Public Education is Being Murdered

This is cross-posted as a diary on http://www.mydd.com

I have been laid off for two years as a public school teacher. NCLB has hit public school districts very hard financially. The poorer the district, the harder they've been hit. Hence they've had to toss teachers and programs until they are down to the "core" subjects.

Districts with a higher percentage of minority and/or poverty students were struggling to begin with in trying to overcome the environmental challenges to learning their students showed up to school with daily. That programs like business ed, art, music, and technical education should have to be tossed is not only leaving behind the students in white suburban schools, but again hitting the poorer districts the hardest. NCLB has resulted in a back-door form of socio-economic discrimination.

The NCLB mandate was unfunded and, I believe, that was no accident. In Ohio, a leading contributor to our political candidates also just happens to own a large number of charter schools.

The Bush administration does not believe in the value of public education or perhaps in any education for the public at all. It makes folks so much easier to lead off a cliff if they are ignorant. So, for now, a rich white man will make some money off his charter schools until their negative reputations finally reach the masses, which is finally beginning to happen.

It would behoove the NEA and the AFT to call for a nation-wide teachers' strike in September. I'll bet nothing would get NCLB repealed faster than a lot of parents who don't know what to do with their children seven days a week taking it out on their state and Congressional representatives.

There is not that wide a slice out of the whole societal pie who feel the calling to spend 185 days a year with 30 of their neighbors' children, and to do it for 30 years. I think it would work!