BAD TEACHERS - BAD, BAD, BAD
This term, "bad teachers" has become the usual battle cry from those who insist public schools need major reform and must be fixed or the future is sure to be one of doom, where pestilence will reign over a land of uneducated zombies.
Yet for all the times I have heard the term "bad teachers" tosses out as the REASON we need immediate reform, I have yet to hear one case where "bad teachers" has been defined.
Is the teacher bad when little Johnny refuses to open his book to the correct page, when little Susan comes to school mid term & has to suddenly meld into a new school/classroom, when little Billy comes to school not having had a decent meal in days, or when little Lindsey comes to school after a night of hearing her dysfunctional parents have it out til the wee hours?!?!
Is it a "bad teacher" who is responsible for taking up to 35 or 40 individual kids; who each has a different basis for their being, health, wealth, nutrition, nurturing, clothing; and when these 35 to 40 kids take some standardized cookie cutter test and comes up short on the results that do not meet the assembly line results that are expected?!
Is it a "bad teacher" who has to deal with 3 or 4 ADD/Autistic kids, while also catering to the slower learners so they keep pace, and all the while trying to keep the more gifted learners engaged?!?!
Is it a "bad teacher" who has to not only deal with the 35 to 40 kids in her classroom, but might also have to deal with the extended families of the students and their over the top expectations that their little genius is just one test score from a full academic scholarship to Harvard?!
I think I get the drift of the real meaning of "bad teachers" when used as the blanket statement to cast the entire teaching profession in a bad light. It's not so much about individual "bad teachers" as it is an all out assault on driving public opinion that public schools/education are a bane to America and the only solution is to create a "new system" where private schools and charter schools are the answer to all the supposed ills of education in the United States.
A side effect of this move to private and charter schools of course is to eliminate the unions of public education, from administrative staff to the teachers to the support staff.
See, when it's a union represented teacher in a public school..........that is a "bad teacher"..........yet when this same teacher lands at a private or charter school, where that "bad teacher" is cleansed of union representation and benefits beyond some basics and where some "educator" holding the school business license is skimming taxpayer dollars to line his/her pockets, then that "bad teacher" suddenly morphs into a "teacher"!!!
This school reform is nothing more than a union busting, drive wages and benefits down effort to create a hierarchy of schools were we separate kids into categorized levels of economic and racial compartmentalization all based on a propaganda program disguised as "school reform".
Now that my rant is over, and if you stayed around to read this, please check out this article:
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