Take back the classroom

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Home : 2004 : September : 22

Take back the classroom
By End of the Rope

I am putting up with the same crap where I am.

We need to start a movement at the grassroots level to let people in this country know what is going on. There is an ultimate agenda here and it is not the education of our
children.
Businessmen, "Funded" professors and researchers, and Huge Textbook and standardized test publishers are trying to slowly (but surely) erode and dismantle the public education system because there is just too much dad blamed money to be made out of it. Education is a gold mine of financial possibilities.
First: Lets have the publishers, researchers, and "research-based" program

developers decry the low achievement of this nations children. Then, lets lobby and contribute to politicians who are running on a pro-education platform. What are they going to do? Improve the decrepit education system. But how are we going to do this oh wise and wonderful politician? Well, in order to see if those teachers (and we all know that those who cant- teach) are really doing their job (we all know teacher ed has the lowest admittance criteria) -- we'll test the kids.

News anchor looking for a hot news bite announces to the country that US test scores are falling. We are below Japan and European countries. (Maybe that will generate some ratings with the moms eating dinner with the TV on.)

Then steps in Publisher #1 (who also provids the entire state with textbooks) Hey, We'll test your students. And you know what if some of them don't do well, we will create a workbook series for those kids too! We'll even give you a discount -- we'll throw in some workbooks. How bout it?

Meanwhile, researcher B applies for and is granted X thousands of dollars to research his program on reading. Nevermind that he tests it on a special education class in his sisters school. He will generalize the results to the entire population of the US. Researcher B then offers professional development to all the schools in the state for 5K a day (travel expenses additional).

Financial golden boy decides that he can rescue schools by offering charter schools. Parents don't have to pay, except for the motivational shirts with the school logo (don't they look just like the prep kids on the other side of town, Roy?). Besides, we won't have to hire certified teachers. We can bring in some people who really know math -- What about my brother-in-law, you know, the one who tried engineering?

Program developer decides that if she can capitalize on the evil and untraining of teachers, she can market her total scripted program to sell to schools. Hey, that's the ticket. Who needs to be a college graduate? We can just get Joe blow off the street, and as long as he follows the script -- anyone will be able to learn....

That's my George Orwell-- a little dramatic perhaps, but just what I think is really going on here.

Teachers, we need to do something to stop this snowball before it turns into an avalanche. I mean if John Kerry and George Bush can have their own websites and foundations for getting elected, surely WE can have some national foundation that can make a difference. No offense to the NEA and AFT, but they have already been painted the adversary. We need something like a moveon.org or a truth.com.