School Teachers Target Of Reformers

I’m in my classroom to fi nalize lesson plans for the week and fi ll in the objectives that are now required. It’s Sunday morning at 7:30. I was here Saturday also, for 3 or 4 hours. I work from 6:30 a.m.

till 4:00 p.m. during the week. This is a little more than 50 hours a week. I’ve averaged that for the 12 years I’ve been in the saddle.

So I’m tired of hearing (some people) bad-mouthing teachers. Unbelieveable. We see the nation’s fi nancial sector rise to unprecedented levels of control and power, then, after their recklessness and derivatives and collateralized debt obligations all crash and burn us and our economy, we pick on teachers.

Our nation continues to polarize economically and fi nancially. Our wealth and property move further toward the few and awayfrom the many. The struggle for a home and health care and a college education becomes more demanding and out of reach for millions of us. Equality is bankrupt.

And so, we go after public school teachers.

They want tenure (job safety). They want pensions (help in retirement). They want freedom (trust in our capabilities and devotion to our kids). Yes, we’re lost in a wilderness of downward mobility listening to the top dogs tell us who to hate. And we listen.

The “reformers” love looking at other countries and their education systems.

They don’t like talking about our high poverty rates and income inequality here in the good ol’ U.S.A. We deny these facts that impact our schools. ... We’ve created this unequal world and it’s unfair advantages and desperation.

Schoolteachers do needsome form of job security;

don’t we all? And, the ignorance of just looking at a test score as the main “assessment” of teaching quality is astounding. How can we factor in all the variables? Number of kids in a class, number of kids over the schoolday, number of classes taught, number of planning periods, family income levels, special education students, English language learner students, number of preps.

There’s plenty of new investment opportunities in testing corporations and consultants and charter schools and other forms of privatizing public education. Our monies are being funneled away from us and toward the corporate.

Surprised? Why should we be when many of these ‘reforms’ are bankrolled by billionaires and multimillionaires that have nevertaught a day in their lives?

Nearly everyone acknowledges that the past 40 years have been good to the rich, bad for the middle class and poor.

The real problem is we do nothing about it. We gripe to each other and allow our Supreme Court to open the floodgates ever more widely with their “Citizens United” ruling. Buying and selling elections through the super PACs of billionaires and multimillionaires. It’s both sad and sickening, as well as undemocratic and unAmerican. Shame on us.

So, I’ve got work to do. We’re testing on Reconstruction and forms of government and their economies. Love my subjects. Love America. And most of this new “reform?” Nothing but poison.

TX TRUMBO

Fayetteville