Quotes: Enough With The "War On Education" Rhetoric

Last I heard there were not any education reform terrorists. No hidden cells of militant teachers planning an attack on Charter Schools or roadside school bus bombs. -- Megan Rosker in the Huffington Post 

Comments

[Sarah]

With some of what you see from the public in terms of adamant fear/hatred, you’d certainly think people at least BELIEVE squads of teachers in military jackets are mailing them anthrax right now, piling sandbags in front of their charter schools, threatening an all-out war.

[Mary]

Sometimes adamant is good. Here's Megan's thesis:

"Peters suggests that instead of keeping track of all the things that have gone wrong in one's business, to keep track of moments, big or small, that have gone RIGHT...
Positive thinking facilitates more positive thinking and good ideas build on one another and before you know it we are going to be dealing with solutions instead of problems."

Somewhat to my surprise, she posted my comment in response. Here it is, all the way adamant:

Under the guidance and mentorship of MassInsight, which fully controlled the Massachusetts DOE at the time, my Title I public district entered the age of accountability a decade ago.

Business venturists advised administrators to low-ball our early scores, so we could show spectacular improvement through implementing their programs. Then, our scores did indeed rise because the advisors made war on the children in my care. "Score supressors" were identified and purposefully held back in 9th grade, to protect the high-stakes 10th grade scores. When they were old enough, they were somehow purged from my rosters and from the state's corrupted Data Warehouse. We reported a 0% drop out rate by 2003, while our actual graduation rate hovered around 50% for years. The original Diplomas Count data base on Edweek reported that most of the missing students disappeared in 9th grade.

My girls came to me in tears, to turn in their chemistry books and be put out of their school against their will, for "failure to make academic progress". Think for a minute about what happens to a 16 year old girl with less than a tenth grade education. She got her lunch and her medical care through her school, so that was lost. Nobody tracked her pregnancy rate. The FBI busted five guys for running an interstate underage prostitution ring, running fake job ads to lure girls. Three of the perps had addresses in my district.