It’s a defense of teachers and tenure. The basic argument is that tenure cannot be cited as the cause of the achievement gap. There’s another piece by a colleague from the Law School that argues that teachers’ unions should not be allowed to participate in education reform talks because the unions only advocate for teachers, and “the interests of children are not part of that discussion.†He got pretty slammed in the blogosphere.
Anyway, the opportunity to publish the piece came about suddenly. I had wanted to attend the hearings at the Capitol on SB 24, Governor Malloy’s education reform bill titled An Act Concerning Educational Competitiveness, but I was unable to do so. I thought to write a letter to the editor on the issue, and, long-story-short, I ended up writing the op-ed piece.
The response has been amazing. Besides all the friends, acquaintances and colleagues who have written me in Facebook or by email to thank me for the piece, the online edition of the Courant has gotten tremendous traffic, with over three-thousand shares, recommends, and tweets, etc, which only account for a fraction of the views. I say this not to toot my own horn but to call attention to the relevance of the issue and to the affirmative response to my defense of teachers. Teachers, of course, but, more importantly, the public in general are not buying into the scapegoating, no matter what the governor, legislators, journalists, and pseudo-reformists like Patrick Riccard claim.
Sunday, February 9, the Courant ran the results of its own poll in its Weekly Buzz section. Question #1 asked, “Should teachers have to re-earn tenure once they’ve earned it?†An overwhelming 84% of respondents replied No. Of those respondents, 56% said that “Tenure protects teachers from arbitrary firings. Without tenure, school systems will save money by getting rid of better-paid tenured teachers and keeping cheaper teachers.†An additional 25% of those who replied No to the first question said that “This [SB 24] is a ploy to get rid of tenure altogether. What’s the point of granting it in the first place if it has to be re-earned?†There were a total of 2,102 responses to this question. By contrast, the third question, on the death penalty, drew the second most, with 679 responses.
Today’s “Issue of the Day†section of the Courant was also dedicated to tenure. The question was, “What’s The Problem With Education? Is It Bad Teachers?†The response, again, was overwhelmingly in defense of teachers. Respondents repeatedly cited poverty, lack of support for education in the home, and lack of funding as the root causes of the achievement gap.
No one’s buying what the Governor is selling except the legislature and the media (and they probably like the sensationalism more than they believe the Governor’s claims).
One colleague wrote to me today and asked what I thought could be done. I told him simple things: write letters to the editor, contact your local representatives, attend the upcoming Town Hall Meetings the Governor plans to hold. The schedule for these can be found here: http://www.cea.org/issues/news/2012/governor-announces-education-reform-tour.cfm.
If you do any of these things, both the NEA and CEA have lots of helpful information on their websites. The NEA can be accessed at http://www.nea.org/. The CEA is at http://www.cea.org/. The CEA has even developed its own “comprehensive education reform plan†that was “developed by teachers†(imagine that!). You can download it here: http://cea.org/viewfromclassroom/. The AFT has good resources, too, of course, and you can access their site here: http://aftct.org/.
And if you want to slog through Senate Bill 24 itself, there are lots of places to access it from. Here’s one: http://www.mygov365.com/legislation/view/id/4f337ea949e51b5a636d0200/tab/versions/.
I hope there’s still time to stop or significantly revise this bill. I’d like to see education reform. I think we all would, but I think that means something very different to teachers than it does to the Governor and the Commissioner, neither of whom have ever taught. As I say in my article, we want and expect support in the form of funding and professional development, not blame, reprisal, watered down standards, and privatization. They seem more concerned with cost savings.
Daniel Ward, editor of Language magazine, a journal for teachers of world languages, states the case succinctly in his February editorial: “it is about time that we all stood up against teacher bashing and insisted that our media affords them the respect that they deserve.â€
Check out Kristal Bivona’s article on professional development and self-determination in the same issue: http://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=3380.
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