Let's Find Issues to Unite Around
My Dear Pedro,
Actually, I was only responding to one paragraph of your Nation piece. It probably suggests disagreement, but hardly would lead me to conclude that you were anti-teacher or anti-union.
I may even be more open to closing large, failing schools than you—if we could do it as well as we did with Julia Richman High School in New York, with the union's support as we had there. But the way closing schools is now being used, we both agree, is as a tool on behalf of another agenda: privatization.
For a while I felt we were being paranoiac about claims that this was part of a conspiracy. But I have discovered that it really has been a conscious PLOT. Not, of course, for all the charters.
So what's my beef with that paragraph of yours, which said, among other things: "The teachers [in Chicago] have been bold in their denunciation of the high-stakes testing that has been used to rank students, schools, and now teachers. But they have been less clear about what should be done to promote change and improvement"?
I just don't know how much you can expect teachers' unions to do! They supported our Annenberg Challenge
Actually, I was only responding to one paragraph of your Nation piece. It probably suggests disagreement, but hardly would lead me to conclude that you were anti-teacher or anti-union.
I may even be more open to closing large, failing schools than you—if we could do it as well as we did with Julia Richman High School in New York, with the union's support as we had there. But the way closing schools is now being used, we both agree, is as a tool on behalf of another agenda: privatization.
For a while I felt we were being paranoiac about claims that this was part of a conspiracy. But I have discovered that it really has been a conscious PLOT. Not, of course, for all the charters.
So what's my beef with that paragraph of yours, which said, among other things: "The teachers [in Chicago] have been bold in their denunciation of the high-stakes testing that has been used to rank students, schools, and now teachers. But they have been less clear about what should be done to promote change and improvement"?
I just don't know how much you can expect teachers' unions to do! They supported our Annenberg Challenge