A letter to the President: 'Teachers work in fear.' | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com

A letter to the President: 'Teachers work in fear.' | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com:

A letter to the President: 'Teachers work in fear.' 

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By Maureen Downey

Here is a letter to President Obama by one of the founders of the Badass Teachers Association, Mark D. Naison, a professor at Fordham University in New York.

I received several emails last week asking me to post the essay from Naison's blog "With a Brooklyn Accent."  I set it aside as we had a lot of local education news to discuss last week.

However, the piece inadvertently posted over the weekend -- without all the necessary coding. When I took it down to add the coding, several of you sent me notes asking what happened and wondering if complaints led to the letter being pulled from my blog.

Somehow, a lot of readers found their way to this posting even though it was not coded to appear on the AJC Get Schooled index or on the AJC Get Schooled Facebook page. And nearly 100 comments were made, all of which have reposted.

So, here we go again -- with coding and a headline. This is an excerpt. Please go to Dr. Naison's blog to read the entire piece:

Dear President Obama:

As a scholar in African American History and a teacher and coach for more than 45 years, it is my unhappy duty to inform you that your education policies have contributed to the lowest morale among teachers that I have seen in my lifetime, while failing to narrow gaps in opportunity or achievement based on race or class.

You may not believe me, but if you were, as I am, in daily contact with thousands of teachers from inner city to suburb to small town, you would be as worried as I am. Judging teachers on the basis of student test scores, as your Race to the Top policy requires, has been an unmitigated disaster; so has closing allegedly failing schools on the basis of such scores. Teachers everywhere now feel they have to teach to the test; in poor neighborhoods, they fear they will lose their jobs if they don't make this their sole priority.

The joy and creative learning that your own children experience in one of the nation's top private schools are being driven out of public schools throughout the nation with