that students will be 100% proficient in certain subject areas by 2014. Is that really an attainable goal for anyone? The answer is no, it is not. That goal would never be set by an educator. Instead, it was a goal that was established by politicians, but not educators.

    Secondly, holding teachers and schools accountable for a students score on a standardized test is another idea proposed by lawmakers, and not educators. There are so many things out of a teachers control that affect how well a student learns. Poverty, single-parent families, and a lack of parental support at home would be three very significant things which could greatly affect a child’s education.

    Thirdly, Michelle Rhee as the former Chancellor of Washington DC public schools fired hundreds of teachers (many times based on student test scores) and closed schools during her three year tenure as head of the school district. Rhee, with very little experience as a public education teacher (2 or 3 years, I believe) is now under scrutiny for high erasure marks on standardized test scores (meaning that incorrect answers were erased and then changed to correct answers later on). If you look at other cities around the country such as Baltimore, educators and school districts are under great pressure to show high achievement via standardized test scores. Rampant cheating has been discovered in Baltimore, as many times a teachers job is on the line if the test scores are not high. You can check out the website rheefirst.com for more information.

    You are correct that local districts receive state and federal funding. These past few months, a number of laws have been passed which many believe are anti-teacher and anti-pubic education, which have further removed local control from school boards. The recent passage of the Emergency Financial Manager law allows an EFM to take control of a school district if they enter into a “deficit”. They have final decisions over how a district is being run, and can even disolve locally elected school boards.

    It appears that you may not be happy with your children’s experience in the public schools, which is unfortunate. Apparently Rick Snyder is too, since his children attend Greenhills Private School near Ann Arbor. It’s interesting that a year’s tuition at Greenhills runs $20,000. Snyder cut funding to public schools this year, even though there was a surplus in the state School Aid Fund. Imagine what public schools could do with that kind of money!

    Finally, in my opinion there are many people who are out to destroy public education as we know it, and turn it over to for-profit companies. You may be interested to know that Bill Gates, Eli Broad and Sam Walton have given billions of dollars in order to implement a business-type model for educating students, especially in inner city schools. Now, who do we really want in charge of educating our kids? Do we want members of the Billionaire Boys Club (such as Gates, Broad & Walton), or do we want career educators? I’ll take the latter…

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