I am a Public School Teacher. Give Me All the Refugees You’ve Got!

November 19, 2015December 30, 2015 stevenmsinger Budget, Compassion, Congress, Education, Hate Crimes, Media, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, Racism, Refugees, Republican, School Funding, School to Prison Pipeline, Schools, Student Mobility, Teachers, Violence Against Children, White Allies, White Privilege #blacklivesmatter, #icantbreathe, #StandUpForPublicSchools, anti-racism, asylum, Bosnia, Budget, Childhood Trauma, displaced, education, empathy, exile, Iraq, Politics, Poverty, PTSD, public schools, racism, refugees, Republicans, Syria, Syrian, teachers, war, white ally, white privilege

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Come into my classroom any day of the week and you’ll see refugees.

That little Iraqi boy slumped over a book written in Arabic while the rest of the class reads the same story in English. Those twin girls blinking back memories of the Bosnian War as they try to underline possessive nouns on an English worksheet. That brown-skinned boy compulsively rocking back-and-forth in his seat fighting back tears wondering when his dad is going to come home from prison.

Every day, every hour, every minute our public schools are places of refuge for children seeking asylum, fugitives, emigres, exiles, the lost, the displaced, dear hearts seeking a kind word and a caring glance.

Some may shudder or sneer at the prospect of giving shelter to people in need, but that is the reality in our public schools. In the lives of many, many children we provide the only stability, the only safety, the only love they get all day.

And, yes, I do mean love. I love my students. Each and every one of them. Sometimes they are far from lovable. Sometimes they look at me with distrust. They bristle at assignments. They jump when redirected. But those are the ones I try to love the most, because they are the ones most in need.

I told a friend once that I had a student who had escaped from Iraq. His parents had collaborated with the U.S. military and received death threats for their efforts. So he and his family fled to my hometown so far away from his humid desert heartland.

I told her how difficult it was trying to communicate with a student who spoke hardly any English. I complained about budget cuts that made it next to impossible to get an English Language Learner (ELL) instructor to help me more than once a week. And her response was, “Do you feel safe teaching this kid?”

Do I feel safe? The question had never occurred to me. Why wouldn’t I feel safe? I don’t expect ISIS to track him down across the Atlantic Ocean to my class. Nor do I expect this sweet little guy is going to do anything to me except practice his English.

In one of my first classrooms, I had a dozen refugees from Yugoslavia. They had escaped from Slobadan Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing. Yet you’d never know unless they told you. They were some of the most well-behaved, thoughtful, intelligent children I’ve had the pleasure to teach. They were always smiling, so happy to be here. They approached every assignment with a seriousness well beyond their years.

But sometimes you’d see a shadow cross their faces. Rarely you’d hear them whispering among themselves. I was so new I didn’t know any better but to come down on them. But later they told me what they had been talking about, what they had been thinking about – how Henry V’s military campaign brought back memories. They taught me that day. Every year I learn so much from my children.

My high poverty school doesn’t get a lot of refugees from overseas these days. But we’re overwhelmed with exiles from our own neighborhood. I can’t tell you how many children I’ve had in class who start off the year at one house and then move to another. I can’t tell you how many come to school bruised and beaten. I can’t tell you how many ask a moment of my time between classes, during my planning period or after school just to talk.

Last week one of my students walked up to me and said, “I’m having a nervous breakdown.”

Class had just been dismissed. I had a desk filled to the ceiling with ungraded essays. I still had to make copies for tomorrow’s parent-teacher conferences. I had gotten to none of it earlier because I had to cover another class during my planning period. But I pushed all of that aside and talked with my student for over an hour.

And I’m not alone. On those few days I get to leave close to on time, I see other teachers doing just like me conferencing and tutoring kids after school.

It was a hard conversation. I had to show him he was worth something. I had to make him feel that he was important to other people, that people cared about him. I hope I was successful. He left with a handshake and a smile.

He may not be from far away climes, but he’s a refugee, too. He’s seeking a safe place, a willing ear, a kind word.

So you’ll forgive me if I sigh impatiently when some in the media and in the government complain about the United States accepting more refugees. What a bunch of cowards!

They act as if it’s a burden. They couldn’t be farther from the truth. It’s a privilege.

When I see that iconic picture of three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi drowned in Turkey as his family tried to escape the conflict, I find it impossible that anyone could actually refuse these people help. Just imagine! There are a host of others just like this family seeking asylum and we can give it! We have a chance to raise them up, to provide them a place to live, to shelter them from the storm. What an honor! What a privilege! What a chance to be a beacon of light on a day of dark skies!

I’m an American middle class white male. My life hasn’t been trouble free, but I know that I’ve won the lottery of circumstances. Through none of my own doing, I sit atop the social ladder. It is my responsibility to offer a helping hand in every way I can to those on the lower rungs. It is my joy to be able to do it.

It’s what I do everyday at school. When I trudge to my car in the evening dark, I’m exhausted to the marrow of my bones. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s not uncommon for a student or two to see me on the way to my car, shout out my name with glee and give me an impromptu hug. At the end of the day, I know I’ve made a difference. I love being a teacher.

So if we’re considering letting in more refugees, don’t worry about me. Send them all my way. I’ll take all you’ve got. That’s what public schools do.

NOTE: This article also was published in Everyday Feminism, the LA Progressive and on the Badass Teachers Association blog. It was also quoted extensively in an interview the National Education Association did with the author.

While Hillary Clinton Courts Teachers, Bernie Sanders May Have Conceded The Education Vote

November 13, 2015December 13, 2015 stevenmsinger AFT, Bernie Sanders, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Dr. Jill Stein, Education, Election, ESEA, Hillary Clinton, Politics, President #LetTeachersTeach, #StandUpForPublicSchools, #TeachStrong, 2016, AFT, annual testing, Bernie Sanders, Bill Gates, charter schools, common core, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, Democrats, Dr. Jill Stein, education, education reform, Election, Hillary Clinton, NEA, President, standardized testing, unions

Hillary Clinton has made huge strides this week courting education voters. The Democratic Presidential candidate made a statement critical of scandal ridden charter schools. She also met with educators to answer questions in a closed door meeting.

Meanwhile Clinton’s main competition for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, remains silent on K-12 public education. He’s a favorite among teachers but he hasn’t really articulated much of an education policy at all.

Parents, educators and students are looking for a candidate with the guts to turn away from the destructive school policies of the last two presidents. Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama have increased privatization and standardized testing while reducing teacher and community autonomy. Instead of helping alleviate an epidemic of child poverty, they have blamed the problem on schools and teachers while starving them of the funding they need to succeed.

Frankly, moving away from these corporate education reform policies is a bad fit for Clinton. Her past education positions have been almost identical to that of the Obama administration. She’s been a strong advocate for charter schools and Common Core. She receives hefty support from wealthy corporate school reformers like Eli Broad, George Soros, Bill and Melinda Gates and the Walton family. After all, her first major policy achievement was her 1983 campaign to establish accountability-based school reform in Arkansas when her husband was Governor.

Her connections to this movement have not weakened. Just this week, #TeachStrong – an education reform organization – was launched with ties to Clinton. The group is organized by the Center for American Progress (CAP) – a think tank long affiliated with both Hillary and Bill. Husband and wife have hired numerous staffers from this organization and have championed policies that originated behind CAP’s closed doors. Many education observers are theorizing that the #TeachStrong initiatives which blame teachers and try to make their lives more difficult will eventually become Clinton’s education policies if she becomes President.

By contrast, Sanders would seem to be well suited to oppose these corporate-driven school reforms. He’s anti-privatization, anti-Wall Street and pro-worker. His vitriol against the banking industry and the 1% using tax loopholes to avoid paying their fair share would only be enhanced if he included corporate school reformers on his hit list. These are, after all, most of the same people he’s already going after just for different reasons. Unfortunately, he has yet to embrace public schools. Up to this week, both he and Clinton favored only pre-kindergarten and college support. Now she has started talking about K-12, but Sanders’ lips remain buttoned.

Perhaps this is because he thinks education voters have already sided with Clinton. The largest teachers unions – The National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) – both endorsed Clinton in the primary. However, in each case these endorsements were highly controversial coming mainly from union leaders without much or any involvement from rank and file members.

Clinton seems to know that top-down endorsements alone won’t get her votes. She needs to win the hearts and minds of membership, and she seems to be committed to doing just that. Her education comments may not be entirely satisfactory, her connections may be highly unsavory, and her history may be deeply disturbing, but at least she’s making the effort to reach out to voters who care about the education system.

Sanders, where are you? You’re a Democratic Socialist. You say you’re committed to the public good. What is a greater public good than public schools? The education vote is by no means decided. It remains on the table for either candidate to take.

Personally, I don’t think Clinton is a good choice to come to education’s rescue. No matter what she says, I just don’t trust her. Someone who champions privatization isn’t going to save us from for-profit charter schools. Someone who is in bed with the testing industry isn’t going to reduce standardized testing. Someone who helped establish Common Core isn’t going to repeal it.

But if I’m honest, Sanders has skeletons in his closet, too. In the Senate he voted to expand charter school funding, voted for No Child Left Behind and most recently voted to keep test and punish policies in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. However, given everything else he espouses, all these votes seem like anomalies. While Hillary looks like a seasoned professional who knows exactly what she’s doing in education circles, Bernie seems like a bumbling amateur who keeps making mistakes. It appears all he needs is a good talking to, someone to explain how our interests and his align perfectly. (Call me maybe!)

Of course, there is another possibility. Perhaps Sanders is against us as much as Clinton. Perhaps there is no major politician out there who has any interest in saving our schools.

Perhaps we really are alone.

In that case, maybe we shouldn’t wait for major politicians to come to us. Maybe we should consider supporting someone who is honestly in favor of us but does not yet have much political clout.

What say you, Dr. Jill Stein?

In the meantime I find myself waiting impatiently for Sanders to make his move. But I won’t wait forever. If he wants my vote – and the votes of hundreds of thousands of parents and teachers – he’s going to have to make his case.

Otherwise, we’ll look somewhere else.

NOTE: This article also was published on the Badass Teachers Association blog.

Department of Education SorryNotSorry About High Stakes Testing

October 25, 2015December 13, 2015 stevenmsinger Arne Duncan, Bernie Sanders, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Election, Hillary Clinton, John King, No Child Left Behind, Obama, Politics, Race to the Top, Standardized Testing, Toxic Testing, Value Added Measures #LetTeachersTeach, #StandUpForPublicSchools, annual testing, Arne Duncan, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, charter schools, Civil Rights, common core, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, Democrats, Department of Education, education, education reform, Election, Hillary Clinton, John King, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, standardized testing, Value Added Measures

The Obama Administration must think the nation’s parents, teachers and students are pretty darn dumb.

President Barack Obama and his hand-picked Department of Education are solely responsible for the knuckle dragging academic policies strangling our public schools day in, day out. Yet instead of doing anything to reverse course to proven methods that might actually help kids learn, the department trudges out its annual apology.

It goes something like this:

Hey, Everybody! So sorry about all those high stakes tests, Common Core Standards and Value-Added teaching evaluations. We know they’re bad and we’re going to stop.

Then whatever functionary drew the shortest straw toddles back into the building and for the rest of the year things continue on exactly the same as they always have.

Let’s just pause for a moment and imagine how incredibly stupid they must think we are. I’m surprised they don’t issue public service announcements reminding us to exhale, multi-colored pamphlets on the benefits of blinking, and puppet shows instructing us how to use the potty.

The Obama Administration has had 7 years to fix this mess, and the only things they’ve done are to make it worse. Most of us voted for this so-called progressive because we thought he’d improve upon George W. Bush’s astoundingly wrongheaded school policies. But instead he doubled down on them! We hired a competent janitor but he was successful only in creating greater disorder.

We thought someone with the intelligence and grace of Barack Obama would be able to understand more than the eternal C-student Bush that you can’t ensure equity by standardized testing. That’s like trying to ensure a bathtub was filling with hot water by using nothing but Tarot Cards. The cards don’t give you an accurate reading and even if they did, you’d need to adjust the faucet at some point!

We thought a Constitutional scholar would understand that a national school curriculum violates federal law – even if you get a faux state commission to propose it and slap a new name on the thing! The federal government is allowed to do some things and state governments are allowed to do others. It’s not that hard. Moreover, armchair generals who have zero understanding of educational pedagogy, psychology, sociology and no classroom experience have no business telling teachers what they should be teaching!

We thought a political party that claims to be on educators’ side wouldn’t then turn around and initiate a witch hunt against us using poor student test scores instead of pitch forks and torches. Every independent, peer-reviewed study shows that poor kids do badly on standardized assessments and rich kids do well. Every statistician says you can’t use a test created to measure one thing (students) to measure another (teachers). Yet this is exactly what this so-called intellectual president mandates, and then he and the Democrats expect us to be there for them at the polls!?

In short, we expected a liberal Democrat, but got instead a Conservative Democrat in Name Only (DINO). He took far right ideas that Bush could barely officiate and made them much more efficient and thus much more damaging.

And every year like an alcoholic stumbling off a bar stool, the administration swears they’re not going to take another drink. Then they hire the head of Anheuser-Busch (John King) as a nutritionist. And some of us still believe them!

Just look at the crumbs they’re throwing out to us, peons!

Hey, Girl. We’re going to cut testing down to 2% of the school year.

That’s 23 hours! Almost 3 full days! Imagine if the dungeon master told you he was only going to put you on the rack for 2% of the time! Would you thank him? Maybe, but it would be a pretty half-hearted thank you.

Can the administration prove any positive value for standardized testing? I’m not asking them to trot out the tired party line about equity. I mean can they prove that testing actually helps children learn in any appreciable way? If the answer is no (and Spoiler Alert: it is!) then we shouldn’t be wasting any more time with it. Not 2%. Not 1%. ZERO PERCENT!

Moreover, Obama has been talking about reducing testing since he ran for office in 2008. America’s schools are still waiting for him to come through on that one. Maybe on his last day in office we’ll have a testing moratorium. Fingers crossed!

The department says, “The assessments must be worth taking.” No shit. That’s exactly the problem! They aren’t! And they’re shrouded in secrecy under the guise of test corporations intellectual property. How will we be able to determine they’re “worth taking”? Will you just tell us? THAT sure puts my mind at ease!

You know what assessments have been proven worth taking? The ones created by teachers. Yet these are exactly the kinds of tests that schools have been forced to cut back on. Perhaps this is what the administration has in mind. No more teacher-created tests. Let’s just have tests made by the professional test creators who have no idea what the heck they’re doing!

And speaking teachers, this one’s for you: “No standardized test should ever be given solely for educator evaluation.” It sounds like a condemnation of Value-Added Measures (VAM), of evaluating teachers on student test scores. However, it’s just the opposite. Notice the word “Solely.” We’re not going to give kids tests if we ONLY use them to evaluate their teachers. Well woop-de-do! Professional flunkies will talk to you for hours (if you pay them enough) about how great the tests we give now are at doing both! So no change in policy, just some purple prose to light on fire and blow the smoke up educators hind ends.

Perhaps worst of all is the use of English Language Learners (ELL), students with disabilities and minorities as props. We’re doing it all for them, they say. Bull! Shit!

The administration has nothing to say about fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). There’s nothing about sanctions on districts that don’t provide proper services for ELLs. There’s nothing about ensuring adequate, equitable and sustainable funding for all students – especially the poor and minorities. Instead the Department of Education pretends like high stakes tests are candy bars and what poor disadvantaged minority ELL disabled kid doesn’t love the soft velvety chocolate taste of a multiple choice test!?

This announcement is not reason to celebrate. It’s more of the same fake apologies soaking wet in crocodile tears and bad candor.

If Hillary Clinton wants to get elected President, she’d better do more than that. If Bernie Sanders wants a shot, he’d better do more than spout socialism about Wall Street and silence about K-12 schools.

You can only lie to our faces for so long. Despite your best attempts to trash public education in the name of saving it, we’re not so dumb as to believe any more of your evasions, deceit and dishonesty.

NOTE: This article also was published on the Badass Teachers Association blog.

Education Does Not Cure Poverty – It Cures Ignorance

October 18, 2015December 13, 2015 stevenmsinger Bill Gates, Campbell Brown, Charter Schools, Common Core, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Education, Media, Politics, Poverty, Schools, Standardized Testing, Teachers, Toxic Testing #LetTeachersTeach, #StandUpForPublicSchools, Ancient Greeks, annual testing, Aritotle, charter schools, class warfare, common core, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, education, education reform, Greed, media, Philosophy, Politics, Poverty, public schools, scapegoats, silver bullet, Socrates, teacher bashing, teachers

What good is an education?

Will it get you money? Will it make you rich?

No. Not really.

And that’s one of the biggest problems with American public school policy of the last 15 years. It misunderstands the purpose of the very thing it purports to promote.

Poverty is skyrocketing. It’s been on the rise for at least three decades, but since the economy collapsed in 2008, the ranks of the poor have swollen like an untreated wound left to fester and rot.

We could be doing something about that. We could be working on a jobs package – on something to get people back to work. Instead we crowd around unemployment data and clap each other on the back because on paper it looks like we’ve overcome this obstacle.

Unfortunately, we haven’t.

Since President Barack Obama took office, there have been less people out of work than during the disastrous Bush years. However, most new jobs created since the crash only pay minimum wage. The good jobs are drying up and being replaced by poverty wage employment. And that’s not even counting the hordes of people who’ve given up even looking for a job but don’t merit a mention in these Pollyanna publications!

So how do we truly answer this dilemma? How do we get America back to work?

According to our policymakers, through magic.

Provide people more training, they say. Make sure those out of work obtain new skills and the next generation receives a rigorous education.

It’s the kind of solution our grandparents – who lived through the Great Depression – would have laughed to silence. Give someone a book, put them in a school, place them before a teacher and – POOF – they’ll be able to get one of the nonexistent well paying jobs that – may I repeat – DON’T EXIST!

It’s not that we have an unskilled workforce. We have more people than ever with Doctorates and Masters degrees living on food stamps. The problem is lack of well paying jobs. We’ve tax sheltered, down sized, and corporatized America into a land where the rich play Monopoly with all our cash while the rest of us subsist on McJobs.

Claiming that education alone can resolve this problem is like saying all a starving person really needs is a fork and spoon. But that won’t help if he has nothing to eat!

It should be no surprise that those championing our school system as a silver bullet to our jobless nation speak out of both sides of their mouths. On the one hand, they say, education can save us. On the other, they say, if education was better we wouldn’t need saving. And since they’re almost exclusively employed by the same people who gobbled up all the jobs in the first place and then spat them out to China, it’s a travesty that anyone listens to them.

They’re not offering a solution. They’re making a last ditch effort to clear the board of any remaining public money – education dollars.

If only the teachers had taught us better, they say, we’d all be able to have a corner office in the sky. But since those evil, lazy educators are doing such a bad job, we need to close as many schools as possible to save those kids. And then we can privatize them and swipe even more of that sweet, sweet public money to the 1% who can run charter schools and cut student services while scarfing up the rest as yummy profit.

To prove this thesis, policymakers force untested and irrational reforms on public schools – standardized testing, computerized test prep, Common Core. When none of this works (as planned), they simply blame the educators who never wanted any of this in the first place. But it helps us serve up teachers on a silver platter as the scapegoat of the day.

These so-called reforms solve nothing – they just make things worse.

Furthermore, they’re a distraction, smoke and mirrors so we won’t see the real issue of how we’re being swindled by the 1%. After all, THEY were the ones who got us into this mess in the first place! They were the ones who crashed the economy – not Mrs. Jones, the local science teacher.

We should know this already. It’s out in the open and easy to see. The media is not doing its job of reporting the truth. The public is being dazzled by propaganda that appeals to our basest selves. But most importantly, we’re being fooled because we no longer remember what education is for!

Even under the best of circumstances, education does not make someone rich. That’s not it’s goal. It never has been. Education seeks to enrich people’s minds, not their bank accounts.

Yes, there is a relationship between the two, but its several steps removed. A well educated person may be able to more easily obtain money than an uneducated one. She may be more prepared for a well-paying job. However, being prepared is rarely what makes someone rich.

People gain wealth most often by inheriting it (See Paris Hilton, Bill Marriott, Mitt Romney and Donald Trump). Others get money by cheating the public out of it. This takes a person with a weak moral code, not necessarily strong book smarts. For instance, look to the Walmart model of selling groceries cheaply by paying poverty wages to employees who then must rely on the federal government to survive and thus can only afford to shop at Walmart. That’s not smart. It’s sociopathic. Anyone could have thought that up, but it takes a person with a stunted conception of the value of other people to actually do it.

More important than a college degree are connections. The Rich know the right people. They have contacts in high places with whom they can barter for lucrative tips, jobs and partnerships. They have friends on Wall Street who can tip them off when a stock is about to rise or fall. They know editors at prominent papers who have no problem changing the headlines to match a preconceived narrative rather than the facts on the ground.

Again, that doesn’t require all A’s on your report card. It’s the result of a lottery of birth, social standing and an undeveloped sense of fairness.

There are some people who actually do gain riches on the merits of their intellects. But they are few and far between. Even among them there is a large portion who are more lucky than genius. I love Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, but it doesn’t take an Einstein to come up with it. Sometimes the gods of finance just smile on hippy dippy flavors with fun names.

Since the ancient world, thinkers have postulated that the purpose of education is not to increase material gain – it is to become a better person. The Ancient Greeks believed that there is value in knowledge and wisdom that doesn’t translate into gold. Aristotle called it eudaimonia or human flourishing. The best life includes wisdom.

This builds on the philosophy of Socrates – one of the founders of Western thought – who famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” We have strayed far from these ideals. Today we might say the unreciprocated action is unworth doing. If something doesn’t translate into cold, hard cash, it is considered weak, a wasted effort. Even philanthropy has become a way to gain control over the industry you’re ostensibly trying to help. (See Bill Gates immense influence on Education policy.)

In their hearts, most teachers would side with Aristotle and Socrates over the Waltons and Gates’. And that’s why our corporate masters look down on us. We represent an ethos that they have abandoned and tried to destroy.

They tell themselves the fairy tale that wisdom means cheating others out of money. The removal of ignorance, they say, is the removal of any obstacles toward clawing and punching your way to the top.

But true wisdom recognizes that people are more than mere animals. We do not need to continue the Darwinian struggle of survival of the fittest among ourselves. We can cooperate. We can value each others lives. We can love.

If people valued this kind of knowledge over money, what would happen to the rich? Wouldn’t it prove that they have wasted their lives betraying and manipulating the less fortunate? Wouldn’t it reveal the poverty of their souls?

Because if people were truly educated, they would see these sick, twisted individuals for whom they really are. And we would demand justice. Not so that we could replace these penny-ante tycoons with our own wealth addiction. But instead so that we could all live in peace and bask in the joy of knowledge, compassion and an unending quest to chip away at our own ignorance.

NOTE: This article also was published in the LA Progressive and on the Badass Teachers Association blog.

Near Silence on Education at First Democratic Debate

October 14, 2015December 13, 2015 stevenmsinger AFT, Arne Duncan, Bernie Sanders, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Election, Hillary Clinton, NEA, Schools #BATsAsk, #DemDebate, #LetTeachersTeach, #StandUpForPublicSchools, 2016, AFT, Arne Duncan, Bernie Sanders, common core, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, Debate, Democratic, Democrats, education, education reform, Election, Hillary Clinton, John King, NEA, President, teachers

None.

Null.

Nada.

That’s how many questions CNN anchors asked presidential hopefuls about America’s public schools at the first Democratic Debate.

Imagine if Anderson Cooper and company had been silent on Climate Change. The candidates would have brought it up anyway. Bernie Sanders actually did talk about the threat to the environment when asked a question about national defense.

Imagine if moderators had no questions about gun violence. Candidates competed with each other to demonstrate which took a stronger stance against the National Rifle Association.

Imagine if no one asked about finance reform. On that stage each candidate tried to position his or herself as the new sheriff of Wall Street.

But when it comes to one of the most important issues of the day – our children’s struggling schools – the media apparently thought it was of no interest to the viewing public.

Admittedly both Hillary Clinton and Sanders briefly brought it up when asked about other things.

Clinton said we need universal pre-kindergarten and good schools. However, she neglected to say what those good schools would look like.

It’s almost like saying nothing at all. EVERYONE wants good schools – Even dunderheads like Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and Donald Trump! But their ideas of good schools differ greatly from that of most parents, teachers and students. McCharter schools for the poor and Cadillac campuses for the rich isn’t exactly what real progressives have in mind.

And universal pre-k? Great! But that’s kind of the flavor of the month. Who really disagrees that we should help toddlers prepare for school? It’s like asking, “Who wants ice cream?” in a room full of little kids on a hot day. EVERYONE wants ice cream – even the kids who are lactose intolerant!

Sanders took a second in a diatribe about social services to mention the need to fund schools. However, he didn’t say a thing about equity or if that funding would have strings attached. President Obama talked about funding schools, too, when he was running for president in 2008. Once he got into office those education dollars came at the cost of accepting untested and developmentally inappropriate Common Core State Standards. And equity meant closing poor schools to save them.

I wonder if CNN would have felt more pressure to ask even a single token education question if the largest national teachers unions hadn’t already endorsed Clinton. Both the American Federation of Teachers representing 1.5 million members and the National Education Association representing 3 million members have backed Clinton.

Well, leadership has. Member outreach, polling, even voting by the organizations largest representative boards has been almost entirely absent.

But now that teachers have been pigeonholed in Clinton’s camp, what’s the point of asking education questions? In the public eye educators have already chosen their candidate. Why would they need to hear Clinton’s thoughts on education policy? Why hear her opponents thoughts? Their minds are made up.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration continues to run roughshod over teachers concerns. For 7 years education professionals from all walks of life have complained about the administration’s failing school policies and its buffoonish education secretary Arne Duncan. But now that Duncan is leaving, the President replaces him with John King – ex-New York State Commissioner of Education who enraged parents so much he was run out of the state on a rail.

The media just doesn’t care about public education. Nine times out of ten if they even print a story about schools, it’s a puff piece spin doctoring a school reform policy that isn’t working, never has been working and is – in fact – making things much worse for our nation’s students. Otherwise it’s an expose of how teachers can’t make these horrendous policies work so its their fault and don’t even glance at the ballooning child poverty rate – that’s completely irrelevant to the issue of all these lazy teachers who can’t be fired because we’d have to prove they’re bad first.

And what of the candidates? Do they care about public education?

The Democrats say they do and then zip their lips. They might make positive noises about preschool or universities – especially when it comes to funding. But they have next to nothing to say about K-12 schools. When the issue comes up, they deflect to toddlers or the college campus.

Meanwhile Republicans can’t contain their glee about mentioning teachers during debates and stump speeches. They want prospective voters to know that conservative types like them want to punch teachers in the face. During the first Republican debate, at least half of the candidates in that crowded boasted how much they stood up to the teachers unions.

And so there you have it, folks. That’s what passes for a substantive Democratic debate of all the important issues of the day. Now voters can make an informed decision in the primaries. There will be a few more debates, but they’ll probably be no different than this one.

And if you actually care about public schools, if you have children in the system, or derive your livelihood from it, or even if you just don’t want to live in a society of uneducated dummies – you’d be better served using Tarot cards to determine where the Democrats stand on this issue.

NOTE: This article also was quoted extensively on Diane Ravitch’s blog and published by Commondreams.org and on the Badass Teachers Association blog.

Do Democrats Give a Crap About Public Schools? John King as Next US Secretary of Education

October 3, 2015December 13, 2015 stevenmsinger Arne Duncan, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Election, John King, Politics, President, Schools #LetTeachersTeach, #StandUpForPublicSchools, Arne Duncan, Bernie Sanders, charter schools, Corporate Education Reform, education, education reform, election 2016, Hillary Clinton, John King, Obama, Politics, President, public schools, Secretary of Education

Meet the New Boss.

Same as the Old Boss.

Arne Duncan is out. John King is in.

It’s the kind of tone deaf decision we’ve come to expect from President Barack Obama on education matters.

We’ve put up with 7 years of Duncan’s buffoonery as U.S. Secretary of Education: A man with no practical knowledge of the field. A corporate functionary. A drone. A mouthpiece for all the worst ideas of the 1% to sabotage public schools and replace them with charters.

And who does Obama replace him with!? Former New York State Chancellor King!? A man who was almost run out of his state on a rail!? A man with – admittedly – more experience than Duncan but all of the worst kind.

King resigned his NY position in the throes of terrible publicity for his and NY Board of Regents’ foolish approval of an obviously fraudulent charter school run by an obviously fraudulent con man. He ignored and dismissed parents at education forums, refused to fix an education system that he, himself, destroyed and was met with the largest opt out movement in the country. Oh. And that education experience I spoke of – he spent three years teaching in a “no excuses” charter school with a high suspension rate.

And now King’s the top policymaker in the nation for public schools.

It’s hard to imagine a worse choice. The Koch Brothers? Donald Trump? An inanimate carbon rod!?

Lest we forget, this is a decision made by Democrats – the supposed saviors of education.

Progressives have been howling against Obama’s test-and-punish education policies since early in his first term. And now when this liberal lion has an opportunity to show what he’s learned, to demonstrate that he’s taking our concerns seriously, his response is a middle finger salute.

It’s revealing politically.

The Presidential Primaries are only a handful of months away. If the Democrats really wanted to court educators, the party would have put pressure on Obama to make a pick teachers might actually be able to stomach. After all, whoever the President picks will only have a year in office – not long enough to make any major changes one way or another. But at least the Democrats could make a show of listening to an important voting block.

Instead the Democrats have demonstrated their true colors. They don’t care about schools, teachers, parents or students. They figure we have no where else to turn. We’re a gimme. They don’t have to concede anything. We’ll vote for whoever the Democratic nominee is.

I am only one man. I belong to a lot of education groups, but I am speaking only for myself here when I say this: MY VOTE IS NOT A SURE THING.

I will not vote for just any Democrat over any Republican. No, I don’t see any of the GOP candidates as being good for education. But most of the Democrats are the same or almost the same.

If the Democrats don’t give me a candidate I can believe in, I will not vote Democrat. I will vote third party. Heck! I’ll write in “John Dewey” before I’ll vote for a faux progressive Democrat like Obama.

I know what some people will say. This is a wasted vote. We have to keep a seat at the table. We need someone who maybe someday might possibly do something just a little bit helpful.

And that’s exactly why we’re in the predicament we are now. We can’t keep voting for the lesser of two evils, because at the end of the day, we’re still voting for evil.

I am so sick of politicians who smile to my face and stab me in the back. If I’m going to vote, it will be for someone I believe in, and if a Republican bent on destroying public education wins, at least he’ll have the decency to be honest about it.

NOTE: This article also was published in the LA Progressive.

Teach for America Deletes Educator Counter-Narratives; Educators Repost EVERY SINGLE ONE!

September 29, 2015December 13, 2015 stevenmsinger Badass Teachers Association, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Schools, Teach for America, Teachers #LetTeachersTeach, #StandUpForPublicSchools, badass teachers association, Corporate Education Reform, education, education reform, Teach for America, teacher bashing, teachers

On Sept. 23, Teach for America (TFA) published an article on its Website about the “Badass Women of Teach for America.”

Many of the more than 56,000 members of the Badass Teachers Association (BATS) commented on this article.

A few days later, all comments were deleted and the ability to make any additional comments was disabled. TFA then published two additional article s about the comments BATS had made. The authors of these new articles then attempted to debunk what had been written about them but was too dangerous to be left for their readers to see for themselves.

The counter-narratives of hundreds of people had been erased. But as any good public school teacher will tell you – nothing that is posted on the Internet is ever lost.

Below is every comment made on the original TFA article.

And, yes, I mean –

EVERY. SINGLE. COMMENT.

COMMENTS:

Badass Teachers don’t Teach For Awhile, they earn valid
credentials and commit their lives to public service. They speak
out against sham operations like TFA that pretend to have the
neediest of children at heart, but which really deprive them of
skilled professional guidance. I earned my M.Ed degree in 1990,
the year TFA crawled out of a dark hole…how many TFAers who
began that year remain as active educators? Badass is as badass
does.
David Sudmeier,
Redmond Middle School
WA State Badass Teachers

Bad? Yes! Badass? Definitely not! While there are a few
exceptions, TFA sends “teachers” into classrooms completely ill
prepared for the realities of teaching. MANY quit before the end
of the year. Few make it more than 2 years. They are
disillusioned, overwhelmed, ineffective, and soon become very
angry about the propaganda that landed them in the horrible
situation they find themselves in.
JD

If TFA wants to stop the bashing — why not actually try and
improve your program rather than airily dismiss the criticisms? I
am a professor who regularly seeing her students hired for TFA –
and trust me — these kids that go on to TFA are not ready to
teach anybody anything. They are totally clueless and have no
idea about the outside world other than academia and upper
middle class suburbia. These are kids who have spent the past
four years grade grubbing and cheerleading and organizing frat
parties. They all say very clearly that they do this to get into law
school. And then they are expected to actually teach other
human beings on a daily basis? Hey TFA — why not put your
teachers in white middle class school districts and see what the
response would be. I’m pretty sure it would be negative. Why? No
one wants a 23 year old with no life experience other than
running sorority rush to teach their kids in second grade.
Alana

TFA is totally NOT’ badass’. If TFA were, it would require its
recruits to take several courses, practicums, supervised trial
teachers with experienced mentors and have them take the
appropriate certification exams. Shame on you.
Robin P.

Hahahaha, tried to co-opt our skills as teachers, largely
failed(ing), now trying to co-opt our skills as activists, FAILING!
You are NOT teachers, nor badasses. True teachers stay and
make a difference! WE are teachers and badasses!
Karen Adlum

Shame on you, TFA. Badass Teachers are those with years of
training, education and experience, not some wide-eyed kids
who are given five weeks of training, brainwashed with feel-good
propaganda, and promised more money to help pay off student
loan debts.
Karen

The badasses are the teachers who stick it out instead of using
teaching as a steppingstone to a career in administration or ed.
policy. I’ve known a few TFAers who have stuck around for the
long haul, but most have left after some pretty shaky years as
fledgling educators. The former are badasses, the latter are not.
Badass Veteran

Sorry, TFA…..but you’re not badass. You use teaching as a
stepping stone; you think 5 WEEKS of training prepares you for
the classroom; you don’t support your recruits; and, worst of all,
you ENCOURAGE them to use their newfound “leadership skills”
to the detriment of children everywhere. Good work.
A trained teacher

I think maybe there is a misunderstanding. This is about kids, not
celebrating ourselves or our personal adult successes. This is
supposed to be about children and communities, especially the
marginalized and disenfranchised. I’m sorry (really) that you are
offended. We are fighting for OUR (yours too) children and this
democratic way of life. It’s impossible for someone who lacks
experience overtime to see the big picture. It just is. Veteran
teachers have that.
A Teacher

TFA is as far from BadAss as you can get. First you co-opt our
professional status with a 5 week training course of inspirational
YouTube videos, now your’re trying to co-opt the name of an
organization that exists to oppose you and all other education
deformers. Get a real teaching degree, TFA, and then we’ll talk.
Linda Meo

You have got to be kidding. You’re “bad ass” because you can
teach based on a five-week training course? You’re not qualified
to teach three-year-olds. What you are doing is trying to destroy
the public education system of this country for your own personal
profit in game for your own personal profit and gain. And for that
you should be ashamed. And don’t be surprised that we have NO
respect much less appreciation for you. Quit trying to co-op the
badass teachers association, the real BAT’s who are trying to
save publication in this country.. Being a copycat only actually
gives credit to the real organization that you’re correctly
acknowledging does an incredibly much better job than you do.
JoAnna Chocooj, BAT

Wow, I could go to school for less than one semester and be
qualified to teach? Why aren’t we doing this for medicine?
Because you could never learn enough in one summer to safely
and properly diagnos and treat patients in one summer. Why do
you devalue education so much that you think we can properly
serve our students with just a basic understanding and limited
exposure to educational and developmental theory. That’s not
badass, that’s bad practice.
SCG

Getting paid a mid six-figure salary to participate in the neoliberal
assault on public education is far from badass. Basass implies
fighting against the powers that be; TFA is embedded in the
power structures that uphold racism and growing economic
inequality. Teach For America is a central cog in the
anti-democratic, racist machine working to privatize public
education. Their influence has severely impacted the teaching
profession and worsened the educational experiences and
opportunities for our neediest students. In addition, badass
means putting yourself at risk, but these women have by and
large personally profited from their work in the education
industrial complex.

I agree with the other comments on this website. This post is an
affront to all the hard-working teachers, activists, and justice
seekers who have risked financial and even bodily harm to fight
against all that TFA stands for. I’m stealing what others have said,
“TFA is not badass, it’s just bad.”
Katie O

TFA is not helping our kids, but rather hurting our great
educational system. Assuming that someone can train for 5
weeks and then teach is a complete nonsensical idea. Kids and
schools are more complex than 5 weeks could ever train one for.
Teaching is an ART and not everyone is cut out for it, particularly
but TFA people. Shame on Wendy Kopp for doing nothing but
trying to PROFIT from our kids! This is not a fast food job. It is a
career dealing with the most precious resources we have: our
children. Go flip burgers but leave our kids alone! Shame on
these profiteers!!!
Allyson

Wow. TFA folks are far from badass. Teasing is the hardest thing
I’ve ever done and I have energy and intellect for miles. I went to
six funerals of my students last year. I teach sixth grade. I have
been at it for about 10 years. They think they’re badass for
serving to? If this piece of so-called journalism called any further
up the corporate butt hole, it would be rubbing against the uvula
of TFA itself. After all, aren’t corporations people?
John Simms

Yes, I know I said teasing instead of teaching. That’s what
happens on a Sunday morning when you are on your way
to feed a family of five. A family, I might add, is not my own.
John Simms

You know what’s really Badass? Remaining a committed teacher
in the face of tremendous adversity. This is something rarely seen
amongst the ranks of those who are working as “teachers” for
TFA.
Rebekah L

If I had known all I had to do to be badass was to study for a few
weeks and act like I knew what I was doing, I could have saved
myself a whole lot of grief, time, and money. If you REALLY cared
about the kids and not your own egos, you’d actually get an
education instead of teaching kids that it’s okay to take short cuts
as long as you’re “making difference.”
Susan G

Oh, please! The term “badass” is fitting for members of the
Badass Teachers Association. TFA is NOT badass in any way,
shape, or form. Go co-opt someone else’s movement!
APaar

Aren’t the real bad asses the children whose bodies and futures
these careers were “fueled” by? (Your word choice)
I think this is the type of op-ed that drives the people trying to do
good within TFA completely nuts. It’s is straight out of the
appropriate, self-promote and leave playbook that TFA claims to
not subscribe to.

Also the parts about TFA being more persecuted than any other
organization sound privileged as hell.
There are great stories in here. I deeply respect Packnett’s work.
But putting her next to Cunningham is really gross. This whole
framing is disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
Xian

TFA is NOT “badass”. You are part of the corporate education
reform movement which Badass Teachers are fighting everyday.
You do not stand with teachers who have gone through
extensive training and have worked for years to help our children
to surmount the obstacles they face in their lives through
education provided by professionals. We are the long term
committed, tested by time and by the efforts of educational
deformers to tear down the teaching profession, public education
and community.
EGlynn

TFA stands for Teach For Awhile. Not doing our students any
good. Most TFA’s are just “warm bodies” for one or two years and
nothing more. They are teaching to pay off their loans.
Richard Martin

You are not “badass.” That label is for real teachers, who stand
with teachers. TFA are pawns for the coporate take-over of
education, most of whom never teach more than a few years to
have their loans forgiven and pad their resume. Shame.
David Topitzer

We can’t forget that our public education system was never
created to educate all children. Thus, it’s not broken; it’s doing
what it was created to do. If what activist and social critic James
Baldwin noted is true, “Education for whites is indoctrination.
Education for blacks is subjugation,” then the traditional public
system is colonial and TfA represents neo-colonialism. TfA is
entering its DNA into the education system at various levels. If
they were there to liberate my urban students, i would support
them, but since no TfA member I met (male or female) are
themselves liberated, I can’t. Wendy Kopp has no clue she’s just
got lots of social capital and money. The only purpose of the use
of “bad” in BAW by TfA is that they want to be “hip” and “cool” SO
bad.
John

I think woman achieving and being successful is great for all
women. I am curious to find out however how many TFA alum are
still teaching 5,10, and 15+ years versus how many leave
education to persue other fields. Real success for TFA will be
achieved when your great alumni continue long term the noble
profession of teaching.
K

Badass? Dumbass…….TFA needs to fold. You’re already folding
education.
Ron J

Who the hell is TFA to call themselves Badass? They are the
scabs in the education-field. They are the recipient of hedge fund
destroyers of public ed. They are the garbage that rich, mostly
white, entitled brats go to in order to move up the ladder and on
the backs of the urban and rural poor.
Myles Hoenig

Who inspires me to badass? My mother a career teacher who
didn’t receive 5 weeks of training, teach for 2 years then leave
the classroom to go to the upper echelons of your organization
to get big bucks while leaving countless children and an entire
generation with a substandard education. A career teacher who
dedicates her whole life to improving outcomes for students and
constantly educates herself to do that job better, NOW THATS
BADASS. I think you have the definition wrong.
Proud daughter

Teach for America … little more than camp counselors without the
pine trees on their shirts.

Imagine for a moment the instant promotion of butchers to
surgeons … or deck builders to bridge engineers. Imagine Cub
Scout troop leaders as military generals … or menu makers as the
next classic authors.

There’s something so odd about teaching … and it’s seldom
ending grading that snatches away your Sundays, faculty and
department meetings, parent confabs, planning, gathering things
you need and resources you want. Colleague exchanges and
innovative thinking. Blend in some school politics and the usual
work-place agita … and maybe some deep intrigue at times. Oh,
and don’t forget your family … those folks you bump into when
you’re half dressed. They want a piece of you, too.

I’m certain that five week preparation period offered by the
Teach for America leadership is gonna arm those greenhorn
teachers to the max? If that’s true, I’m only four or five hundred
practice swings from the major leagues. When do I get my
contract and uniform?

I’m not angry that people assume they can do my job. I’m
amused. You know, I’ve been thinking … wondering what I might
do when I’m done in the classroom. I think I might dabble in some
surgery … or maybe aeronautics. Looks easy from where I sit.
Pluto … here I come!
Denis Ian

Great propaganda. Read this, also http://www.alternet.org
/education/teach-america-bait-and-switch-youll-be-making- difference-youre-making-excuses
Bobbi

Excuse me. Public education teachers are badass! No one with a
5 week training period should even think about calling
themselves a badass. Unless it was a typo and you meant, Teach
for America is “bad,” for education. And anyone who uses TFA is
an ass! That I would agree too.
Paula Garfield

“It’s no accident that Teach For America has fueled the careers of
so many extraordinary women—it’s by design.”

WHAT?!?!? Use your critical thinking skills you honed in college
and think about that. The design is that you go into a
marginalized school where parents can’t or don’t know to
complain about the random (albeit book smart in another subject
besides education) unprepared person teaching their kids. And
YOU are then ‘fueled’ by and off the backs of disadvantaged
children! to then leave and become individually ‘extraordinary’ in
another career. And you admit it. You HIGHLIGHT it! You are
using these most deserving children, families and communities
for your own gain. It’s actually quite shameful. And the damage
left behind you wouldn’t know.

Teaching is about uplifting children and developing productive,
happy and empowered citizens in a democratic society for the
LONG HAUL not a spring board for some ‘badass’ career. So sad
for kids, families and our democracy actually and definitely NOT
BADASS.

Badass teachers know the depth of knowledge and experience
OVERTIME that is needed for BADASSNESS. They are committed
public servants NOT ever thinking about personal gain. Sorry,
good people, TFA is not anywhere in the realm of Badass.
A Teacher

How very typical. You claim you are teachers , after only 5 weeks
of training. Then as you ‘donate’ two years of time in the
classroom to pad your resume, you claim you are “a badass
woman”. NO! A Badass Teacher is one who has earned
credentials through 4 years of university undergrad, hones their
craft while teaching by extending their credits to include behavior
management, motivation, child development, collaborative
learning environments while likely juggling a home and a family
of their own. A real BADASS Teacher is not afraid to examine the
behind the scenes manipulations of a ‘reformer’ agenda. You are
all PAWNS – People Allowing Whiny Newbies to destroy Public
Schools. <o>
Jan

Being an underprepared instructor drone who is not committed
to the education profession or staying in the classroom and
perfecting your craft is NOT badass. It’s just bad.
Steven Singer

Is Katie Cunningham taking full responsibility for the race baiting
ad that is running in New York right now?
And, to say that these women are not self promoting when they
are in the news regularly is disingenuous at best.
NYGAL

My favorite quote ” It’s received a fair degree of attention for
organizational effectiveness” – fair is as good as marginal!!! You
are marginally correct – TFAers are Bad…case in point – you can’t
even come up with your own slogan – you have to steal it from
others…
Angela Reynolds

As an educator, I find this article insulting to my chosen
profession of 21 years!! I chose education and began teaching
after completing my B.A. in Education and my master’s degree. I
am currently working on my doctorate in Education while I am still
in the classroom! TFA teachers, I challenge you to spend more
than one or two years in a classroom. I challenge you to join a
district as a person with a degree who wants to teach, and I want
you to apply for alternative certification, a process that takes
about 2-3 years. I challenge you, as a new teacher, to join the
local teacher union, so that you can understand the importance
of banding together. I want you to explain to me how you
differentiate in a class of 27 students–where you have 12 of them
with IEPS, 2 ESOL students, and 6 students with 504s. I want to
challenge you to one year in my classroom at my high school or
ANY Title One school in our country. I want you to be there for
the football games, dances, lockdown drills, medical
emergencies, and Homecoming Spirit Weeks. I pity you, because
you will NEVER have the satisfaction of seeing the younger
siblings of families come through your classes, you will never
have the joy of celebrating school milestones, and you will never
have the respect of the community because “she left after a year
or two”. And you will never….be Badass. That takes courage and
commitment.
Cheryl Vinson

Helping to destroy the public school system does not make TFA
employees badass; it just makes them pawns for corporations
that want to turn education into a for-profit operation, to the
detriment of the students and their communities. Being used is
the polar opposite of badass—they should be embarrassed, not
proud.
Peggy ^O^

Why don’t you go establish a settlement house in a slum
somewhere instead of writing PR like this?
Splendidanomaly

As a Bad Ass Teacher(BAT), I am highly insulted as a woman that
you are naming these TFA’s Bad Ass Women. They are not the
only women juggling a Career (not a job), families and everything
else it entails. I have been doing so for the last 25 years while
battling the decimation of public education including the attack of
TFA on the teaching profession!
Cynthia Pelosi, M.S.

These are NOT teachers. Teachers are trained for more than 5
weeks. I find it insulting that TFA keeps putting these untrained
people in the classroom and calling them teachers. Teachers
have the backround and training to understand how to develop
the entire child…..not just follow a script. Why don’t they do this in
other professions? Why do lawyers, doctors, accountants,
plumbers, or anyone need training or college.? These people
think with 5 weeks training they can do this important job as well
as the trained professionals!!!! Sad ….. very sad.
Daisy

Anyone who falls for this propaganda has their head in the sand.
TFA has been called out for what it is: An opportuni$tic grab to
displace experienced, qualified teachers with 2 year ambitiou$
young career climbers who have no intention of staying in the
classroom. Well, I hope you realize that you just abandoned
Johnny, again, and helped destabilize a community’s school
along the way. Nice resume padding, $cab.
Erin Rafferty

Most TFA-temps can’t handle 1 year in a tough classroom. TFA’ers
aren’t badass they’re dropouts.
Joan Grim

Teach For America (TFA) is a Dumb Ass Scam (DAS).
Chris

I don’t think Badass means what you think it means….unless you
think it means hopeless posers who have NO idea how to teach
with a mere 5 weeks of training. Badass teachers have years of
preparations. Badass teachers advocate for and promote their
students, not themselves. You people are disgusting.
BASS

Badass Teachers Teach for Life
RBA

Imposters.
Scabs.
Pretenders.
You people have absolutely no right to stand in front of a
classroom of children.
John Christopher Nolan

Teaching and corporate America are not compatible. How dare
TFA try to Kopp(sic) the name. Bad Ass women? More like
Gordon Gekko, greedy poseurs. Hypocrites of the lowest
echelon.
Char Ashton

If by “transforming the landscape,” you mean the strip mining of
the education reform movement, then yes, the landscape is
“transformed.” No, it is not pretty. If you think that makes you
badass, than you are very confused as to what a real badass
teacher is.
FLBadassTeacher

No amount of propaganda can make me believe that TFA Corp
members are teachers.
Another Real Teacher!

Badass Teachers are in the profession for the long run, not for
resume building. We are there for the kids long after you TFA
employees move on and your charter schools shut down. Stop
pretending to compare yourselves to real classroom
professionals.
David Burks

Just wondering if you would also promote dentists, doctors,
nurses or lawyers who trained for 5 weeks instead of the 5+
years a true professional would undergo? Will you put you teeth,
surgery, hospital care, or legal case in the hands of a summer
trainee? Stop belittling the true expertise of a properly trained
educator. Teaching is NOT glorified babysitting. I believe my
library offers a babysitting certification in about the same time as
your ‘TFA’ training. Shameful!
ProudProfessionalEducator

Stealing, by imitating, the name of another group, namely the
BadAss Teachers (BATS), is unethical.
Sensei

Nice try Wendy. There is nothing badass about TFA. Now BadAss
Teachers know how to truly reform education in this country. Your
scabs are trying to help those who would destroy public
education and leave our most vulnerable children behind.
Laura Fleming

Basically Awaiting White (collar job)
Boldly Accomplishing What?
5yearstoyour5weeks

It’s telling that the accomplishments highlighted in the article deal
with actions outside the classroom. Figures.
Real Teacher

Badass Teachers are college trained professionals. I put in 20 ye,
with an education masters, plus National Board. TFA are naive
kids that damage the community with their cheap, inexperienced
labor then leave to say they worked with the poor. TFA is Teach
For A while.
Lucia, Real Badass Teacher

YOU CALL YOURSELVES TEACHERS ALSO,YOU CAN BELIEVE
WE ALL KNOW YOU ARE NOT BADASS TEACHERS BECAUSE
BADASS TEACHERS KNOW THE REAL TRUTH!
Wanda Ryals

TFA employees (I can’t call them teachers when the organization
calls them corps members and the organization doesn’t think
they are, either) don’t deserve the label “badass.” They may work
hard and raise families, but they were never as dedicated to their
students as the many thousands of real teachers who, knowing
the long hours and low pay, still went through the full education
program to be fully qualified as teachers and who have
dedicated decades to teaching. Temps for Awhile get this
attitude of superiority and idea that they can move into an area,
impose rigid discipline and scripted instruction, and leave after
two years to start their “real” careers. Even your founder, Wendy
Kopp, admits the deception. In 2011 she said, “We’re a leadership
development organization, not a teaching organization. I think if
you don’t understand that, of course it’s easy to tear the whole
thing apart.” Yet, she named it “Teach for America.” Why not,
“Leadership Development for America”? I call that “deceptive,”
not “Badass!”
Lisa ^O^

TFA is not and will never be a badass organization. The women
of TFA are not badass. They are temporary school personnel
committed only for two years of “teaching” despite the lack of
teacher training and skill obtained by credentialed teachers. TFA
takes money from public school districts as a headhunter would
for providing temporary, untrained personnel who will be gone as
soon as they begin to develop skills. That is not badass, but
greedy, shortsighted, and asinine.
Karen Rosa

Bad Ass Teachers aren’t “fueling” a career by teaching for two
years, we teach for a lifetime! TFA recruits are being terribly
deceived by articles like this. I hope they realize they have been
duped…students deserve career teachers. ^0^
Donna Mace ^O^

Wondering since TFA is so much more enlightened than us
properly trained EDUCATORS, why could you not come up with a
better moniker for your women than bad ass? Does seem odd
that you wanted to be called by the same name as us, so called
no good teachers who actually got a degree in education and
have put our hearts and souls into every precious child we teach
YEAR AFTER YEAR……meaning 10, 15, 20, 30 years….not an
“activity” to add to our resume for that “big job” in a couple of
years.
Badass Certified, Highly Qualified,
Highly Effective Trained Teacher

Perhaps the likes of Teach for America will go down in history as
one of the vulture capitalists’ most damaging privatization
enterprises to US public schools. The treatment of children as
commodities is weak and inhumane, not Badass. Feigning highly
qualified status is weak, not Badass. Taking jobs away from truly
highly qualified professionals is weak, not Badass. Using
propaganda to hide the truth of the impacts of poverty is weak,
not Badass. Going along with TFA’s cultish indoctrination without
using critical thinking (i.e. How can I possibly be highly qualified
to teach our neediest children after only 5 weeks of training
when it takes more training than 5 weeks to be licensed to be a
nail technician in a salon?) is weak, not Badass. Becoming an
insider to promote corporate propaganda in other leadership
roles when you’ve seen the ineffectiveness for personal gain and
profit is weak, not Badass. Protecting the profits of the 1% while
feigning good works for needy children is weak, not Badass.
Teach for America is a sham, not Badass. The harm done by TFA
and all who were complicit in this parasitic organization will go
down in history as personal weakness and unprofessional
conduct, as greedy and shameful behavior, not Badassery.
Susan DuFresne

You are not “Badass” at all. Maybe you should change to
“Wimpass.” Sounds a lot better and matches the crappy fake
teacher crap you promote.
Glenn

Sorry, the Badass moniker is taken by real Badass Teachers.
Don’t co-op the name, style and message of legitimate, highly
trained teachers – it’s just a sleazy move.
Joanne OBrien

Badass you are not.
Bad, edutourists, teach for a while, those who use students as
resume bullets, eduprenuers, fake, policy writers, wanna be a
politician, teacherprenuers and teacher wanna be are the correct
adjectives for you.
StandingProud

TFA are basically scabs, they teach for two years to pay for part
of a college education!
They are not committed to our children, they are committed to
lowering their student loan payments!!!
Food Safety Chef

Only a person from TFA (without teaching experience) would think
what they do is “badass”. You’re a joke and thankfully, despite all
of your self promotional efforts, the public is now aware of what a
sham you really are.
Proud Public School Parent Against TFA

Badass? Not a chance. A real badass ^0^ teacher knows that it
takes more than five weeks to develop her craft and years to
become a fully formed professional. Also, real badasses don’t
feel the need to promote themselves; they advocate for their
students. Real badasses study for years to be the best educator
they can be. Real badasses are in it for the long haul, not for a
few years. Please stop trying to be something you’re not…you are
not badasses
20 Year Badass ^O^

Obviously, the author of this article has a bias against real
teachers. Who would want their child to be taught by a poorly
trained college student? This is not OK. In no other profession
would you want a newbie working with you or your kids.
The idea that anyone can teach with just a little bit of training is
what’s wrong with education in this country. Do we want really
want a bunch of untrained, low-paid drones teaching our kids
through computers? Free thought, creativity, and a real zest for
learning would be casualties of this plan.
Shame on you for your fluff-piece!
Irving Milbury

You STOLE the name of our major teaching group. Some things
beggar belief–that some people believe throwing a kid with 5
weeks training into a high risk environment is a recipe for
success, for instance, or that the same people think it is okay to
steal a concept name that doesn’t belong to them and never will.
Shaking my head, TFA. Shaking my head.
Mr. Jay

Treating poor students and students of color as stepping stones
to your “better” career is not badass…it is selfish and morally
reprehensible.
Lynn

Wow – really? You can’t even come up with something original for
female TFA workers? And yes, workers because they are not
trained, highly qualified professionals, like teachers are. They are
pretenders and led to believe by an organization that they are
being well-trained in 5 weeks to withstand the demands of
modern teaching. Which is just like you trying to use “badass”
that already belongs to the Badass Teachers Association –
pretender.
C Andrews

You remind me of a group that co-opted the Children’s’ Defense
League’s motto, “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” ! Real teachers go
through 2 to 5 years of training as teachers, real educators jump
through hoops TFA doesn’t even begin to address! To quote the
Childrens’ Defense League, “my boat is so small and the ocean is
so big”. Please don’t steal from real Bad Ass Teachers and we
won’t pretend to be nurses or paralegals or whatever other
career choices that take 2-5 years past the B.A.
Cynthia Mann

Not Cool… you have NOT EARNED the right to be “Badass” until
you earn your TEACHING DEGREE.
KAT

I am waiting for a Dentists for America. I can drill and fill cavities
in 5 weeks and tell other dentists how to do things more
effectively.
Robby G

Why do you need to “borrow” the essence of the name of an
actual Badass organization like Badass Teachers? A group of
highly trained REAL educators who despise the very thought of a
crash course for people to become teachers. Could it be that you
hope to take advantage of people who may not be aware of
TFA’s tactics? Could it be that you’re scared of the power and
influence that real BATs hold? I think so.
Real Badass Teacher

You are neither “Bad Ass” nor highly qualified. And worse, you
take the place of a teacher who is not only Bad Ass and highly
qualified, BUT who also plans to make it a life’s work. Shame!
Artmisse

http://www.alternet.org/education/teach-america-bait-and-switch- youll-be-making-difference-youre-making-excuses
John teacher

YOU ARE NOT BADASS. HORSE’S ASS, FOOL ASS AND GREEDY
ASS, THAT’S WHAT TFA IS. YOU CAN’T CALL YOURSELF
BADASS WITH ANY DEGREE OF CREDIBILITY IF YOUR GOAL IS
TO DESTROY THE PROFESSION OF TEACHING AND TURN IT
INTO A PART TIME GIG WHILE YOU’RE WAITING TO GET A REAL
JOB.
Michael Dominguez

TFA is dumbass, not badass. Anyone willing to believe that
inexperienced and poorly trained people who are in and out of
schools are somehow changing education in America for the
better is seriously confused. TFA is a private entity being used to
help privatize our country’s public education system. While TFA
recruits may put their hearts into their jobs, they just can’t
compete with a traditionally trained teacher. Edreformers tout
TFA but are the very reason there is a teacher shortage. If you
want to teach, don’t be a dumbass, go to school and get a
teaching degree.
Phil Sorensen

Holy neocolonialism, Batman! Could you be any more transparent
in your attempt to appropriate the badassery of the Badass
Teachers Association? This is pretty much what we expect from
an organization devoted to dismantling what’s left of public
education in support of a neoliberal corporate agenda.
Will Valenti

You are not bad ass. 5 weeks does not prepare you at all to teach
in education. I have taught for almost ten years and I have met
only two TFA worth anything. Most are simple a body in a class,
not knowledgable and certainly not a teacher. Your program is
NOT a solution, it is part of the problem. Shame on you for
pretending to be teachers!
Kelly

You are not bad ass. Far from it. You are part of the problem, not
the solution. 5 weeks of training is nothing. BATs work hard to
make changes in the system that benefit our students. We are
there everyday. Year after year. Becoming part of the community.
Your people don’t last in education. Your program is a joke.
Teresa Brown

SHAME ON YOU!! Claiming to be something you are when you
aren’t! You’re trying to take jobs from PROFESSIONALLY trained &
licensed teachers.
Mary

This is not even teaching, let alone badass teaching! Stop lying.
You have summer camp training at best. You are changing the
landscape of public education by harming the very children who
need the most stability. The real ‘badass’ teachers devote their
lives to their students, parents and communities. You use them to
further your NON educational career. How dare you call
yourselves teachers? You are destroyers of public education.
Shame on you.
Lesa Wilbert

Professional education, experience, and hard-won expertise are
badass. Long -term commitment and professional development
are badass. Pretending to expertise while blocking true
educators from jobs is not badass. Thinking that five weeks
creates a teacher is sheer ignorant folly.
Prof.teacher

Seriously you have 5 weeks of training to be a teacher. You are
not badass. ^o^
^O^

Forgetting the fact that you lifted the notion of being a badass
teacher directly from an established group of actual badass
teachers (and you know you did), this whole post smacks of fake
and flimsy rhetoric and degrades the common sense of intelligent
women.

My friend’s daughter fell for your “badass” pitch. She lasted a day
in New Orleans. A day. She realized immediately that she had
absolutely no support and was not prepared for the job that you
need a 4-5 year degree to do.
TFA= Teach For Awhile.
Al

This article is such ridiculous drivel! Who in their right mind
WANTS to entrust the education of their children to a person who
was trained for only 5 weeks?! While standing by and
watching/listening to HIGHLY QUALIFIED public school teachers
who are VERIFIABLY BADASS be villainized! This TFA program
has been used to de-professionalize the teaching profession, to
attack public school educators, and to fuel the drive for
ed-reformers to privatize and charter-ize public schools (oh
surprise! The same program’s advisory board the author of this
piece serves is driven toward ed-reform! I wonder if she also
knows & loves Michelle Rhee). Then, after 2 years or so, the
“teachers” from TFA leave teaching to pursue a different career
entirely! Though the examples listed above are family-related,
there are but six of them. All this TFA garble really tells me is that
there is a dangerous lack of knowledge of what it takes to truly
be a badass. Shameful.
A Highly Qualified Public School Teacher

Tfa is far from Badass! 5 weeks of training is a joke. Nothing can
replace the college training, internships in schools during college,
and student teaching that real teachers go through. No to
mention the continuing education in graduate school and the
years of experience that go into becoming a great teacher.
Teachem

Thinking you can become a teacher in 5 weeks is far from
badass. Going through a real education program and devoting
your life to teaching children – that is badass!
Marla Kilfoyle

If TFA was so great, why are white affluent districts standing in
line to hire these “teachers”? I guess if you are poor or a person
of color you don’t need a professional teacher! Instead, any hack
with 5 weeks of training looking to beef up their resume will do!
^o^
Eve Shippens

TFA=another attack on the public schools. Destroying truly
dedicated teachers who are getting forced out of the profession
(a profession is field of work you prepare for seriously and work
in for a prolonged period of time). All as a cheap alternative.
Charmbla

This is not badass, how dare you try to co-opt the badass theme!
Come at me ten, fifteen years from now when you’ve earned
comparable qualifications (not the ones handed to you), and
stayed in the classroom and not used is as a jump to the
boardroom.
TFA is pathetic. Gl
eelo

Putting TFA clones into staff office in the House of
Representatives is the moral equivalent of stuffing a ballot box;
Putting people with 5 weeks training into inner city classrooms is
gentrification and is the moral equivalent of breaking and
entering; calling yourself badass is a joke. No one is laughing.
sue

You are not badass. You are destroying public education with
dirty money.
^O^

TFA=Teach for awhile 5 weeks of summer training do not make
for a highly trained teacher, but a babysitter. School systems pay
TFA per placement – how much $? The money would be better
spent on hiring qualified, trained teachers who choose teaching
as a career, not a resume building experience. It takes years to
become a master teacher. How will the two-year churn of teacher
turnover with TFA teachers benefit the schools they work in?
NOVAOptOut

Hope that TFAers who read this post are aware of how dishonest
and derivative this BAW idea is. If I hadn’t been so before and I
were a TFAer I would finally be humiliated by being a member of
TFA. Is there anyone reading our comments who is puzzled?
Well, if you are one such person figure it out.
ann

Badass? For how long? 2 years? Then on to another career
where you make twice as much and talk about how you tried to
help poor minorities at some cocktail party? Please. Teaching is
not for weak or for people who give up on it.
JSmom

You are not in any way, shape, or form badass. 5 weeks of
training does not equal a REAL teacher.
^o^ Maggie Coffinet, one badass teacher and proud member of
the Badass Teachers Association

“These women are so badass that they don’t have time for
self-promotion;…..” followed by a page of promotion? I am
thinking that this blatant co-opted, copy-cat messaging is a sign
of desperate times.
Cindy Hamilton

Badass??? Really??? 5 week training course and you don’t make
a career out of education you use it as a stepping stone for
another job that pays better. How “badass” is that? There is no
“love” of the job, “love” for the children, no true calling…REAL
BAD ASS TEACHERS have degrees 4 and 5 years long with
Master Degrees to boot…we do what we do for decades in the
classrooms…talk to me when you’ve been in the classroom as
long as I have! I have been in college learning HOW to teach
longer than most of your members have been teaching in
classrooms! THAT’S BADASS!
One seriously Badass Teacher

Pathetic Imitation is the pathetically sincerest form of pathetic
flattery. or something . . . heh heh. I mean, this just beats all!
Pathetic. Se also https://www.facebook.com/groups
/BadAssTeachers/
Bert Downs

These women aren’t badass. They are exploiting the poor,
compromising public education and responsible for putting the
most untrained, temporary teachers into our most underserved
schools. Not badass – just self-serving.
Pamela Casey Nagler

Are you trying to co opt the language of the Badass Teachers
movement? Five week trained scabs are not bad ass nor
teachers. Nice try but we aren’t fooled.
Ro Jensen

NOTE: This article also was published on the Badass Teachers Association blog.

You Can’t Win a Rigged Game – Standardized Tests as “Proof” of Failure

September 19, 2015December 13, 2015 stevenmsinger Budget, Common Core, Corbett, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Education, PA Core, Pennsylvania, Standardized Testing, Toxic Testing #LetTeachersTeach, #StandUpForPublicSchools, annual testing, Budget, common core, Corbett, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, PA Core, Pennsylvania, public schools, school funding, standardization, standardized testing, standards

One of my dearest high school friends was a bit of a doofus.

Who am I kidding? So was I!

One of our favorite things to do after school was plop on the coach and play shoot ‘em up video games. “Smash TV” was a particular favorite.

We’d bob and weave while clutching controllers and rapidly jamming our thumbs on the buttons.

And at such times, we‘d talk.

No great philosophical problems were solved during these mid-afternoon gaming sessions. We’d talk trash, dissing each other’s gaming skills, bragging about our own, and occasionally quizzing each other with trivia on a shared topic of interest.

We both loved movies, so my buddy used to shout out cinematic quotations and ask me to name where they came from.

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

“Luke, I am your father!”

“Go ahead, punk. Make my day!”

None of these famous quotes made my buddy’s list. He preferred lines like these:

“Run!”

“Look out!”

“Holy S&*t!”

As you can imagine, I rarely got any of them right.

I’d laugh, punch him in the arm good-naturedly and go on shooting virtual enemies.

It was good dumb fun. But now – more than two decades later – my students are forced to take my buddy’s quiz – and if they don’t pass, the government is threatening to shut down their schools and fire me, their teacher.

No, learners don’t have to identify impossible movie quotes. Instead, they’re forced to answer impossibly bad multiple choice questions. But the results are pretty much the same.

In my home state, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) and the Keystone Exams are high stakes versions of my buddy’s moronic quiz. The purpose isn’t to fairly assess: it’s to stump as many kids as possible.

And it’s working. For the fourth year in a row, student test scores have declined statewide. Previously, students had been doing relatively well. Why the change?

It began with budget cuts. The legislature slashed almost $1 billion every year in school funding. That means higher class sizes, less teachers, fewer electives, tutoring, nurses, services, etc. And districts like mine weren’t exactly drowning in money to begin with.

Students now have less resources, therefore they can’t prepare as well for the tests.

So what did the legislature do? Did our lawmakers fix the problem by putting back the money they had repurposed as gifts to the natural gas industry?

Heck no! They made the tests even more unnecessarily difficult.

As a result, the steady decline in test scores this year fell off a cliff!

After all, this was the first year in which the Commonwealth fully aligned every question of its mandatory testing with the Pennsylvania Core Standards – which are similar, but not identical to the Common Core standards adopted in other states.

Proficiency rates in grades 3 through 8 dropped by an average of 35.4 percent in math and 9.4 percent in English language arts on the PSSA. Nearly half of all seventh and eighth graders dropped an entire proficiency level in math in just one year.

If I made up a test like this in my own classroom, gave it to my students and got results like these, my first assumption would be that there was something horribly wrong with the test. I must have messed something up to fail so many students! Teachers are always on the lookout for unclear or bad questions on their self-created exams. The for-profit corporations that create our state-mandated tests? Not so much.

Though state Department of Education officials acknowledge the continued decline in scores, they insist problems will work themselves out in subsequent years – as if a 4-year trend is just an anomaly. Move along. Nothing to see here, folks.

My students used to make impressive gains on the tests. My principal stopped by today to give me the scores for my current students and those I taught last year. No surprise. Very few passed.

Are my students now lazier and less intelligent than those I taught four years ago? No. Students who scored well before the budget cuts, often score badly now.

Am I a worse teacher? Absolutely not. I have the same skills I did then. I spend the same amount of time at school – maybe more.

So what changed in my classroom? Lack of reconnaissance.

Teachers like myself used to know exactly what was expected of students on these assessments. We had plenty of materials with which to prepare them. Now the exams change every year – and I don’t mean just the individual questions, I mean what is tested!

Back in the day, when my buddy first shouted out, “Run!” and asked me which movie it came from, I had no idea. But after he did it long enough, I’d start to anticipate him. I’d learn that he was thinking of James Cameron’s “The Terminator.”

That’s how the PSSA’s used to be. Teachers knew how the test makers wanted kids to answer. And we could prepare them to do so. The tests didn’t accurately assess student learning even then. It was a game, but at least it was more fair.

Let’s be honest. These tests have never been particularly good. You can’t honestly expect to assess higher order thinking skills on a multiple choice test. Basic skills, maybe. But anything complex simply cannot be measured in this manner. We’ve known that for over a century!

It’s like my buddy’s movie quiz. I have little doubt that someone really did shout “Run!” in “The Terminator.” However, that same line probably appears in at least a dozen more action movies. There’s no way to determine a single correct answer. And shouting out a different quote instead like “Look out!” doesn’t help either.

So please stop the talk about “Rigor.” We’re not raising standards. We’re changing them. My buddy found a new bunch of movies from which to shout out impossible quotes. That’s all.

Anyone who wants to argue validity to these new test questions has to leap a host of hurdles to accomplish his goal.

First, one would have to prove PA Core – and by extension Common Core – Standards actually improve student learning. Good luck. It’s never been done and all the evidence is against you.

Second, one would have to gain access to an individual year’s worth of test questions. Again, good luck. They’re corporate property. The public is not allowed to see the questions. If a principal, student or teacher were to copy a question or snap a photo of a test, they could be subject to prosecution in a court of law.

Such a lack of transparency in government is a sure sign of malfeasance.

It’s almost impossible to avoid certain conclusions about this whole process. Standardized testing is designed to fail students – just like my buddy’s movie quiz was designed to stump me.

These tests constitute fake proof of inadequacy. They attempt to “prove” our public schools are failing and should, therefore, be replaced by private corporations – maybe even by subsidiaries of the same for-profit companies that make and grade these tests!

When my buddy unfairly stumped me, we both knew it was a joke. We’d laugh and play another video game.

But there’s nothing funny about this when it’s perpetrated by the state and federal government.

Pennsylvania’s standardized test scores are a farce just like the scores in every state and territory throughout the country. They’re lies told by corporations, permitted and supported by lawmakers, and swallowed whole by the media and far too much of the public.

We always seem on the verge of waking up. Tomorrow we will stop the state-sanctioned abuse of children by the testing industry. Tomorrow we’ll take responsibility for this sick system we allow.

But when will tomorrow come? I’m tired of waiting.

NOTE: This article also was quoted extensively on Diane Ravitch’s blog and published in full on the Badass Teachers Association blog.

Why Were So Many Education Reformers Bad Students?    

September 13, 2015September 27, 2015 stevenmsinger Bill Gates, Budget, Campbell Brown, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Politics, School Funding, Schools, Scott Walker, Teacher Tenure, Teachers #LetTeachersTeach, #StandUpForPublicSchools, Bill Gates, Campbell Brown, charter schools, common core, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, Politics, public schools, school funding, school vouchers, Scott Walker, standardization, standardized testing, standards, teacher bashing

Bad students often hate school.

Not exactly shocking, I know.

But perhaps more surprising is the pattern of low, sloppy or inconsistent academic achievement by so many of those adults who consider themselves education reformers, particularly corporate school reformers.

Our ideas of school are certainly formed during our years in it. Those working so diligently to destroy the public school system and reshape it to resemble the business model are so often people who didn’t fit in. They earned low grades or only excelled in subjects they really liked. Perhaps school failed them or perhaps they failed school. There’s no way to know for sure since school records are almost always kept private. But details do trickle through and display a clear pattern – a pattern that certainly gives the appearance of an ulterior motive.

Are these former bad students more interested in fixing the perceived problems they see with the system? Or are they consciously or unconsciously seeking revenge against a system that found them to be inadequate?

Take Scott Walker.

The Wisconsin Governor-cum-Presidential candidate has been one of the most virulent enemies of public education and public school teachers in the past decade.

But when he was a lowly student, he wasn’t anywhere near the head of the class. His grade school years are mostly shrouded in mystery, but his college career is ablaze in controversy.

He claims to have been a solid C-student with a 2.59 grade point average. Contemporaries say it was closer to a 2.3.

“I had some classes I was more interested in than others, I suppose,” he admits.

In any case, college wasn’t for him. He attended Marquette University for almost four full years before dropping out. He only had a year or more to go before earning a bachelors degree.

Why did he quit? Numerous contemporaries allege he was expelled for cheating in student government. Walker says he simply accepted a full-time job and had to devote his time there.

The facts are these: Walker unsuccessfully ran for student body president with a tumultuous campaign. He was found guilty of campaigning a week early thereby losing campaign privileges at one facility and a day of campaigning at another.
When the student paper endorsed his opponent, the edition mysteriously vanished from the stands. Students reported seeing Walker staff taking almost all of the papers and replacing them with campaign literature against his opponent.

An investigation was conducted but the university refuses to release it saying the results are either private or have been destroyed.

However, the university denies that Walker was ever in bad standing or that he had been expelled.

The matter could easily be cleared up if Walker released his academic records to the public, but unlike most Presidential candidates of either major political party, he refuses to do so. (All while continuing to criticize President Barrack Obama for not releasing a birth certificate that the President clearly released to the public.)

Not exactly student of the year. Nor would the preacher’s son ever win “Most Ethical” in the student superlative section of his college yearbook.

It’s easy to see why someone who had such difficulty in college would spend so much time as Governor attacking that world.

He reduced state funding to Wisconsin colleges by 13% and then mandated they freeze tuition for 4 years. He recommending replacing University of Wisconsin leadership with a private authority governed by his own appointees. He proposed the university change its fundamental commitment from “a search for truth” to the goal of workforce readiness.

That’ll show ‘em, I guess.

But he didn’t just attack post-secondary education. He went after high, middle and elementary schools, too. He signed a law mandating high stakes reading testing begin in kindergarten. That’s right – kindergarten! Teachers and principals, of course, had to be evaluated based on these scores. Oh and don’t forget the massive school budget cuts.

He also presided over the largest roll back of collective bargaining rights in state history – and who make up the biggest unions? Teachers. Other working people are just more grist for the mill of his petty power trip.

If Walker had studied harder, spent less time on extra-curricular politics and finished his degree – I wonder if he wouldn’t have such animosity towards education. Maybe then he wouldn’t spend his days congratulating himself for hobbling colleges and public schools while trampling on workers rights.

Moving from politics to punditry, few people have devoted their careers to destroying the teaching profession as much as former anchorperson Campbell Brown.

Since being quietly let go from CNN when her news program was cancelled for low ratings, Brown has become an outspoken corporate education reformer. School choice, the destruction of teacher tenure and labor unions – there are few supply side education ideas she doesn’t support. Most notably, she serves on the board of directors for the infamous Success Academy Charter Schools – a system that uses student humiliation to ensure children swallow a curriculum consisting almost entirely of standardized test prep. Moreover, her husband, Dan Senor, is on the board of StudentsFirstNY, a corporate school reform organization affiliated with Michelle Rhee.

How anyone so personally invested in the factory schools model could possibly claim she was impartial enough to serve in a journalistic capacity on this matter is beyond belief. But that’s just what Brown does. This summer she even co-founded The Seventy Four – a news site dedicated to covering education. She claims it’s all “non-partisan” and “non-profit.” Ha! Her husband is a former adviser to the Romney campaign and spokesman for the Bush administration’s Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq! Her “news” site is like Fox News for schools – which given the supply side bias of MOST news organizations is really saying something!

Is it any surprise that when Brown was in school, herself, she wasn’t exactly honor roll material?

She describes herself as a “terrible student” in Catholic school, but immediately justifies her academic performance by saying the teachers were awful, too. Since she had such a horrible parochial school experience, it’s a wonder she reserves her rancor for the public school system where she has little first hand knowledge. A child of privilege, Brown was a private school girl.

At Virginia’s elite Madeira School, she was kicked out for sneaking off campus for a party. She eventually earned a GED, and briefly attended Louisiana State University before waitressing in Colorado and enrolling in a Catholic college in Denver. It was there that a priest who taught political philosophy finally reached her. She eventually earned a B.S. in political science.

It was a long, difficult academic road for Brown. I wonder how she would have done at Success Academy where mostly poor Black and Hispanic students must sit with hands clasped and eyes following the speaker; where reading passages must be neatly annotated with a main idea; where her teachers would be inexperienced drones forced to work 11-hour days and face high turnover.

Something tells me as a student she’d find those teachers just “awful,” too. It’s a hard thing to take responsibility for one’s own actions especially as a child. If only the teacher had taught me better, if only I had gone to the good school, if only someone had done this or that. Poor little rich girl.

Now Brown is a professional at casting blame on our public school system in favor of unproven or disastrous education models. She’s come from the back of the class to the front – where she can criticize and wag her finger.

But to do the most damage to the school system, you need to be more than a politician or a pundit – you need to be an ideologue. And you need so much cash you don’t now what to do with it all.

No one has had a greater negative impact on public education than Bill Gates and his billions in so-called philanthropic contributions. As one of the richest men in the world, he has steered the course of education policy away from research-based policies to a business-minded approach favored by corporate raiders.

Common Core State Standards would not exist without his backing and financial bribery of federal and state governments. The man of ideas who instinctively understands the world of computers extends his hubris to encase all subjects. For clearly, what is true of a network of calculating machines must be true of young minds. Gates knows best, and where he is contradicted by one peer-reviewed study, he can pay for several independent ones to back up his pet ideas.

But whatever you say of Gates, he differs dramatically from Walker and Brown. Gates is clearly brilliant. He was a National Merit Scholar who scored a 1590 out of 1600 on his SATs. One would think his academic record must be impeccable. But one would be wrong.

While he excelled in subjects he cared about, he neglected others that weren’t immediately interesting. According to a college friend:

Gates was a typical freshman in many ways, thrown off pace by the new requirements and a higher level of competition. He skipped classes, spent days on end in the computer lab working on his own projects, played poker all night, and slept in a bed without sheets when he did go  to bed. Other students recall that he often went without sleep for 18 to 36 hours.

Even at Harvard, Gates continued his pattern of  getting good grades in the subjects he liked and disdaining those that were of little interest. His heart didn’t seem to be in his studies. Gates joined few college activities unless his friend Steve Ballmer dragged him off to a party.

School was of little interest to him. He dropped out of Harvard before getting a degree to start his computer software company.

Some tell it as a story of an eccentric’s unstoppable rise, but few tarry long enough to remark on the privilege from which Gates emerged. He didn’t have a public school education. He attended an elite preparatory school since he was 13. Once again someone with such little experience of public school is a self-appointed expert in reforming it.

His parents also instilled in him a peculiar marker for success. In his home, the family encouraged competition. One visitor reported, “it didn’t matter whether it was hearts or pickleball or swimming to the dock … there was always a reward for winning and there was always a penalty for losing.” How interesting that this same philosophy has become Gate’s vision for all school children! Schools must compete against each other for resources and the losers get shut down. Yet what irony that his own personal success relies on ignoring his weaknesses and focusing solely on his successes! We excuse the inconsistent grades and dropping out of college. But would Gates-backed education policies do the same for other children?

Gates, the student, easily might have wilted under the education policies of Gates, the edu-preneur. How hard it is to see oneself clearly. How hard to admit one has limitations. Especially when one is brilliant in one narrow field and has too much money and free time.

And so the enemies of America’s public education system gather round. Many of them may have axes to grind. Of course this doesn’t hold in every case. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, for example, is no friend to schools. Yet by all accounts he personally had a relatively trouble free academic experience.

However, the case holds often enough to be instructive. An awful lot of C-students think corporate education reform is needed to fix our schools. Heck! Most of these policies come from No Child Left Behind legislation proposed by the most infamous C-student in American history – President George W. Bush!

These kinds of psychological conflicts of interest should give us pause. Do we really want to support such personal crusades? Should all the power of public policy really back the revenge of indifferent students?

Corporate education reform policies don’t work. They never have worked. They’re destroying our system of public education.

Doesn’t there come a time when you have to get over your personal childhood traumas and pay attention to the facts?

NOTE: This article also was mentioned on Diane Ravitch’s blog and published in the LA Progressive and the Badass Teachers Association blog.

White People Need to Stop Snickering at Black Names

September 6, 2015September 27, 2015 stevenmsinger Black Names, Civil Rights, Compassion, Education, Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, Prejudice, Racism, White Privilege #blacklivesmatter, #icantbreathe, African American, Black Names, Civil Rights, Freddie Gray, michael brown, People of Color, prejudice, public schools, racism, white privilege

As a public school teacher, few things give me as much anxiety as getting my student rosters for the first time.

I look over the list of names for my incoming children and cringe.

How do I pronounce that?

Every year it never fails – there’s always at least four or five names I’ve never seen before – or at least never spelled quite like THAT!

As a white teacher in a district with a majority of black students but very few black teachers, there’s not really many people to turn to for guidance.

And if I don’t figure it out soon, I’ll be making a pretty terrible first impression. No one likes to have their name butchered, especially children, especially if an adult is doing it, especially if that adult is white.

The only solution I’ve found is to soldier on with the first day’s attendance and just try my best:

Me: Shah-NEE-Qwa?

Child: Shah-NAY-Qwa.

Me: JAY-Marcus?

Child: JAH-Marcus.

It’s uncomfortable, but I get through it and eventually learn.

However, one thing I’ve stopped doing is going to other white people for help. That’s a recipe for disaster.

It almost always turns into an exercise in subtle racism and white supremacy. No matter who the person is, no matter how kind, caring or empathetic, the reaction to unique black names is most often derision.

White people snicker and use the situation as the impetus for telling stories about other black names that they thought were even more outrageous.

It’s not that we’re trying to be hateful. I don’t think we even recognize it as racist, but it is.

We use the situation as an opportunity for bonding. THOSE people who are not like you and me – THEY name their children things like THIS! Not like you and me who name our children more respectably.

Make no mistake. This is racist behavior. We are emphasizing the otherness of an entire group of people to put ourselves over and above them.

It’s bigoted, discriminatory, prejudicial and just plain dumb.

What’s wrong with black names anyway? What about them is so unacceptable?

We act as if only European and Anglicized names are reasonable. But I don’t have to go far down my rosters to find white kids with names like Braelyn, Declyn, Jaydon, Jaxon, Gunner or Hunter. I’ve never heard white folks yucking it up over those names.

I can’t imagine why white people even expect people of color to have the same sorts of names as we do. When you pick the label by which your child will be known, you often resort to a shared cultural history. My great-great-grandfather was David, so I’ll honor his memory by calling my firstborn son the same. Jennifer is a name that’s been in my family for generations so I’ll reconnect with that history by calling my daughter by the same name.

Few black people in America share this same culture with white people. If a black man’s great-great-grandfather’s name was David, that might not be the name he was born with – it may have been chosen for him – forced upon him – by his slave master. It should be obvious why African Americans may be uncomfortable reconnecting with that history.

Many modern black names are, in fact, an attempt to reconnect with the history that was stolen from them. Names like Ashanti, Imani and Kenya have African origins. Others are religious. Names like Aaliyah, Tanisha and Aisha are traditionally Muslim. Some come from other languages such as Monique, Chantal, and Andre come from French. I can’t understand why any of that is seen as worthy of ridicule.

Still other names don’t attempt to reconnect with a lost past – they try to forge ahead and create a new future. The creativity and invention of black names is seldom recognized by White America. We pretend that creating names anew shows a lack of imagination when in reality, it shows just the opposite!

Creating something new can be as simple as taking an Anglicized name and spelling it in inventive ways. Punctuation marks also can be utilized in unusual positions to add even more distinctiveness such as in the names Mo’nique and D’Andre.

At other times, they follow a cultural pattern to signify as uniquely African American using prefixes such as La/Le, Da/De, Ra/Re, or Ja/Je and suffixes such as -ique/iqua, -isha, and -aun/-awn.

And for the ultimate in creativity, try mixing and matching various influences and techniques. For instance, LaKeisha has elements from both French and African roots. Other names like LaTanisha, DeShawn, JaMarcus, DeAndre, and Shaniqua were created in the same way.

This is something all cultures do. They evolve to meet the needs of people in a given time and place. Yet when it comes to people of color, we, white folks, whoop and guffaw at it. Heck! When we can’t find black names far enough out of our mainstream, we even make them up!

Don’t believe me? Have you heard of La-a? The story goes that a black girl was given that name and a white person asked how it was pronounced. The black woman said her name was La-DASH-ah. This is often followed by a punchline of black vernacular.

Har! Har! Har!

But it’s not even true! According to Snopes, this is a made up story. It’s the American version of a Polish joke and demonstrates how far white people will go to laugh at black culture.

The great comedy duo Key and Peele tried to call attention to this in their outstanding substitute teacher sketches. In a series of short routines, an almost exclusively white classroom gets a black substitute teacher from the inner city schools. Mr. Garvey is expecting black names, so he pronounces the students’ middle class white names as if they were African American.

Almost everyone loves this sketch. It gets universal laughs, but wait until it’s over. Too many white folks try to continue the giggles by then talking about crazy black names they’ve encountered. But that’s not at all the point Key and Peel were trying to make! They were trying to show how cultural context shapes our expectations of proper names. Mr. Garvey is worthy of our laughter because his expectations are out-of-sync with his surroundings. When we expect all African Americans to have European or Anglicized names, we’re just as out of touch as Mr. Garvey. But like Dave Chapelle’s comedy, sometimes the person laughing the loudest is getting something the comedian didn’t intend at all.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if black names just generated snickers. However, white culture actually selects against people with black sounding names.

Countless studies have shown how much more difficult it is for someone with a black sounding name to get a job, a loan or an apartment than it is for someone with a white sounding name. It’s one of the most obvious features of white supremacy. You may not like black names, personally, but do these people deserve to suffer for embracing their own culture?

Moreover, having a European or Anglicized name is no guarantee of fair treatment. It certainly didn’t help Michael Brown or Freddie Gray.

If we’re really going to treat people equitably, an easy place to begin is with black names. White people, stop the laughter and giggles. I used to do it, myself, until I thought about it. Yes, I’m guilty of the same thing. But I stopped. You can, too.

It’s not the biggest thing in the world. It’s not even the most pressing thing. It’s not a matter of guilt. It’s a matter of fairness.

Because when the final role is taken of all America’s racists and bigots, do you really want your name to be on it?

NOTE: This article also was published on Everyday Feminism and the Badass Teachers Association blog.

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