teacher strike

There Are Few Things As Reprehensible as a Scab

stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, California, capitalism, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", edtech, Education, Labor, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Politics, privatization, protest, Racism, School Funding, Schools, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Strike, Students, Teachers, union busting, Unions , , , , , , , , , , ,

scabrat

 

There is a special place in Hell for strikebreakers.

 

Some people kill. Some steal.

 

But only a filthy, disgusting scab can do all of that in one.

 

When you take someone else’s job, you’re stealing their bargaining power and killing the community’s chances for their kids.

 

This week as 30,000 teachers at Los Angeles Unified School District walked out demanding support for their students and their professions, a few slimy worms have crossed the picket line to keep some of the district’s 900 schools open.

 

Most parents have kept their children home, but some don’t have that choice. And the district is trying to use that opportunity to justify larger class sizes and fewer resources. While sitting on $2 billion in the bank, they pull out their pockets and play dumb. In the richest state in the country, they want you to believe there isn’t enough money to waste on children.

 

At least not on these black and brown children!

 

And whether they mean to or not, the craven, no account, flatulent scabs back them up 100%.

 

According to the LA Times, the district has students cloistered in holding areas while administrators tell them to fill in workbooks or go on their cell phones or iPads to learn via app.

 

Among these yes-men, you’ll find a handful of substitute teachers who put their own yellow bellies over solidarity with their fellows.

 

Not only is this sniveling, groveling behavior suitable only to strip the self-respect from the most base criminal, they aren’t even getting thirty pieces of silver for it.

 

According to the Times, at one school scabs are only being paid $160 a day – less than subs normally make. Yet for each of these fill-ins, the district is paying the Charter Substitute Teacher Network – an outside agency providing these miserable miscreants – $250 a day, which is in fact more than the usual sub rate!

 

How transparent! The district doesn’t even value its scabs! It would rather pay the corporation that provides these amoral dupes than the dupes, themselves!

 

How low a weasel do you have to be to take such a job? What kind of dung beetle? What piece of excrement could stoop so low?

 

No. Wait. That’s an insult to weasels, dung beetles and excrement!

 

Working people have one thing of value in this economy – their labor.

 

When you rob a person of the right to withhold that labor, you take away her power. You turn her into little more than a slave whose only choice is take it or leave it.

 

But when people are given the dignity to join together as one, to unify as one solid whole, they can equal the power of the wealthy and privileged.

 

They can stand together on their own two feet and demand a fair share.

 

And in these terrible times, when the powerful look at even public schooling as little more than an opportunity to further enrich themselves through no account charter schools and high stakes testing and endless ed tech bells and whistles – who is left to stand up for our children?

 

I’ll tell you who! The teachers!

 

The parents!

 

The students!

 

The community!

 

We are all here united as one. We have drawn a line in the sand – and woe to the pustulent, putrid, pissant who dares cross it!

 

You want to make America great?

 

You want to make this country into something we, the people can be proud of?

 

Don’t cross any picket lines.

 

Show some backbone, even if it hurts to stand up straight for once.

 

The only way forward, the only way to create a society worthy of our children, is to join hands and walk toward the promised land – together.

 

 

 

“After God finished the rattlesnake, the toad, the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab … When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the Devil shuts the gates of Hell to keep him out. No man has a right to scab so long as there is a pool of water to drown his carcass in, or a rope long enough to hang his body with.”

–Jack London

 

Still can’t get enough Gadfly? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

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LA Teachers Strike is About Charter Schools and High Stakes Testing

stevenmsinger Accountability, Arne Duncan, Betsy DeVos, Budget, California, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Democrats for Education Reform, Donald Trump, Education, Labor, Local Control, Obama, Parents, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, protest, Republican, School Choice, Schools, segregation, small class size, Social Justice, Social Justice Unionism, Standardized Testing, Strike, Students, Teachers, Unions , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

utla-strike

 

On Monday more than 30,000 teachers at 900 schools in Los Angeles, California, will be on strike.

 

And unlike the wave of teachers strikes last year in red states like West Virginia, this time educators are taking to the streets due to the policies of Democrats.

 

At issue are things like lowering class sizes and providing more nurses, librarians and counselors.

 

But behind these issues lies one of the most important facts about our country.

 

When you get right down to it, there is very little difference between many Democratic policymakers and their Republican counterparts.

 

You think Betsy Devos is the opposite of Arne Duncan? Wrong.

 

You think Barack Obama is the opposite of Donald Trump? Wrong again.

 

Though there are differences, those often amount to differences of degree.

 

Corporate Democrats like almost all Republicans support the same education policies – school privatization and high stakes testing – that are robbing the LA Unified School District of the funding it needs to meet the needs of its students.

 

THAT’S why class sizes have ballooned to more than 45 students in secondary schools; 35 students in upper elementary grades; and 25 students in lower elementary grades.

 

THAT’S why the district does not have nearly enough counselors, psychologists or librarians to give students the support they need.

 

THAT’S why 80% of schools don’t have full-time nurses.

 

The second largest district in the country has more charter schools than any other. The overwhelming majority of them are operated by corporate chains and have expanded by 287% over the last 10 years.

 

These are publicly funded but privately run schools. They don’t have to meet the same standards of accountability or transparency about how they spend taxpayer dollars – all while gobbling up $600 million a year!

 

That is money that parents and community members are forced to pay but about which they have very little say. It’s money that can – and often does – go right into the pockets of charter school operators without providing its full value to the students it was meant help educate. It’s money set aside for all children but given to educate merely a handful of students chosen by those same businesspeople who run these charters because they think these children will be cheaper and easier to educate.

 

That’s not Democracy. No self-respecting Democrat should support such a thing – but you’ll find luminaries from Obama to the Clintons to Cory Booker who will tell you what a great idea it is. Along with DeVos, Trump, Jeb Bush and the Koch Brothers.

 

 

LA Superintendent Austin Beutner is a Democrat, but he’s also a multimillionaire with experience in corporate downsizing and none in education.

 

According to an op-ed by President of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) Alex Caputo-Pearl published in the LA Times:

 

“…Beutner has moved ahead with what we believe is his agenda to dismantle the district. Through an outside foundation, he has brought on firms that have led public school closures and charter expansion in some districts where they have worked, from New Orleans to Washington, D.C. This approach, drawn from Wall Street, is called the “portfolio” model, and it has been criticized for having a negative effect on student equity and parent inclusion.”

 

These are policies in direct opposition to the progressive ideals at the heart of the Democratic Party. They are, in fact, bedrock Republican ideology and demonstrate the vast divide among Democrats.

 

New Democrats oppose them. Grassroots Democrats oppose them. Democratic voters oppose them. And it will be telling whether the policymakers in our halls of power will follow the lead of the people or try to shepherd the power behind the party into doing what the patricians think best.

 

That’s why this strike is important way beyond California. Whatever happens will send echoes throughout the country, because school districts from sea to shining sea are facing similar issues.

 

In the meantime, the LA Unified District has a $1.8 Billion budget surplus it can use to help meet these needs. But the solutions to the district’s woes require a long-term commitment to public education.

 

Certainly the state of California needs to increase its per pupil spending. It’s the richest state in the country, yet ranks 43rd out of 50 in this regard.

 

This would help the district raise teacher salaries to match those of surrounding districts.

 

But the root problem is a lack of ideological support among policymakers.

 

Too many Democrats inside and outside the district don’t support the very idea of public schools. They’d rather boost privatization.

 

Too many Democrats support unnecessary and harmful high stakes standardized testing which not only unfairly paints the district as a failure for the poverty of its students but forces out things of real education value like the arts and ethnic studies.

 

Too many Democrats have no problem doing this in a district that serves a majority of students of color while providing only the best for middle class white kids.

 

That’s why today the American people stand with the UTLA as they go on strike.

 

It’s why we always stand with educators – You can’t put students first if you put teachers last.

 

Democrats need to get their priorities straight.

 

It’s time to decide if they’re going to continue being Trump lite or reclaim their progressive heritage and rejoin the rest of the nation.

Still can’t get enough Gadfly? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

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Charter School Lobby Silent as Charter Teachers Continue Strike

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www.usnews.com

 

Charter school teachers in Chicago are in their fourth day of a strike.

 

Yet I wonder why the leaders of the charter movement are quiet.

 

Where is Peter Cunningham of the Education Post?

 

Where is Shaver Jeffries of Democrats for Education Reform?

 

Not a word from Campbell Brown or Michelle Rhee?

 

Nothing from Bill Gates, Cory Booker, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton?

 

Not a peep from Betsy DeVos or Donald Trump?

 

This is a historic moment. Teachers at various charter schools have unionized before, but it has never come to an outright strike – not once since the federal charter school law was established in 1994.

 

You’d think the charter cheerleaders – the folks who lobby for this type of school above every other type – would have something to say.

 

But no.

 

They are conspicuously silent.

 

I wonder why.

 

Could it be that this is not what they imagined when they pushed for schools to be privately run but publicly financed?

 

Could it be that they never intended workers at these schools to have any rights?

 

Could it be that small class size – one of the main demands of teachers at the 15 Acero schools – was never something these policymakers intended?

 

It certainly seems so.

 

For decades we’ve been told that these types of schools were all about innovation. They were laboratories where teachers and administrators could be freed from the stifling regulations at traditional public schools.

 

Yet whenever wealthy operators stole money or cut services to maximize profits or engaged in shady real estate deals or collected money for ghost children or cherry picked the best students or fomented “no excuses” discipline policies or increased segregation or denied services to special education kids or a thousand other shady business practices – whenever any of that happened, we were told they were just unfortunate side effects. Malfeasance and fraud weren’t what charters were all about. They were about the children.

 

And now when charter teachers speak out and demand a better environment for themselves and their students, these ideologues have nothing to say.

 

Funny.

 

It’s not hard to figure out what’s going on here.

 

The latest audit of Acero shows they have $10 million a year in additional revenue that they aren’t spending on the students. Yet they’re cutting the budget by 6 percent annually. Meanwhile, Acero’s CEO Richard Rodriguez is taking home more than $260,000 for overseeing 15 schools while Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson makes slightly less money for managing more than 500 schools.

 

If the school privatization lobby cared about kids, it shouldn’t be hard to come out against Acero and in favor of these teachers and students.

 

But nothing.

 

Silence.

 

It seems to prove what charter critics have been saying all along – and how full of crap the privatization lobby has always been.

 

In short, the charter movement is all about the rich getting richer. It has never been about helping students and families.

 

Well, maybe it was once upon a time when union leader Albert Shanker backed the plan. But even he turned against it when he saw how it enriched the moneymen and corporations while doing very little for children.

 

 

The fact of the matter is that the only people at charters on the side of teachers, parents and students are the people generally associated with opposing them.

 

I, myself, am a huge foe of school privatization in all its forms – and that includes school vouchers and charter schools.

 

However, I have nothing against charter students, parents or teachers.

 

I know many educators who’ve worked at charters. In most cases they are dedicated, caring professionals who’d rather work at a traditional public school but had to settle for employment where they could find it even if that meant less pay, longer hours, and fewer rights.

 

I know many parents who sent their kids to charter schools because of funding inequalities or rampant high stakes testing at traditional public schools. In every case, they are doing the best they can for their children – navigating a system they hate looking for the best opportunities.

 

I’ve taught many students who’ve gone to charter schools and then returned to my traditional public school classroom disillusioned from their subpar experience in privatized education. Without exception they are great kids who try their hardest to succeed despite huge deficits from the years lost at charters.

 

These people are not our enemy. We are their allies.

 

We are pushing for a better education system for all of us. And this strike is part of that.

 

If the operators of Acero charter schools in Chicago (formerly UNO’s charter schools) agree to a living wage for teachers and lower class sizes, it sets a standard for the industry. It helps push other charters to do the same. It pushes charter schools to become more like traditional public schools. And that’s a good thing.

 

The amenities at traditional public schools should not be rarities.

 

Every school should have an elected school board. Every school should have public meetings, transparency and be accountable for how it spends tax dollars. Every school should have to accept the kids living in its borders and provide them the proper services and respect their rights. Every school should treat its employees like professionals and pay them a fair wage for a fair day’s work.

 

Ultimately, I think this means the end of the charter school concept. But that doesn’t have to mean the end of all these charter schools. Many of them that can operate effectively and efficiently should become traditional public schools. That may mean incorporation into existing districts or creations of new ones. It may mean additional funding from the state and federal government.

 

In the case of fly-by-night charters that do nothing but enrich their investors while cheating kids out of an education, they should be closed immediately and the persons responsible should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law (whatever that is, if at all possible).

 

I don’t have all the answers, and what’s right in one neighborhood may be wrong in another. However, I am confident that there is a solution.

 

No matter how this strike is resolved, the fact that it exists – and is probably a precursor to more such strikes – points the way to a brighter future for everyone.

 

It’s a victory for workers over wealth.

 

And that is a victory for students, too.

 

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

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I Stand With Striking Teachers Because I Stand for Underprivileged Children

stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", edtech, Education, Labor, Pensions, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, protest, Racism, School Funding, Schools, small class size, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Unions , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

teacherstrike

 

America’s teachers are taking to the streets by the thousands.

 

In West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky and soon to be Arizona and Puerto Rico, educators are leaving the classroom and storming their state capitals.

 

Why?

 

Not because they’re greedy. Not because they don’t want to do their job. But because this country doesn’t care enough to provide them the resources they need to do it.

 

America doesn’t care about black and brown children.

 

America doesn’t care about poor white children.

 

America only cares about middle class and wealthy kids, preferably if their skin has a melanin deficit.

 

Don’t believe me?

 

Just look at how much these states have cut education funding. Look at how the federal government has slashed financial assistance. Look at how districts are forced to increasingly rely on local tax revenues to pay for the kind of education their children receive.

 

This means poor kids get poor resources. This means minority kids have to do without.

 

For the dark and the destitute, this means larger class sizes, out of date text books, and narrowed curriculum. It means fewer tutors, reading specialists and librarians. It means being left to your own devices to deal with the effects of generational poverty which put them behind their wealthier, lighter peers before they even enter kindergarten. It means greater emotional disturbance, greater malnutrition, higher absences, more learning disabilities, and less help to deal with any of it.

 

On the other hand, for the economically privileged white kids, it means just the opposite – fewer social problems, and the best of everything to deal with whatever issues they have.

 

It’s an unfair system, and teachers aren’t having it. We’ve been sounding the alarm for years, but it has fallen on deaf ears.

 

We don’t want to strike, but lawmakers are giving us no choice.

 

We’re saying, Enough! We’ve had it with the excuses.

 

Society hires us to do a job – let us do it.

 

Don’t refuse us the money to get it done and then blame us for the results.

 

That’s why there was a 9-day teachers strike in West Virginia which won educators a 5% raise in February.

 

That’s why 30 districts closed in Kentucky this week after a statewide sick out inspired by the legislature’s plan to cut pension benefits.

 

That’s why thousands of teachers in Oklahoma walked out this week demanding higher wages and better school funding.

 

And it’s why educators in Arizona, Puerto Rico and other states and territories may be next.

 

When you deny teachers the basics necessary to do their jobs, you’re refusing your responsibilities toward children.

 

When you deny educators a fair wage, you’re discouraging young people from entering the profession and encouraging those already there to seek work elsewhere.

 

And that is what we’re talking about here – a fair wage. We’re not talking about teachers getting rich off the taxpayers dole. You’re asking us to get an advanced education and do a hard job – that requires a middle class income so we can pay off our student loans and support our families.

 

The same goes for pensions. When teachers took their jobs, a fair pension was part of the contract. You promised that after 30-some years, educators could retire and you’d take care of them. You can’t renege on that. And if you plan to offer less for those coming in to the field, you’re going to get fewer high quality teachers willing to take the job.

 

When you attack unions and union benefits, you’re really attacking students. A teacher who can be fired at the whim of an administrator or school director is not as affective at her job. She has less autonomy and freedom to do what is right for her given students. And she has less reason to take a chance on the profession in the first place.

 

This doesn’t mean that after three years teachers should have a job for life. They don’t. It just means that if you’re going to fire a teacher for negligence, you should have to prove she’s negligent first.

 

This is why there’s a so-called teacher shortage in most states. As a society, we’ve become less-and-less willing to pay for teachers to do their jobs. We’ve become less-and-less willing to offer them the independence and respect necessary to get things done.

 

Why?

 

Because we’ve swallowed a pack of lies from the business community.

 

Many of them look at our public schools and see an opportunity for financial gain.

 

School funding may not be enough to give every one of the 50.7 million students in public school a first class education, but it’s more than enough to make a cabal of entrepreneurs and corporate officers rich.

 

That’s why they’re pushing charter schools and voucher schools and standardized tests and edtech software scams.

 

They want to get rid of democratic rule, get rid of teacher-based assessments and – ultimately – get rid of teachers. They want to replace us with minimum wage temps and leave the work of educating to computers that can provide test prep and standardized assessments.

 

But only for the poor and minorities. The affluent and middle class white kids will still get the best money can buy. It’s only those other kids they’re willing to feed to the wolves of edu-profit.

 

THAT is what educators are fighting.

 

THAT is why teachers across the nation are striking.

 

We’re demanding this nation does right by its public school students.

 

And that begins by supporting their teachers.

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Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

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Rampant Ignorance of What a School Should Be

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635880071969781625796021747_Ignorance

 

From politicians confusing a living wage with a handout—

 

To a white supremacist teacher podcast.

 

From a tone deaf government flunky using tragedy to do anything to stop gun violence except regulate firearms—

 

To a Bronx principal barring a black history lesson during Black History Month.

 

All-in-all, it’s been a crazy news cycle.

 

If one thing was made clear during the last seven plus days, it’s this:

 

Many people have no idea what a school should be.

 

Take West Virginia, the site of a recently resolved statewide teacher strike.

 

After years of watching the cost of living rise while wages remained stagnant, educators took to the streets to demand enough money that they wouldn’t have to quit their teaching jobs and look for work elsewhere.

 

It’s a reasonable request.

 

Imagine if we didn’t pay doctors enough to afford to practice medicine. Imagine if we didn’t pay lawyers enough to afford to practice law.

 

Teachers just wanted enough money so they could focus on educating the next generation and still get perks like food and shelter.

 

However, West Virginia is a self-confessed conservative state where self-identifying conservatives unashamedly explain that a full-throated expression of their conservative values includes the idea that you shouldn’t have to pay people a living wage for a hard day’s work.

 

Or as state Senator Lynne Arvone (R-Raleigh) put it:

 

“The teachers have to understand that West Virginia is a red state, and the free handouts are over.”

 

What, Sen. Arvone? Are you high?

 

A salary is not a “free handout.”

 

That’s redundant – there is no such thing as a free handout. Handouts are by definition free. That’s something you would have known had you paid more attention to your third grade language arts teacher. But, whatever.

 

Moreover, a salary is neither free nor a handout.

 

It is a fixed regular payment – often weekly or biweekly – made by an employer to an employee in exchange for doing a job.

 

West Virginia teachers are doing their job. State representatives like Arvone aren’t doing theirs.

 

They aren’t making teaching an attractive career and thus encouraging the best and brightest to become teachers. When you’ve already got a shortage of people willing to become educators, you have to invest. That’s economics 101! Basic supply and demand.

 

Admittedly, after 8 days of a state-wide strike, the legislature caved and gave teachers a 5% raise, but only moments before introducing a bill to reduce the requirements to become a West Virginia teacher in the future.

 

Boom.

 

It’s like lawmakers are saying: Oh. So you want your raise? Here you go. But the next generation of teachers hired in the state will be more ignorant, less experienced, more unskilled and less professional. In short, they won’t expect to be paid a living wage because we’ve made teaching right up there with being a WalMart greeter!

 

So there!

 

If passed, the academic quality of education provided by West Virginia will drop.

 

But so will the cost. And that seems to be the only thing lawmakers like Arvone and her “conservative” colleagues seem to care about.

 

You know, I don’t think they know what conservative means, either.

 

It’s certainly not what a public school should be.

 

Want another example?

 

Take Dayanna Volitich, a 25-year-old Florida teacher who allegedly ran a white supremacist podcast until non-Aryans heard it, put two-and-two together and removed her from class.

 

On a recent episode she bragged about spreading racist and prejudiced ideas to her students.

 

According to an article in the Huffington Post describing her latest podcast:

 

Volitich also agreed with her guest’s assertion that more white supremacists need to infiltrate public schools and become teachers. “They don’t have to be vocal about their views, but get in there!” her guest said. “Be more covert and just start taking over those places.”

 

“Right,” Volitich said. “I’m absolutely one of them.”

 

Great. Just what we need. An army of undercover white supremacists being encouraged to enter the teaching profession – taking those newly minted minimum wage jobs vacated by more expensive but less biased educators.

 

As a more than 15-year veteran of the public school classroom, I have some advice for white supremacists thinking about becoming teachers: Don’t.

 

We don’t want you here.

 

No one has the time for your warmed over master race lullabies.

 

We don’t need another generation of privileged white people who think the world owes them something just because of the color of their skin.

 

We need an America made up of people of all colors and creeds who believe in a meritocracy. You get what you work for, what you earn.

 

And we need lawmakers to actually create a system that supports this ideal.

 

We need political parties and grassroots movements to push for such an America.

 

Nazi propaganda belongs in one place only – the history books. It is not part of our future.

 

And on a personal note, let me just say that becoming a teacher often makes you more progressive than you were when you started.

 

I know it did me.

 

Especially if you work at a high poverty, high minority district like I do.

 

Your job is to serve students’ needs. You push them to think, you don’t tell them what to think.

 

If that’s not what you’re up for, you’re not up for being an educator.

 

Indoctrination is not what school should be.

 

And that brings me to Betsy DeVos, our billionaire Education Secretary who bought her government position with campaign contributions and political connections.

 

She went to Parkland, Florida, this week to visit with students, teachers and administrators who survived a school shooting a couple weeks ago.

 

Or at least that’s what it probably said on the press release.

 

It was really just a publicity stunt to push for arming teachers instead of sensible gun control.

 

Parkland students have been rocking it holding demonstrations and speaking truth to power demanding that we keep them safe from future violence by banning assault rifles, mandatory background checks on all gun sales and other common sense measures favored by almost 70% of the nation.

 

DeVos took about five questions before walking out of her own press conference.

 

She didn’t meet with students – didn’t even try.

 

She was just there for a photo op.

 

Well, time’s up, Betsy.

 

The next generation isn’t putting up with your tone deaf water carrying. With your own family ties to mercenary soldiers for hire, it’s no surprise you’d be against gun control and in favor of firearms to chase away all the Grizzlies attacking our public schools.

 

It won’t stop the bloodshed but an increase in gun sales will boost your portfolio.

 

Arming teachers is one of the dumbest things on an agenda full of real whoppers from this absurd Presidential administration.

 

Teachers touting guns, shooting it out with armed terrorists – no. That’s not what a school should be, either.

 

So finally we get to the Bronx, where some dimwit who somehow became a principal told an English teacher not to teach a unit on the Harlem Renaissance.

 

You know, the Harlem Renaissance – Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Louis Armstrong, Zora Neale Hurston, Duke Ellington… Nobodies like them.

 

And if that’s not bad enough, she did it in February during Black History Month.

 

This number crunching pedant thought it was inappropriate because the teacher wasn’t in the social studies department.

 

This is what happens when you try to put education in a box with things like Common Core. Don’t teach background information, just look at every text divorced from everything else around it – the author’s personal history, what was happening in the world at the time or even how the reader responds to it.

 

Administrators like this need to take a seat and get out of teachers ways.

 

This kind of subtly racist micromanaging isn’t a part of what schools should be either.

 

Schools should be places where dedicated professionals are prized and valued. They’re given the autonomy to teach what they know is important and they make these decisions informed by the empiricism of what their students need.

 

Schools should be places without prejudice or racism. They should be cultural melting pots free from segregation and preconceived notions. They should be about academic freedom and the joy of learning.

 

I wish more people understood it.

 

Maybe then we could work to make our schools and our country more like the ideals of the overwhelming majority of the people living here.

 

Instead of continually letting the rich and privileged set the agenda.