NYC Educator: Another Day, Another Sliming

NYC Educator: Another Day, Another Sliming:

Another Day, Another Sliming

by NYC Educator

It seems like not a day goes by that we who teach the children of this country are not trashed in the media. In my school, free tabloids are all over the place, and I'd open them in teacher rooms to discover what fresh perfidies we'd committed this week, this day, this hour. We are perverts. We are incompetent. Our jobs are protected forever. We make too much, work too little.

Today, on the heels of a new evaluation system based on junk science the Daily News bemoans the fact that not enough teachers are labeled incompetent. If kids are still failing tests, or not graduating, it must be the fault of teachers, since they are the sole factor in student achievement. It doesn't matter if they come from abusive homes. If their parents each work 200 hours a week and never see them, that's an excuse. If they came from other countries and had interrupted formal education, a competent teacher would