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CAT Tracks for February 5, 2011
YOUR HONORABLE PRESIDENT OBAMA |
Another "Letter to the President"...an angrier letter!
Got my Education Week e-mail yesterday and it featured a link to the article below. Education Week restricts some material to paid subscribers and this was one such article. Being an El Cheapo CAT, I am not among the blessed. However, my interest was peaked, having posted "Another Voice" yesterday.
Being a veteran cheapskate, I employed a method used in the past...Googling "Paul karrer Dear President Obama". Voilà!
How dare they! Education Week wants me to pay to read an article that was written and published on October 22, 2010...and sits "out there" waiting to be read by anyone wandering the highways and byways of cyberspace! Allow me a moment of righteous indignation! (Sigh...we sinners always find an excuse to justify our mischievous ways! Guess I'd best take a pass on taking up serpents this week...)
Anyway...
The author of the article below shares my frustration at a President of the Democratic Party who would attack a sizable group of people who helped put him in office...activist types who made phone calls, knocked on doors, and drove people to the polls. This same group of people who may (at the very least) sit on their hands in November 2012, if not actually vote for his opponent.
Had a friend e-mail me yesterday (in response to yesterday's letter to the president), expressing the hope that as the 2012 election neared maybe, just maybe Barack Obama would "see the light"...recant his wayward education policies...seek out the support of those he has wronged in order to win re-election.
I cannot share her wishful, Pollyanna perspective...
First of all, because I don't believe for one second that it will happen. For such a smart man, President Obama is a naive politician. He really, really believes that Republicans will vote for him in 2012 if he "reaches out" to them...adopts their policies as his. Pity the fool...
However, more importantly...
POLITICS 101:
RULE #1 - It is an accepted FACT of political life...politicians will SAY ANYTHING during a campaign to get elected and, then, DO ANYTHING they damn well please afterwards. I mean, that's why "campaign promises" are NEVER taken seriously...nobody really thinks/expects an elected official to walk the talk.
That's one of the reasons I voted for Barack Obama. YES...he said he was an "education reformer" during the presidential campaign of 2008, even said he was in favor of "merit pay". YES...his education "campaign promises" ruffled this old CAT's fur, but I took comfort in "Rule #1".
I (and millions of other educators) did the ASS-U-ME thing...it'll be okay. Candidate Obama is simply appealing to those among the Republican Party who have been trying to privatize public education for their own personal agendas. Once in office...NAH! No way!!!
I could ghost-write his explanation speech with ease..."Yes, my fellow Americans, I'm in favor of merit pay. Unfortunately, no workable method has been found to implement such a program. In theory, it's great, but in reality...there are some evil school administrators out there who will simply use merit pay to reward their cronies for their allegiance and punish "enemies" who don't dance to their whims. It is a goal of this administration..."
YES...
...I had hope!
President Barack Obama...consumate (typical) politician.
Who knew?
Barack Obama...a unique politician...a truth-telling politician...a man of his word!?
MY Open Letter to President Barack Obama...
Your Honorable President Obama:
Fool me once, shame on you...fool me twice, shame on me.
Excuse me, Mr. President, if I don't turn the other cheek...
From The Frustrated Teacher.com Website...
A letter to my president, the one I voted for.
By Paul Karrer
Your Honorable President Obama:
I mean this with all respect. I'm on my knees here and there's a knife in my back and the prints on it kinda match yours.
You're righting the wrong guys with your Race to the Top program, which provides grant money that "might" go to schools if they comply with unproven, absurd draconian "reforms" such as shuffling teachers around.
You're hitting the good guys with friendly fire.
I teach in a barrio in California. It's a public school. I have 32 kids in my class. I love them to tears. They're fifth-graders. That means they're 10 years old, mostly. Six of them are 11 because they were retained. Five more are in special education and two more should have been.
I stopped using the word parents when I talk with or about my kids because so many of them don't have them.
Amanda's mom died in October. She lives with her 30-year-old brother (a thousand blessings on him). Seven kids live with their grandmothers, six with their dads. A few rotate between parents.
Fifty percent of my 10-year-olds have visited relatives in jail or prison.
Do you and Arnie Duncan understand the significance of that? I'm afraid not. It isn't bad teaching that has taken things to the current stage. It's poverty. We don't teach in failing schools. We teach in failing communities.
It's called the ZIP code quandary. If the kids live in a wealthy ZIP code, they have high test scores. If they live in a ZIP where the people are poor, guess how they do.
We also have massive teacher turnover at my school. Now, we have no money. We haven't had an art teacher or music program in 10 years. We have a nurse twice a week.
And due to No Child Left Behind, we are punished most brutally. Did you know that 100 percent of our students have to be on grade level? That's like saying you have to get along with 100 percent of your cabinet (and unlike my kids, your cabinet gets to quit).
You lived overseas, so you know what conditions are like in the rest of the world. President Obama, I swear that conditions in my school are Third World. We had a test when I taught in the Peace Corps. We had to describe a glass filled to the middle. We were supposed to say it was half full. Too many of my kids don't even have the glass.
And then, of course, there are the gangs. They are eating my kids, their parents and the neighborhood.
One of my former students stuffed an AK47 down his pants at a local bank and was shot dead. Another one of my favorites has been incarcerated since he was 13. He'll be 27 next month. I've been writing to him for 10 years and visiting him in Level 4 maximum security—he's in chains behind bullet-proof glass—in Salinas Valley State Prison.
Do you get that it's tough here? Charter schools and voucher schools aren't the solution. They are an excuse not to fix the real issues. You promised us so much and now you want to give us merit pay based on how the kids do, no matter their circumstances?
You're making it real hard to vote with enthusiasm.
Can you pull the knife out now? It really hurts.
Paul Karrer, who teaches at Castroville Elementary School, writes about education for this page.
