There's a movement going on.......

It’s taken me a while to wrap my head around what’s really going on in the sphere of public education, but I’ve come to realize that, guess what? Whether it started that way or not, now it’s all about money, and the belief of those who have it in abundance that if you are super rich you somehow have the answers to….. well, everything. There’s a vibrant strain of megalomania going around among the super rich that is threatening to turn what’s left of our democracy into a plutocracy faster than you can say “Bill Gates.” You may wonder why I chose poor Mr. Gates (oxymoron intended) and not Warren Buffet, the Kochs, or another of our wealthy elite. The reason is this: Mr. Gates has chosen education as his arena of involvement and intends to remake it in his own image. As one who is on the receiving end of his ministrations, I don’t like it one bit. Here’s the scenario in a nutshell: In spite of the fact that the myth of failing public schools is totally inaccurate, and choosing to ignore the fact that all human beings are not identical and cannot be standardized, he and others came to believe that it is possible to find an approach to teaching that will be appropriate for anyone, anywhere, anytime, and that all that is standing in the way of every student being ready to go to college or career is the arts, unions, and ineffective teachers. This gave rise to the development of No Child Left Behind, the Common Core, and standardized testing and its accompanying method of teacher evaluation called Value Added (VAM). Whether or not the intentions of the originators of these ideas were pure we’ll never know. One thing is known, however: all of these things have morphed into the wholesale raiding of public education money under the guise of "helping students" by individual and corporate raiders with little regard for its actual effect on education or those who are in the classroom every day dealing with real students with real issues and not data points on someone’s data wall. It is the attempted transfer of one of the last large pools of public money into the private coffers of a few unscrupulous individuals and companies and the gutting of public education. Things are heating up as more and more teachers, administrators, school boards, and parents become aware of what is really going on. My hope is that this blog will be a useful link for those who want to stay on top of what’s happening and maybe even inspire some to become involved. This is reminiscent of another time in our country when people of all ages and from all walks of life and political persuasions came together to fight for what they knew was right. I’m glad I was there then, and I’m glad I’m here now. There’s a movement going on…….stay tuned.