We Hate You, Teachers, the School Reformers Said

Hello, teachers. We are the people with all the great plans to fix America’s schools. Did you know we hate you?

Yes, we do.

We are not the children you teach. Nor are we their parents. (In terms of ethics and honesty, the public rates you just below nurses, doctors and pharmacists.) It doesn’t matter to us. We hate you still.

Who are we? We are reformers who, in our insufferable arrogance, insist you must save every child. When you cannot—because no ever has—we denigrate your efforts. We question your professionalism. We are men and women who will not teach, or teach only briefly. And yet, somehow, we know it all. We are the Guggenheim’s and Bloomberg’s and Gates’ who have solutions for every problem in the public schools, but send our children to private schools.

In ways you can never fathom (probably because you aren’t very smart) we care more about children than you do.

We prove how much we care by offering up bold plans to save every child. You must implement these plans, of course. We are too rich and important and busy giving advice—and did we mention how smart we are?

If our plans fail, it can’t be our fault.

It has to be you.

Who are we? We are the politicians who hamstring your every move. We want you to save every child by piling up data. Data will save them all! Pile that data high!

Now pile it higher!

We want you to give plenty of standardized tests because lobbyists pay us to insure we push for more tests. We want you to stop complaining in your teachers’ lounges, even if we change our minds every August about which tests you must actually give. We tell all our friends your unions are the main problem in education today. We say dealing with you is like dealing with terrorists.

We want to punch you in the face.

We are the pundits who insult you daily in newspapers and on TV. We are authors of books about teaching, people who never taught, but we know exactly what we would do to save every child if we were in your shoes. Indeed, we blame you for every problem America faces today. We mock you.

We hate you, too.

But who are we, really? Sometimes, we wake in the middle of the night, and we think about what we’ve done. And we know in our hearts that we are cowards. We toss and turn because we know we have asked you to do all the fighting that must be done to save the children. We don’t save a soul.

We criticize. We don’t act.

We weren’t there at Sandy Hook when you and the children were slaughtered like sheep in a pen. We weren’t there when Colleen Ritzer was murdered in a bathroom at the school where she taught. We weren’t there to tackle the gunman at Chardon High. We have no plan to address violence in schools and don’t really care what happens to you. We are the fools in Congress, whose approval rating hasn’t topped 20% since September 2012. We are the governors and state lawmakers who hold out our hands to receive fat contributions from corporate education interests. All you do is hold the hands of traumatized Chicago second graders, or scared Nevada middle school kids who have just seen blood spilled, on the way to, or at their schools.

We are the men and women who act like we know more about saving children than you do, even if you have spent six years, or sixteen, or thirty-six in a classroom, working with kids. We have spent no time in a classroom, most of us, or labored only two or three years. Then we tired of the challenge. We realized we were better suited to giving advice and piling up fat speaking fees, often by lambasting you. “Here is what you need to do,” we insisted, “if you want to save every child.” But we don’t think you do. We tell everyone you are lazy, and protected by tenure, and stupid, too.

We are the bureaucrats who put together studies no one, save other bureaucrats, will ever read, who pile data in giant heaps. We say you can never have enough data, not when it comes to saving kids. We are the types who become U. S. Secretaries of Education without ever saving one child.

Who are you, teachers? You are nothing to us.

But who are you, really? Your students think you matter. Their parents do, too. You are the educator who teaches the painfully shy five-year-old to speak in kindergarten for the first time. You are the third grade teacher who consoles the boy who just found out his parents are going to file for divorce. You are the teacher who helps the fifth grader who weeps one morning at school, after his drunken mother shaves large patches in his head the night before, who sends him to the counselor. You are the counselor and the school nurse who cut off the remaining, random tufts of hair, so the poor young man will feel a bit better in the end.

You are the foot soldiers of education. The battlefield is your classroom, where all the fighting takes place. It is there you labor without respite to fire great kids from fine homes with a passion to excel. And on that same battlefield you try to save the sixth grader who comes to class smelling of urine because he and his mother call a rusted out station wagon home. It will not be easy saving this boy. You know that—even if the people who criticize you so cavalierly do not.

(Or perhaps they know, and don’t care.)

Who are you? You are the special education instructor who must help autistic twins fit in with the other kids in the seventh grade. You are the junior varsity track coach who motivates girls to run harder than they ever thought they could. You are the tenth grade Language Arts teacher who can spot the unnecessary word in any sentence, in any essay you receive, a word like a wart on a beauty queen’s nose, and convince a young writer to cut it out.

This is who you really are. You deal with teens every day, kids who belong to gangs, gifted teens, teens who are contemplating suicide and want to know if you have time to talk. Many of you have been fighting for young people almost your entire adult lives. You have embraced the challenge. You have not wavered or quit. But you are more frustrated than at any time in your careers.

You are sick of the haters who have no earthly clue.

You are the art teacher who fuels a fire of creativity in your fourth grade kids.

You are the middle school band instructor who turns bleating trumpet players into future professional musicians.

You are the health teacher who reaches that obese kid and shows her a path that will help her lose weight.

You are the biology teacher who inspires a young woman who goes on to Ohio State and to graduate school at Yale.

You are the math teacher who feeds the thirst for knowledge of a future Rhodes Scholar.

You are legion. You are men and women who give up evenings every week and Sunday afternoons to call parents, work on lesson plans, attend concerts and games, and catch up on tall stacks of ungraded papers, projects and artwork.

Really, who are you? You are the people who labor long and hard to save every child.

And, really, who are we? You do all the fighting. We talk and talk. We are shirkers in the fight to save children.

We hate you in the end because when we look in a mirror, we see what we truly are and what we are not.


MY BOOK ON TEACHING--ABOUT WHAT REAL TEACHERS KNOW--IS NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.

No standardized tests necessary!!!!!

Fox News Goes All Warm and Fuzzy for Public School Teachers

I’VE ALWAYS WONDERED WHY any sane public school teacher watches Fox News. After all, if there is a story out there that can be used to shed a negative light on public school teachers, Rupert Murdoch’s sock-puppet commentators will find it and flog it. 

But, wait! Fox News is suddenly “standing up for teachers!” 

That's right—Gretchen Carlson and Megan Kelly and Sean Hannity will soon be boo-hoo-hooing the fate of poor public school teachers. 

According to a recent Fox News story, teachers are getting absolutely hosed. It’s tragic, they want their viewers to know. Just terrible—and unfair—and un-American too. The average teacher is making a mere $44,000 a year.

It’s tough going, says Tracie Happel, a teacher in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. And here’s where the story gets interesting. 

Whose fault is this? You’re thinking, maybe, that ass, Governor Scott Walker, who wants to take away all bargaining rights from teachers? Maybe the infamous Koch brothers, who donate tens of millions to all the big right-wing-nut causes, and who dream about crushing the last glimmer of life out of the U. S. labor movement? 

Nope. Fox News found the one teacher in America who would agree that the real problem was fat cat union bosses. Says Happel:

It’s always about the union. It’s never about the teachers or students. When you’re a teacher, you know you will not always be able to have the money for renovations on a house or go away on vacation, but it’s a tough pill to swallow when you can’t do those things when the people who are supposed to represent us get paid more and more every year.

That pill might be even tougher to swallow if you’re one of the tens of thousands of teachers who have been laid off by Tea Party- loving, tax-slashing, union-busting governors in the last couple of years.  

But no one at Fox News bothered to talk to any of those teachers. 

Not a snowball’s chance on a Fourth of July grill! What Fox really wants to see is the smashing of unions. It’s simple. No one at Fox News actually cares about teachers. The key to this “awful” story isn’t teachers’ pay. It’s those evil union leaders, and by extension their diabolical Democratic political friends. According to Fox sources, the evil leaders of the evil teachers’ unions are pulling down salaries and benefits of almost half-a-million annually. 

That’s the real takeaway from the tale. Don’t stop to remember that Wall Street types crashed damn near the entire U. S. economy in 2008, while hedge fund CEO’s raked in $100 million salaries. Don’t look at stories in newspaper about banks rigging basic interest rates—affecting what every teacher (and every poor sucker who watches Fox News) pays on mortgages and car loans. Pay no attention to the pharmaceutical companies that have paid huge fines for illegal marketing tactics. Ignore companies, including Bain Capital, that ship good American jobs overseas to India, China and Bangladesh. 

Biggest economic problem in America today?  

Overpaid union leaders. 

YOU MIGHT THINK THE DUMB CLUCKS who let themselves be gulled nightly by the Fox crew would have the tiniest clue. Then again, you’d think public school teachers wouldn’t be watching a channel that vilifies them. But if you think fans of Fox News didn’t get the real point of this recent story, all you have to do is read a few typical posted comments. 

“Well,” Warren Reichle noted, “the Average teacher is a know nothing Slug! End the unionization of our educators, end the tenures, increase quality of our educators, increase their pay with results!” 

Clearly that man felt bad for all the “know-nothing slugs” (to polish up his grammar) who make only $44,000 a year. 

Estella Bunny Howe added:  “Hey, the teachers have the right to opt out of the unions. Stupid if they don’t. And, just remember these are the same teachers who are teaching math, etc. to our kids. And, you wonder why our society is so screwed up?????” 

Yeah, don’t you hate it, Bunny, when teachers screw up the world? Starting the War in Iraq, for example, making American adults fat, causing health care costs to skyrocket. 

Yeah, damn teachers. 

Diana Lynn Friemann certainly caught the point of the story. She picked up the football and ran with it down the field and spiked the ball in the end zone. “We need to have a law outlawing these unions. They are full of thugs, liars and thieves. All they are good for anymore is raising money for the Democrat candidates. That is NOT what they are supposed to be for! They are supposed to be a voice for workers, but that ended years ago. Thugs!” 

The sympathy (cough, cough) for teachers that Fox News, in its heart, hoped to elicit was everywhere in view: 

Theresa Victorino Stevens:  “Public education system is RIDICULOUS!!” 

Joe Armato:  “This is why the children do not get an education. The teachers are so dumb that they allow this to happen.” 

“There’s probably no more overpaid profession than teacher,” Tom Van Riper grumbled. Apparently, he didn't care if Tracie Happel (or any other teacher in America) made $44,000 per year or if she had to get by on minimum wage.

John Hammack was equally sympathetic, noting, “around here they make on the average $90K. I’d love to make $44k, get three months off during the summer, and leave the job at 3:30 with no accountability.”

Marc Mathews pretty agreed with Mr. Hammack:  “44G with a pension, summers off and very good benefits and what is basically a job for life. Doesn’t excuse the 500g salaries but I'm playing the worlds smallest violin for the whiners.”

GregandAngie Jones—which could be a couple sharing a Facebook page—or maybe a posting by co-joined twins, responded:

Good teachers are the exception, not the norm. Many teachers are there to put in their 180 school days per year. Take their winter break, spring break, and summer vacations; collect their pay and retire on the taxpayer. The level and standard of public education in the US is a good indication that it is failing.

Charles Donaldson looked under his bed, couldn’t see President Obama’s birth certificate anywhere, but caught a glimpse of the Red Menace boogie man: “schools, public education, is destroying america…kids don’t have an idea what work is cause they spend their whole life in school socialism.” 

Jeff Runyan touched on a common sentiment, damning to America’s teachers in general, when he grumbled:  “The US doesn’t even rank in the Top 10 in the world for education yet we spend the most on it. Wonder why that is.” 

John Bravo backed him up, especially after a more liberal individual noted that maybe the matter was more complex than a simple list that showed the United States wasn’t in the Top 10 in terms of education. He lambasted Azhar Din, who dared to disagree, then made it crystal clear where the problems in education began:  “[We] rank low because liberals have been in charge of our schools for the past 50+ years wake up troll.” 

I did what I could. I posted a few comments of my own, including one in response to Mr. Runyan, noting that the U. S. doesn’t rank in the Top 10. True. We stood 25^th in the most recent international math comparison. Unions, right, fans of Fox News? I explained that if he cared to do a snippet of research he might discover that the U. S. was 24^th in life expectancy, using the same 30 countries in the international math survey. We’re 1^st in health care spending, too. 

It must be our terrible doctors. Are they union members, too? 

UNFORTUNATELY, LOGIC ISN’T A STRONG SUIT for fans of Fox News. So let’s leave the last word to Lowell Smith, a Tea Party philosopher. Says Mr. Smith: “For all you history majors here, on the upside, when the communist finally do get total control the first thing they do is shoot all the intellectuals and teachers.” 

Of course, Mr. Smith, won’t it be great when they shoot all the intellectuals and teachers! That’s the upside.  

Something tells me, sir, you’re going to be perfectly safe.

Governor Scott Walker and Big Business Buddies to Save U. S. Education

Teachers' unions are killing the U. S. economy.

GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER LIVES to fight another day. He has survived his recall election. Now he can go about the job of saving Wisconsin. He has handed greedy public sector unions a stinging defeat, then another, defeating them against all odds and rescuing the taxpayers of his state. Governor Walker is like David with his sling (but wearing a Cheesehead hat), slaying Goliath.

He has brought down the mighty teachers' union.

Okay: true. 

The governor did have tens of millions of dollars worth of stones, thanks to campaign contributions from Big Business types like David and Charles Koch.

That doesn't change the story. Just watch Fox News. Walker is a hero! He is like Governor Chris Christie. Only thinner. 

The forces of evil, those dirty union members behind the recall, have been defeated. Wisconsinites can sleep again at night, knowing the kindergarten teacher and the high school physics instructor can't ever rip them off again. Teachers have no more bargaining rights. Taxes will go down! Count on it. Millionaires are saved! 

Pay and benefits for middle class Americans will also go down. But, say, did we mention taxes will go down? 

Test scores will go up. Really. Bank on it! Wisconsin's economy will boom. No more teachers' unions standing in the way. And with luck, and a Romney win in November, we introduce this approach on a national scale.

Remember 2008, when the teachers crashed the economy and got that big bailout from the Bush adminstration? Well, okay, maybe that was somebody else; but the point is the same. Never again will unions bring down the U. S. economy.

A NEW ERA IS DAWNING, from sea to shining sea, as voters realize (after watching $45 million worth of pro-Walker advertisements) that only a marriage of Big Business and conservative politicians can save the nation. The door to a fantastic future is opening. Unions are dying. Now we privatize U. S. education.

We turn schools over to billionaires and millionaires who know how to profit. We put Big Business types in charge, those who can bring business efficiency to schools. Teachers will have to shape up or ship out and children can only gain. Okay, maybe we outsource secretarial positions to call centers in India. Alright, maybe we hire illegal immigrants to perform janitorial services. Hey! That's what free enterprise is all about.

Saving taxpayers money.

With Big Business methods you can look forward to Big Business morality. And when has Big Business ever not been about helping kids? Okay, sure, there was that 19th century when business leaders fought against enactment of laws to ban child labor. Okay, sure, business leaders today want to help your son our daughter save money for college by freezing the minimum wage and cutting funds for low-cost student loans. Quit quibbling. We are saving America here and if a few middle class Americans get run over in the process, that's the price of success, and the cost of lower taxes for the Koch brothers. We are putting faith in Joe the Average Billionaire because, let's face facts, who cares more about about helping every child in America, and helping every American worker, unless that child or that worker needs health care, than the people who (did I already mention this) know how to profit?

Privatizing U. S. education is going to be great. It will be like:

Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling...no, no, poor choice. Um. Schools will show rising standardized test results, year after year, like when Bernie Madoff...uh...no, no, that's not right. The school nurse will save taxpayer money by turning away students who come to her office with preexisting conditions...
Still not quite right. Okay: Your school superintendent will have the business acumen of Jamie Dimon, CEO of J. P. Morgan. He will let your district business manager put up buildings, athletic fields and school buses as collateral for risky loans. No. Scratch that. You don't want to lose $2 billion do you?

Oh yeah, have we mentioned greedy teachers lately?

Well, now that you've smashed the unions, you can tell those middle class teachers to take a hike if they want a raise on their $50,000 salaries. You can pay your superintendent who is really the key to all success, $133.7 million dollars for one year.

That's what Home Depot does. That's how much Bob Nardelli earns running the company; and while you're at it your district can start buying everything it can in China. This means parents of students might lose jobs; but it doesn't matter because the savings you make buying foreign goods will allow you to pay Bob Nardelli and he's the key. 

When a newspaper reporter asks if Mr. Nardelli deserves it, a spokesman for your district can reply, "Mr. Nardelli works harder than other people."

"Really?" the reporter may respond. "Harder than 2,674 teachers, earning $50,000 each, combined?"

Your spokesman must be ready to respond (and be sure not to laugh): "Yes. Mr. Nardelli puts in a lot of late nights and weekends."

Still not convinced that Big Business, with the help of conservative politicians, can save all the children? Maybe a real example might help. 

How about K-12, Inc. an online school operation, which owns the Ohio Virtual Academy? The company spends $6,108 per pupil vs. $10,660 at traditional brick and mortar schools (partly because K-12 pays teachers half what the regular public schools do). This means...um...huge savings for taxpayers! Have we mentioned huge savings for taxpayers lately? Talk about efficiency. Ohio Virtual Academy has one building and 7,277 pupils and a student-teacher ratio of 55.5-1 vs. a statewide average of 16.1-1. Assigning each teacher three-and-a-half times as many students and paying them less allows K-12, Inc. to make tidy profits, and...give taxpayers a fantastic deal. What? The dropout rate is 14.9% yearly, compared to a statewide average of 4.3%, according to the website Local School Directory.com?

Don't sweat it. Governor Walker can explain how it will all work. Or Governor Christie, unless his mouth is stuffed with donuts. Or Governor John Kasich here in Ohio. K-12, Inc. is in the education business because the company wants to help children. They would probably run their school for free if they could help children. But, no, Big Business leaders at K-12 can't help it if they are so talented that they make a ton of money running the Agora Cyber Charter School in Pennsylvania. True: One-third of students at Agora fail to graduate on time. Also true: hundreds withdraw every year, within months of enrollment. True, again: some Agora high school teachers are responsible for overseeing 250 students.

What the heck. Big Business heroes are crushing evil unions. Big Business heroes are going to save U. S. education.

Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch has bought into the education business, because who cares more about children than an Australian billionaire, paying $360 million for an education company called Wireless Generation, a technology operation with close ties to the New York City Schools. And who used to run the New York City Schools?  

Joel I. Klein, a gentleman who never taught a day in his life.

Now Klein works for Murdoch, heading up his education operations. How much does he earn for his expertise? A cool $4.5 million per year. After all, if you want to help the kids, you need to have the best legal advice, and Klein's real value has always been in the field of corporate law, another bastion of altruism if there ever was one. Sadly, Klein has been unable to focus on improving U. S. education lately.

He's been devoting most of his efforts to cleaning up Murdoch's long list of legal difficulties in Great Britain, including widespread phone-hacking, bribery of politicians and police, perjury, and all kinds of other sleazy antics. Maybe Klein will suggest to Murdoch that they name their first on-line charter school Milly Dowler Virtual Academy, in honor of the 13-year-old girl English girl who was abducted on her way home after classes one day, and who then had her cell phone account hacked by Murdoch's reporters while she was still missing, so that News Corporation could try to get scoop rival papers.

I mean, if you can't trust lawyers like Klein and businessmen like Murdoch to save America's kids, who can you trust?

Donald Trump, Next U. S. Secretary of Education?

TODAY, I AM GOING TO EXPLAIN how Big Business and billionaires can end the "education crisis" facing America.

Unfortunately, most people who see that phrase, "end the 'education crisis' facing America," will lose interest before finishing the sentence and switch to YouTube to hunt up clips of Jolene Van Vugt setting the land speed record on a motorized toilet.

While you're checking out Vugt's stunning accomplishment you might also watch Secretary of Education Arne Duncan drone on about the achievement gap in U. S. education. But you're not actually crazy. Duncan has a measly 184 views. No. Do what most  people do. Check out the video of Charlie Schmidt's piano-playing cat, which has 24,189,976.

Of course, if you're interested in what's happening in the public schools, there's one place you can still go for "fair and balanced" coverage. That's right, you can watch Fox News. And if you do your head is already brimful of ideas:

1. You know teachers' unions are shot through with greed and corruption and that their reason for existence is to protect tenured child molesters.

2. You are convinced that unions make campaign donations to politicians who worship the Devil.

3. You realize that if Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin loses his recall election, June 5, then union thugs are coming to your home next and they are going to eat your baby.

4. On a positive note, you can see that the only way we can save our schools, our children, our piano-playing cats, and our inalienable right to ride motorized toilets, is to break teachers' unions and turn the public schools over to for-profit corporations.

5. You believe government isn't a solution. Government is a problem. In fact, government is like herpes.

6. And last, but not least, billionaires are your heroes, because you admire their altruism; and you understand that business efficiencies brought into U. S. public education can only mean lower taxes and soaring profits.

6a. No, wait, we meant:  soaring test scores.

6b. In fact, you hope that when Mitt Romney sits in the Oval Office he will select Donald Trump as his U. S. Secretary of Education!

Of course, since you probably don't follow education news closely, you might not know that Rupert Murdoch, the Australian billionaire and owner and guiding spirit of Fox News, paid $360 million in November, 2010 to buy a company called Wireless Generation and get in on the education technology business. And you've probably never given much thought to what might happen when people like Trump and Murdoch see dollar signs dancing in front of them....no, no...we mean happy American children.

So let's look at a few examples to see how the Golden Age of For-Profit Public Education might play out:

SCHOOL BUS SERVICE:  Low-budget bus companies take over and slash costs (hugh savings for taxpayers! huge profits for low-budget bus companies!) by dispensing with time-consuming safety inspections, ignoring rules limiting hours employees can drive, and skipping background checks for drivers. Okay, kids! Meet Ophadell Williams, your new driver! Sure, Ophadell was once jailed for manslaughter. Sure, his driving privileges have been suspended on multiple occasions. Mr. Williams works cheap and this is business. So fasten your seat belts, because your bus is going to be careening off the road when Ophadell falls asleep at the wheel!

GYM CLASS REQUIREMENT:  Parents might worry that their children are getting flabby. But the for-profit gym teacher has a solution. He asks mom and dad to watch a short educational film about the benefits to their child of wearing Skecher toning sneakers. The film features Dr. Steven Gauteau, chiropractor, touting a six-week clinical trial he conducted, which showed that if a child would wear these toning sneakers he or she would lose weight, see an increase in muscle strength, and have slimmer legs and better buttocks! But the doctor will not bother to mention that his wife is an executive who works for...Skechers. No problem. The shoe companies will rake in the dough, earning $1.1 billion in 2010 sales of toning sneakers, and the $40 million Skechers will pay in fines later, for making unsubstantiated health-benefit claims, will be a small cost to pay for doing business. And your son or daughter will still have those cool sneakers!

GOOD SCHOOL NUTRITION: Meddling bureaucrats with the Department of Agriculture will try to impose new rules and require more fresh fruits and vegetables on the school lunch menu. But student interests come first when Big Business controls education. Del Monte Foods will save all those chubby fourth graders, putting lobbyists to work in Washington, D. C., to ensure that pizza remains classed as a vegetable. (After all, a slice of pizza is covered in tomato sauce!) Tea Party types will be shown on Fox News, passing out bumper stickers that read, "You'll have to pry my cold dead hands off my pepperoni pizza."

FOR-PROFIT SCHOOLS: We have seen the future of for-profit education! At the college level, it's ITT Tech and Phoenix University! These for-profit colleges make money hand over fist, which we all know is the founding principle of U. S. public education. Since 2008, such institutions have actively recruited students, including returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, who have guaranteed G. I. Bill tuition benefits, even though many of the students they recruit are totally unprepared for college-level study. No problem for Big Business saviors:  Students at for-profit colleges have used G. I. Bill benefits and relied on more than $125 billion in federal grants and loans to pay almost all their tuition expenses (because government is always a problem) and many have flunked out or graduated with worthless degrees (because business is always a solution). Wait? What? And then those students have defaulted on 15% of all loans.

START YOUR OWN CHARTER SCHOOL:  Profits are waiting at the elementary and secondary levels, as well. Just found a charter school! Collect payments from state government. Then cook the books and pad your own bank account. It's the Carl W. Shye Jr. method! Shye, treasurer for four Ohio charter schools, has been charged with embezzling $523,000 from school operations! Or go bankrupt, as did Lorain Art Academy, another Ohio charter. Yep. Make the state take back it's students, but say you no longer have the money already paid to your institution to educate those students. Feel the power of Big Business to save U. S. education! Operate with the same dedication to children as Michigan-based National Heritage Academies. Lease an old Catholic school in Brooklyn for $264,000 yearly. Then charge a New York State-supported charter school $2.76 million to use the same building.

STANDARDIZED TESTING: The states pay testing companies hundreds of billions to design, market and grade standardized tests. Classroom teachers will tell you the tests aren't working. But if that were true Big Business couldn't keep selling more testing, and, you know, helping America's children. So, all you billionaires, rely on your allies in right-wing political circles, and your proxies at Fox News, to keep portraying teachers as lazy union members! Sure, the test-preparation company, Princeton Review, now faces a federal suit, accused of submitting millions of dollars in false claims, for providing tutoring services to underprivileged school children in New York City! Sure, sure, one former supervisor is accused of forging student signatures, falsifying sign-in sheets and providing false certifications, including one billing which showed that 74 students attended a class held on New Year's Day in 2008, when...well...no class was actually held. That's  okay. Free markets always work the way God intended.

FINALLY, SCHOOL NURSING: Children with severe emotional problems are way more expensive to educate. Yet they insist on coming to school! Time to apply good business principles and sedate them. Presto! No more behavior issues! And tidy profits for drug companies! So what if hundreds of thousands of young children, two-thirds of them twelve or younger, are treated with Risperdel. Who cares if 1,200 kids suffered serious health problems after using the drug? If thirty-one died, including a 9-year-old who suffered a stroke a few days after beginning treatment? You're bringing business efficiency to the school house!

Meanwhile, doctors are increasingly prescribing Zyprexa, Seroquel, Abilify and Geodon to treat children. But government agencies are whining. (As always, government is the problem!) Studies show that use of these drugs has increased fivefold in twenty years. Well, that's great! Drug companies help kids and simultaneously make billions in profits! In fact, according to an article in the New York Times, “The growing use of the medicines has been driven partly by the sudden popularity of pediatric bipolar disorder.”

Well, okay. Thank god for the work of Dr. Joseph Biederman, a child psychiatrist at Harvard, and leading advocate of that diagnosis. If you can’t trust an expert like Biederman to tell you when your child needs powerful medication, who can you trust? What? You say an investigation by Congress reveals that the doctor failed to report to Harvard that he earned $1.4 million in outside income from... the drug manufacturers?

You say Biederman and the drug companies were not entirely forth-coming in testimony before Congress? That as early as 2002, one internal report noted that more study of medicines prescribed for children was necessary?  That without more data, government watchdogs might rightly question the use of these powerful medications, “especially those like neuroleptics, which expose children to potentially serious adverse events?”

You say “adverse events” is Big Business-speak for “death?”

Don't worry. When it comes to America's public schools, Mr. Murdoch and all the other billionaires just want to help.

P. S.: I CAN ALWAYS ADD EXAMPLES to show how business efficiencies, business morals, and business motivations can save us.

HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS: Your favorite high school realizes good athletic teams mean good publicity. The football coach starts recruiting, paying players from other schools under the table. The star linebacker gets hurt and his status for the big game is doubtful. Follow the National Hockey League, where Derek Boogard, who played for several teams, received more than 100 perscriptions for pain-killers from team doctors, even though he had a history of addiction. (Boogard died of an accidental overdose at age 28.)

GAMBLING DOLLARS GO TO SCHOOLS: We all know altruistic casino owners like to pay taxes to support schools. It's called doing your civic duty! So, let's say you want to move into a new state, say New York, and say you want the governor's support for a constitutional amendment to to legalize casino gambling because you love helping the children, and let's say you donate $2 million to the governor's campaign organization. You won't care about that money because you'll be raking in huge profits...no, I mean, you'll be helping raise test scores.

Forsooth: Shakespeare Doth Explain School Reform!

The author speaks 
in terms we still might grasp.

I originally posted this in 2012; it seems the flaws in school reform remain unchanged, the newsest school reformers no wiser than the last crew, most of whom have moved on to new pursuits.
I’M A RETIRED TEACHER. Perchance too much idle time doth rest upon my hands.

I’ve been trying to read every Shakespeare play there is. And it doesn’t take long to see the Bard still speaks to us today.

If you haven’t noticed, politicians seem to put forth new plans to fix the public schools almost daily. These plans are stupid, generally, and at least one Republican governor I might name fits this description from England’s beloved poet:

“He hath not so much brain as ear-wax.”

Meanwhile, more and more state lawmakers answer to the beck and call of deep-pocketed, far-right conservatives like Charles and David Koch, and do the bidding of the American Legislative Exchange Council, which the brothers doth graciously fund. As Shakespeare might put it:

“They say if money go before, all ways do lie open.”

Even politicians who slavishly follow the Koch brothers might sound cool if they spoke with the same power as England’s greatest playwright. Imagine, for example, Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, saying to teachers of his state:

“Your hearts I’ll stamp out with my horse’s heels
And make a quagmire of your mingled brains.”


WE’VE ALL HEARD A HUNDRED TIMES that business methods and business leaders can bring great improvement to the schools. So, here’s an idea. Why not apply the principles of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to stores and factories and hedge funds and see what happens?

Here is how it might play out. Starting in 2014 every boss would be responsible for the quality of the work of every worker—just as teachers are now accountable for the work of every student. Businesses would run on the same principles as public schools. First, they would no longer be allowed to ask job-seekers to fill out applications. If a worker entered the factory gate they would have to hire him. It would be up to them to turn him or her into a productive member of society.

Secondly—of course—they couldn’t fire anyone. Public schools like businesses; businesses like public schools.

Imagine a future where government woulds’t measure how every company fareth and requireth each company to increaseth yearly production. Productivity woulds’t be measured according to work done by thy employees of all different racial categories and sub groups and failure by any group woulds’t be proof of failure by thy business as a whole, just as schools are judged presently. Here’s how the Bard might tell the tale:

Much Ado About School Reform:  Act 1, Scene 1:

Falstaff, a fat government agent, visits Koch Industries and delivers bad news to the billionaire brothers. 

FALSTAFF: As I’m sure you doth know, after reading this year’s standardized reports, production here at Koch Industries hath been deemed “unsatisfactory.” Thou must know that thy workers with learning disabilities are faring poorly. Forsooth, we’re going to have to fire you, sir, and you.

CHARLES KOCH: Hast thou no feeling? What must we do with that girl, Juliet? She doth take drugs all the livelong day, in sooth on Mondays and Fridays most oft. Yesterday didst she driveth yon forklift over yon supervisor’s left foot.

FALSTAFF: Subtle be thy words, sublime thy excuse. We of thy government stand unmoved.

DAVID KOCH: Marry thee, I can’t get that fellow, Claudio, to show up at all. By my troth he hath called in sick 49 times this year! Under No Worker Left Behind, you won’t let me dispossess him of robust employ!!

FALSTAFF: Oh sighs! Oh groans! If you had but created a more stimulating environment employees might have been motivated to come to work.

CHARLES: Idle knave! I beseech thee to be realistic. What about that Hamlet fellow? His criminal record is long and deep in breadth. Last week the shift manager tried to tell him to get busy and he didst punch him and cracketh his jaw.

Can’t we fire him, at least?

FALSTAFF: Verily, he’s covered under the Workers with Severe Emotional Disabilities Act. Thou art the boss and if the bees doth not gather nectar, and thy factory isn’t functioning to capacity, if any worker doth not produce, who doth thou think we ought to blame?

DAVID: Hamlet?

FALSTAFF: ‘Tis absurd of you to sayeth!

DAVID: I asketh but a fillip of understanding. What say thee of that poor homeless varlet who wandered in off the street but yesterday? Doubt not, he be touched in the head, betimes. We tried to tell him how to run the stamping machine and he started talking to some imaginary co-worker, or, perchance, the Ghost of Christmas Past!

FALSTAFF: Thou doth confuse thy famous English authors! Dost thou not know what the law requires? Every worker must be productive by 2014.

CHARLES: Some workers are but lazy sots. You make us take all and we can fire none. How doth you expect us to get that girl, Cressida, to do anything? I but turn my but minutes and she doth disappear and we find her on yon factory roof an hour hence, sound asleepeth.

FALSTAFF: I care not for thine hollow wordlings! Thou art the motivator. It ‘ist thy job to turn that worker round.

DAVID: Sometimes it seemeth the law is setting bosses up for failure. Six months past we had to take on that Moor, Othello, darkly doth he look, a man who speakest not a speck of English. We try to tell him what he needs must do; but he utters only grimmest mutters.

FALSTAFF: A creative boss findeth creative solutions. A creative boss knoweth even a second language is no barrier. A creative boss seeth it as a challenge. I’m sorry. We’re going to have to let both of you go.

CHARLES: You whoreson cur!

DAVID: I will beat thee into handsomeness. Your guts are made of puddings!

Exit Falstaff Flying.