Thursday, May 05, 2011

An open letter to Arne Duncan

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan praised teachers in a letter written this week in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week.

This is the same Arne Duncan who praised a Rhode Island school board last year for firing all of the teachers at a high school.

This is the same Arne Duncan whose Race to the Top is pushing American schools more and more toward teaching to the test and away from teaching critical thinking skills.

I respond to Arne Duncan's letter in my latest Huffington Post blog, which includes this passage:

Mr. Duncan, you have been told by one teacher after another that the key to improving schools is by eliminating the societal problems that contribute so heavily to student failure. That input is ignored.

Poverty, crime, divorce, child abuse have nothing to do with student failure in the Walton/Gates/Broad MBA style education reform you represent. You have identified the problem with education, though you try to airbrush it with your flowery ode to the teaching profession, and it is public schools and the "bad" teachers who populate them.

Mr. Duncan, you speak warmly of the hundreds of teachers with whom you have spoken, and again, I am sure you are sincere, but there is a difference between speaking with teachers and knowing what actually goes on in a classroom.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

And, how will collective bargaining benefit the students and taxpayers?

Anonymous said...

So that you don't have minimum wage teachers because you lower the quality needed for good teachers. How are your critical thinking skills?

Anonymous said...

So, a teacher will be a better teacher if engaged in collective bargaining?

Anonymous said...

Yes it is called incentive. Just as you would probably be a better worker if you got paid more. You strive to be better hoping your reward is better pay. That is assuming you have a job and if you do,thank a teacher. And no I am not a teacher. I have just had very good ones to get where I am at.