President Obama, We Were There When You Needed Us
It has been a year and a half since I wrote an open letter to President Obama, and started a project called Teachers' Letters to Obama. Back in December of 2009, I sent a package of 107 letters to the President and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (downloadable here).
Sadly, there has been no change in education policies, and the administration seems more determined than ever to enforce policies that attach ever higher stakes to standardized test scores.
On March 28 of this year, as President Obama began looking towards his reelection in 2012, he held a town hall meeting at a high school. A student named Luis Zelaya asked him if he could help reduce the many tests students were forced to take. The President responded with words that reminded us why teachers had supported him so actively back in 2008. But the words did not correspond with his policies, so the organizers of the Save Our Schools March created a petition, which states:
Our public schools need support. President Obama understands what his daughters need -- occasional low stakes tests used to find out their strengths and weaknesses, and a rich learning