- Provide access to private and charter schools for all Louisiana children through a voucher system that will (allegedly) enable every family to choose a school for his/her children, regardless of where his/her residence is zoned;
- Evaluate teacher performance based on "added value," whereby teachers will be solely accountable for a child's performance, and the performance of students will determine a significant portion of a teacher's salary. Student performance will be measured by nationally normed, standardized tests that may or may not be reflective of the state's new core curriculum standards;
- Assign evaluation to administrators who may or may not be familiar with the content areas of the teacher that he/she is assigned to evaluate;
- Attach teacher tenure to student performance and administrator evaluation. Teachers can be stripped of tenure and be required to work for a minimum of SIX years to have tenure reinstated;
- Apply different rules for assessment to charter and private schools.
So, yes, ladies and gentlemen, your children's teachers are protesting. Those who CAN retire soon will do so sooner rather than later because there is no compelling reason for them to stay. No intrinsic reward of a job well done or the love of children will make the new assessment system bearable. Attrition of new teachers will quickly decimate the ranks. Good teachers too young to retire will soon be looking for other occupations. So, who will teach? Whomever the state can find. . . after all, individuals can work at charter and private schools, who do not have to abide by the same credentialing requirements that public schols do. The generations of teachers who spent summers and their own time and money to become "highly qualified" as mandated by the state will have no particular added value -- and it costs more to hire experienced, highly qualified professionals.
I have grossly over-simplified the situation in the interests of brevity. Those of us who have written letters to legislators have valiantly tried to appeal to reason, but it appears that many of our elected officials do not respond to reason, unless that reason is applied by the governor: your allegiance to the governor's wishes overrides your commitment to your constituents. I suppose there is some logic somewhere . . . . Could it be that threats from a despot are intimidating?
Teachers are NOT against education reform. In fact, the teachers I know have been sitting on committees, reading hundreds of pages of documents to understand state and federal education mandates, and working indefatigably FOR change. We KNOW there are children who fall through the BIG cracks in the system. We KNOW there are individuals in classrooms who are NOT as well prepared or as motivated as they should be.
Most of us, however, try to compensate for those cracks with the limited resources the state and parishes provide; most of us spend hours and hours working with those children to narrow the gap between their knowledge and the test expectations. NO ONE KNOWS THIS BETTER THAN WE DO.
Teachers have been betrayed by those who are supposed to represent the best interests of our children. Teachers have, sadly, been betrayed by some individuals in our communities who, often uninformed, challenge teachers' integrity and commitment and skill. You have made your opinions very clear in your comments on Facebook and other public forms of discourse.
I am proud of the work that our teachers do every day, and I am doubly proud of their exercising their constitutional rights to protest legislation that is specious at best, catastrophic at worst.
Thank you, fellow teachers, for your courage in the face of community criticism, for your willingness to add onto your already busy days, for your knowledge and skills in educating my children and those of the community. You have my gratitude and respect.
Carry on. Better infamous than anonymous.
