Stop Blaming Teachers for Poor Student Performance
The Baltimore City Council, spurred by Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke, deserves praise for its resolution endorsing the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action, to be held in Washington, D.C., on July 30. This march, and the national attention it brings to the plight of our public schools, is long overdue — especially as it falls on the heels of the mass hysteria around blaming teachers for the questionable lack of student performance on high-stakes tests.
This resolution comes at a very important time for education policy-making in Maryland. Gov. Martin O’Malley must appoint a new state schools superintendent, now that Nancy Grasmick is retiring. Perhaps the governor will take the hint from Baltimore City that we need to reverse course immediately.
Ms. Grasmick was a strong proponent of Race to the Top, which has been more appropriately labeled “Race to the Bottom” and even “Rat Race to the Top.” The entire focus of President Barack Obama’s educational policy is to replace public schools with charter and non-union schools; bust the teachers unions by stripping teachers of collective bargaining rights; rely on extremely nebulous, faulty and often fraudulent data to assess school and student performances; tie teacher salaries to standardized test scores; and ignore economic reality in order to shift blame for apparent failures.
The politics around blaming teachers is simple. If you’re not going to go after the legitimate targets for