I, too, have a dream.
Sadly, since I am a product of an Ozark upbringing, my dream does not rise to the aesthetic beauty of Martin Luther King's. I am sure visions of cage fighting never crossed his mind as he was preparing his March on Washington address.
Instead of seeing a land where all of the children, African American, Asian, Caucasian, can be judged on their merits and not by the color of their skin, I see a land where the education of those children will be decided by throwing raw meat into the center of an arena and letting desperate classroom teachers dive for it.
Instead of seeing a land where education and the people who are responsible for it -- the classroom teachers -- are valued for the contributions they are making to society, I see a land where those teachers, and I proudly stand among them, are pitted against each other for the amusement of a group of politicians and billionaire businessmen who give lip service to creating a nation of out-of-the-box thinkers, while at the same time taking giant steps toward turning education into a microcosm of the rest of society -- a place where the rich get richer and the poor become breeding stock for a workplace filled with people whose primary skill is filling in bubbles, making clean and careful erasures of stray marks and never coming anywhere near the threshold of creative thinking.
I don't have a dream -- I have a nightmare.
And the land I see is my home state of Missouri.
Last week, by a vote of 5-2, a state senate committee took the first giant step toward a radical change of public education that will make our schools a nightmare for students, teachers, and administrators.
The "Teacher Continuing Contract Act" calls for everything so-called "educational reformers" have been demanding. It eliminates teacher tenure, it makes it illegal to pay any teacher based on years of classroom experience, and it requires all public school districts to divide their faculties into a four-tier pay scale, with pay based primarily on standardized test scores.
Under the four-tier system proposed by the bill's sponsor, Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, teachers whose students score the lowest would receive the lowest pay, with the second tier receiving more, the third tier an even greater total, and then the fourth tier receiving 60 percent more than those in the third tier.
Even if all of the teachers are capable, the tiers would be required, and the bill even offers an elaborate tiebreaking system to determine who goes in what tier.
Mrs. Cunningham's bill, which is identical to a bill sponsored in the Missouri House by Rep. Scott Dieckhaus, also calls for the following:
-The abolition of tenure, to be replaced by "continuing contracts," which can be two, three, or four years, depending on how well teachers' students perform on standardized tests.
-Abolition of minimum salaries for veteran teachers or those who have earned master's degrees
-Performance pay would become effective in 2013
-Teachers cannot campaign for school board candidates in their district. (It should be noted that Mrs. Cunningham was a one-term member of the Ladue Board of Education and lost her re-election bid after she alienated school officials, teachers, and students, with her attempts to push a religious organization on the school's students.)
-All teachers who have already earned tenure lose it as of 2012 and become probationary teachers once again.
As if this bill was not enough, it is not the only legislation designed to push the "reform" agenda:
Another bill, which also stands a good chance of passing, would tie administrator pay to standardized test scores.
If President Obama thinks there is too much teaching to the test now, he needs to come to Missouri if this legislation passes.
Yesterday, I signed a contract for my 13th year as a classroom teacher. I still see value in what I do, even if Missouri's elected officials see me and my fellow teachers as just one more obstacle in the way of eliminating this special class of public employees who are draining dollars that could be used to reduce taxes for businesspeople, who at some unspecified date will begin using these tax breaks to bring low-paying jobs into our state.
Public education has always had its critics and always will, but it is a system that has served this country well and continues to do so.
Having teacher pay decisions turned into a cage fight, with teachers battling to see who can teach to the test best and receive a handful of gold-plated salaries, is a formula guaranteed to continue the transformation of our schools from places of learning, which they have continued to be despite the recent wave of negative publicity, to test preparation factories.
In the world of Jane Cunningham, experience does not matter. Advanced degrees and the debt that went into earning them are meaningless. In Mrs. Cunningham's world, if you remove all originality and empathy from your teaching and spend the lion's share of your time teaching test-taking tips, you have a 25 percent chance of becoming a highly-paid teacher.
With public education turning into a nightmarish Dickensian and American Legislative Exchange Council vision, one question remains unanswered:
Why in the world would anyone want to become a classroom teacher?
Follow Randy Turner on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rturner229
You're test scores will be fine.
The only one punished will be the teacher who actually cares.
As far as how rigorous Missouri's tests are, until we have a system that is nation-wide, how will we know? And on a kind of creepy note...... My last year to teach was 2002. That year when we gave the test, we, the teachers, were instructed to not to look at the questions on the test. Just saying.....
Don't kill the messenger! Your headline should read:
“The Smackdown of Those NEW Teachers!â€
I scouted out the situation- the Calvary is NOT coming!
I repeat the war is over. Top paid teachers and union-leadership have decided it's best to focus on building union membership.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/randi-weingarten/the-taxing-issue-of-share_b_849906.html#comments
I think the decision was made somewhere between Wisconsin & Michigan. Union Leadership is probably looking at Ohio, Florida, Idaho, New Jersey, Missouri.. and trying to decide which plan to role out nation wide. Which plan do you think creates the Highest Turn-over? I'm leaning toward Florida: Teachers can be terminated yearly, based on an evaluation. (high potential for turn-over)
Less Wage & Benefits for new teachers = more hiring opportunities (dues)
More turn-over = more Initiation Fees ($500?, $1,000?, $5,000? each new teacher)
Smackdown, MMA or Big Time Wrestling (scripted)?
Either way, your on your own. I'm sorry Randy- Be Brave!
Link please; any site that says, Unions Can't charge Initiations Fees. Union Constitution?
Care to explain what Union-Leadership is doing to help the teachers in the Great State of Missouri. How much do Unions collect every week in dues?
5,000,000 members x $20.00 per week (dues?) = $100,000,000
How about the “War Chest†reserve?
If it wasn't for Huffington Post and Mr. Randy Turner's article, I would never have heard about the “Teacher Continuing Contract Act.†Has anyone else ever heard of it? Please explain what Union-Leadership is doing to help the teachers in the Great State of Missouri.
Lets be honest, how often have you seen teachers question authority? For the past several decades they had horrific pedagogical and curricular experiments shoved down their throats from administrations carry out the dirty work for the Schools of Education, and they don't even bat an eyebrow. Seeing how teachers behave in a single professional development class is enough for one to understand why the wealthy feel so empowered to ram through these "reforms".
If you want the wealthy to respect you then shut the damn state down. After a couple of months of families not being able to work because they have no one to watch their children, the importance of teachers in our current society will become completely evident.
This is a nightmare!!
It will as you suggest "throwing raw meat into the center of an arena" resemble the Roman Gladiator games.
Yes i know these subjects are getting pushed out but the state of MO isn't going to completely eliminate these subjects so where do they do only in the first tier because their subjects don't get tested????
Am I a racist for pointing this out?
Be that as it may however, this is what you get when the educators continually state that no system to evaluate them would be fair.
The educators need to get together and come up with constructive processes they will support to assure quality educators for our children and fair pay based upon that performance. To continue to just sit back and say we need the status quo will result in more and more short shighted efforts like these. Educators need to understand the real problems associated with tenure and a pay system that pays everyone equal to the worst teacher in the system.
If you want change you can live with, you need to drive the bus.
Yours is an argument I've heard before. It usually goes along with calling anybody who disagrees with the sort of Duncan/Rhee/Klein/Gates model of horribly destructive "reform" a defender of the status quo. I don't think I've ever met a teacher who didn't think our education system couldn't be improved. But they don't want change if that change is going to make things worse.
I do hear teachers claim they want to improve the system. However, the point I was making is that it comes across as lip service. I sure they are interested, but until they put forth real plans to actually make a change it's just background noise. The answer is for the teachers to devise a system that they can live with that does show promise for moving things forward and then sell that plan to administrators. If they do that they can direct their future. If they just continue to sit back and say NO much more of this type of knee jerk, over the top changes will be forced upon them.
We do this because it's too hard to do it any other way. Imagine if we really individualized and personalized learning for kids, how much better that would be. But that's too hard.
Just wait until the Common Core takes hold and the national assessment evolves out of it. You think it's bad now?