Bad school administrators, from counsellors on up, are NOT being identified.

This week I listened on NPR to a glowing account of a "new" teaching method. The story presented this teacher as one who embraced the "Common Core." Gee, I'd like some Brownie points for having used this technique in my classes (I retired in 2008). I hate it that so many teachers who had classroom skills way ahead of imposed "changes" are not credited with being good teachers. In my short 17-year career I saw teachers whose skills and subject knowledge were superb and I saw teachers who couldn't have passed the Freshman Composition class I took at Amarillo College (Amarillo, Texas). I once went to the teacher, the head of the math teachers in my school, for some help in understanding a graph in my social studies book. She hadn't a clue. As I left, the head custodian came up and said, "I kept sweeping outside her classroom listening to you too. Let me see the graph." She then proceeded to explain it to me.
I saw nothing in my 17 years that changed the opinion I formed within the first year I taught - the main problems with American education all point to lousy, lazy administrators. I NEVER received a thorough teacher evaluation, except from fellow teachers in Career Ladder. I never heard of a teacher fired for incompetence even though I must say that the overall competence I saw in action was a distant second to the Amarillo radio where I worked for 5 years - KGNC. The entire staff of that station (in the eighties) was smarter, more efficient, and better managed than any other place I worked in my life.
During my teaching years I saw things involving misuse of funds and mismanagement that appalled me. I discussed these things with teachers I met from many parts of the US and they always nodded and said, "Oh, yes. These things happen in my school and district, too."
Only once for about three years did we have a counsellor who had all student schedules ready for teacher use before the student's first day. We would often give pre-tests to students, as ordered, and then lost these students as schedules were finalized. The counsellor/s would not change the pre-test information. At the end of the year I was accountable for the progress or lack thereof even though I did not teach those students!
If a teacher smiled, jollied the administration along, and never raised a fuss no matter how outrageous a situation, they were a good teacher. If a teacher complained, they were not a good teacher. If a teacher in good favor incorporated ideas from the latest inservice training, they were praised. If a teacher was in bad favor with the administrators, no one noticed that their students were learning.
A teacher who was a former lawyer sued the district for not following requirements of English As A Second Language students, and in my district a huge percentage were in that category. The district lawyer fought that battle to a standstill with her superior skills. It took years because the teacher was correct. He lost on technicalities. Who paid her? You did, American taxpayer, because my district was funded by federal dollars. This woman was paid her hourly rate while she drove to board meetings, too - a 3 hour drive each way! You paid for that.
When the state changed curriculum around I went from teaching American history to World history. The school provided NO textbooks. I wrangled some old high school books, way above my 8th graders reading level. We used the graphics mostly.
When the district ended the practice of providing materials through the warehouse we bought our own. I hated it when they took my chalkboard away and I had to buy those expensive dry erase markers instead of chalk.
After several years of 2-hour blocks for "language arts" and after a loss of a couple of teachers (not to be replaced), the district permitted the principal to change back to 1 hour of language arts. Test scores dropped. These lower test scores were cited as one reason the middle school was failing and the district came within a hair's breadth of dissolving the school and putting kindergarten through 8th grade all together in three locations. I asked, "How will you handle sports?" Oh, each school will have it's own team. I responded, "We only had 12 eligible football players by the end of this season. You won't be able to field a team." Idiots. In my district, hell anywhere in the US, students and parents would come out in force if the kids couldn't compete in sports.
Once I pestered the state auditors until they provided me with the information I knew was true based upon statements from retired and nearly-retired districts. The district, almost every year, failed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars into our Social Security. They deducted it all right, and then, of course they spent that money.
I sat at a board meeting where money was being allotted to tear down old buildings. One board member asked about a particular old, stand-alone gymnasium which was still much-used. "Oh, we're not tearing that down yet." They just wanted the money allotted to use for God-knows-what.
I could go on, believe me. But my point is that we are following a ridiculous pathway with education. We are federalizing what is Constitutionally a state matter. States were already failing to oversee schools adequately and now they are following federal laws and mandates that have NOTHING in them to reform the problems. The problems are called Superintendents, Financial Officers, Principals (thank God many schools still have good ones, no thanks to the federal reforms), auditors, and the concept of federal mandates.
There is a reason why Republicans and many others want to focus on teachers as the bad seeds of education - all they want is to provide their corporate friends with a non-unionized, kiss-ass workforce for the next growth industry - privatized education.

Republicans lead Democrats by the nose

Part 2

In yesterday's blog I made the point that the old set of rules for broadcasting in America  was thrown out during the Reagan administration. There had been an idea that the airwaves belong to the people and therefore broadcasters have a legal obligation to the people. I argue that the entire electromagnetic spectrum belongs to the people, so therefore no provider's use of the internet should never become a monopoly.

The other actors in the game of keeping folks misinformed are our politicians. I blame Democrats for being mealy-mouthed and spineless as a group because the Democratic Party has failed to perceive and/or act upon so many problems that even a lowly citizen such as myself have seen coming. Another of these problems is school reform.

I was a teacher for 17 years. The main thing I saw as a teacher was that every new president brought a new perspective to education leading to a situation of constant turmoil. Every four or eight years Americans throw the babies out with the bathwater in the name of getting politicians reelected. Republicans make steady progress in demonizing teachers in order to destroy their unions and to force them to teach propaganda instead of fact-based reality. Democrats compromise away the very Constitutional basis of the educational system. However did Larry Burl Dunn receive such first class educational opportunities in Amarillo, Texas from 1956 to 1968 without the overwrought guidance and money of the federal government?

How? Well, for one thing Amarillo had the same superintendent of the school system during all that time. For another, the political landscape was not poisoned with the the lie of privatization and the dilution of money forcibly given to charter and religious schools. And no one should dismiss the fact that, as the tax-payer revolt begun in Ronald Reagan's California spread outward, the federal tax burdon imposed because of the Military/Industrial/Secrecy Complex increased apace so there was never a net gain for taxpayers. This has brought us to the point where one political party wishes to create an oligarchy that sucks the best of everything away from the little man and lays it upon the altar of the super-rich. They won't be happy until government does nothing beyond collecting taxes for war, exercising police-state control, and incarceration. The other party TALKS about getting back little pieces of the freedoms and benefits WE the People once had - the very freedoms and benefits they voted to end. 

Nothing in my blog should be construed to be anti-Obama. I am talking about the arc of the two political parties during my lifetime, not the brightest American political mind of our time.

The arc of the Republican Party ends in contempt of WE the People. The arc of the Democratic Party ends in whimpering.

The biggest threat to education posed by Republicans is that we will still pay taxes for education, but those taxes will go to international corporations who run "private" schools as money-making businesses. Privatization is taxation without representation.
The greatest threat posed by Democrats (and unfortunaltely supported by Obama) is the drive to make a "good" education a Constitutional right. This will play directly into the Republican game plan because the only people who will ever suffer from denying this Constitutional "right" will be teachers, thus furthering the Republican goal of privatization. The first people who are guilty of denying education, people who deny it from the womb to pre-school, are parents. All scientific studies confirm that the first years of a child's life are the most crucial in determining the brain-potential of a child. The Jesuits knew it. "Give me a boy for seven years and I will give you the man." (We can do without the cheap-shot wisecracks here. You know what they were saying.) Do you think the government is going to start arresting parents for the violation of their child's Constitutional rights? Okay, do you think the government is going to arrest hard-working WHITE people for the violation of their children's rights?

Example - I know some parents (educated, with good jobs) who recently withdrew their daughter from the public school and put her into a church school that assured them they had better abilities to teach their girl how to read. She was in the eighth grade and they just found out she couldn't read! I grant you that the school system failed that child miserably, but I also say that parents who don't notice their 12-year-old can't read have failed as parents. Who is going to prosecute them? They must not have engaged their child with books when they were young and any child who shows up at the schoolhouse door without excitement over books is already on a losing path.

Finally to the issue of educational standards, especially social studies standards with which I am most familiar. Read your state's standards. Are they written in language such as, "The student will show an appreciation of the importance of ___________ in American life"? Fill in the blank. In Texas the ultra-right have removed some historic personages, such as Jefferson, and added such noble greats as Phyllis Schlafly! But there is a larger issue involed. You need to be able to see the propaganda angle. The student is not being asked to develop critical thinking skills, such as the separation of "fact" and "opinion" or the rules of honest debate. They are being asked to accept and internalize an opinion without question. American students can't perform a critical reading their Constitution. They are told what it says, meanings are garnered second hand. Education becomes catechism. America becomes more stupid by the day, but that's okay because there are plenty of kids receiving good educations all over the world and many of them want to emigrate to America and become rich. So, no problem. We will still have plenty of doctors and nurses, scientists, and technicians. And the stupid American kids? Lock 'em up. It's the American way.

... About Education

I was a teacher before the No Student Left Un-Recruited Law. The Bill was a Republican plan. What do think was supposed to happen? The quickening of privatization, that's what. 100% of ANY nations' students are not going to be proficient in school; can we have some common sense, please? The famous support of Edward Kennedy of this law is a shame. He played the role of rich kid invited to the neighborhood game only because he owned a ball. Democrats must begin to care more about justice than they do about trying to get the "middle" (read right-wing) vote. After the law passed there was a huge increase in the use of consultants (teachers tired of teaching students) and a decrease in the amount of money spent directly in the classroom. Education is, Constitutionally, a STATE issue, and the fed needs to butt out, if only because EACH new administration is going to change the policy of the previous administration. It was justice to integrate the schools and it took the federal government to do it, but education in and of itself is not a Civil Right. The movement to declare it so is a Republican move to further discredit PUBLIC schools so that they can reward their buddies with privatization. The first violators of the "Civil Right" to education are always PARENTS (for the first five or six years) and they set the stage for that child's future. But no parent will ever be accused of the violation; unionized teachers will.