Ask us how you can help. Don’t tell us what you’d like to change.
Dear Bill and Melinda,
We receive letters to you in many forms. This one came on our Facebook page: Teachers’ Letters to Bill Gates.
Please read it below, and we hope you will heed Luann’s requests.
Background:
“I worked every possible angle to attend the T&L conference, but it’s not in the cards this year. I was very disappointed that I could not attend, and then I saw the email about Bill Gates as a speaker. I’ve been a long time supporter of NBPTS, having certified in AYA/Science in 1998 when the certificate was first available and renewing in the 2006-2007 cycle. I’ve supported initial cert candidates and renewal candidates, having written the renewal workshop materials for Washington State (WEA). I am working hard to promote certification to potential candidates in Oregon. I was watching the revisions as carefully as an outsider to the process can watch, and was very much hoping that the process would maintain the rigor and standards I’ve known since 1997 when I began the process. Associating Bill Gates with our profession, no matter how much money he might give, has alienated a good many potential candidates and has many of my NBCT colleagues across the nation questioning whether they will bother to renew. We do not want anyone who is not an educator in the position to offer financial incentives for following their decisions about what they believe is best for our profession and our students. I don’t remember a time I’ve been so disappointed in the direction my profession is taking, and it’s not my nature to watch in silence as it’s destroyed.With that in mind, below is my letter to Bill Gates as he prepares to address my colleagues at the National Board Teaching and Learning Conference on March 14, 2014.A Teacher’s Letter to Bill Gates
Mr. Gates, I see that you’ve been awarded the honor of addressing a group of America’s most accomplished teachers. I am disappointed that I am unable to attend the conference and thus won’t be able to attend your speech. As a parent of 2 successful, professional young men, I know about raising kids. As an old, well-educated teacher with many years of classroom success, as one who learns daily from every available source and from my students, I know that I have something to learn from everyone. Based on what I’d like to learn from you, I have some suggestions for possible topics I’d like to learn about from your speech:
- You’re an expert businessman. (I respect that. I’ve supported your business by purchasing your products.) Share your business model. Include what worked and why, and especially, what didn’t work, and why.
- Share your plans for business and industry in the US. What are you doing to support employment for our students and their families?
- Describe skills you’d like your employees to have, now, and in the future.
- What are you willing to learn from us? After all, you did so as a child, and much of that learning apparently worked.
- How will you act on that learning? Here are some ideas:
- Offer up ways that you can support our work, and let us choose what we need. This is how we help our students.
- Be our partner, not our critic.
- Be our partner, not our adversary.
- Be open to working with us on how we might best help students gain these skills.
- Support us as we build foundations in students so they can accomplish real work later; accept that we know how to do the foundation part.
- Listen. Listen, listen, listen.
And some pointers to remember as you prepare your speech:
- Realize that our classrooms look very different from the classrooms you, your wife, or your children attend. We’re not only individuals, we’re NBCTs. Our certification process requires that we make decisions as to what’s best for each student, in our particular setting and moment. We do this, daily. It’s a skill you likely value in your own employees; we need to model this for kids.
- Remember that you don’t, and will likely never, know our students. More importantly, assume they had no breakfast, or a bed in their own home in which to sleep last night. Assume they may not know where they will sleep tonight, or if and where they will get a good dinner.
- You’ve created anger in many of my colleagues. Remember that we’re all in this together. Show this by your actions rather than unkept promises. (You pulled small school funding from my school, contrary to recently collected evidence that it DOES improve attendance and graduation rates.)
- Ask us how you can help. Don’t tell us what you’d like to change.
I hope that a video or transcript of your speech will be made public. I look forward to hearing what you have to say. I look forward to working with you as a partner, not as an adversary. The choice is yours. Are you willing?”Luann Lee, NBCT; Ed.D.
You can find Luann’s blog here.
What do you think? Should you be telling us what you’d like to change or asking how you can help?
Susan and Katie, Co-authors of Teachers’ Letters to Bill Gates
Posted in National Board Certified Teachers, Teaching and Learning Conference Tagged Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Luann Lee, National Board Certified Teachers, NBCT, Science Education and Science Education, Teaching and Learning Conference, Teaching and Learning Conference Keynote Speaker Leave a comment
Where in all of this testing is a benefit for students?
Dear Bill and Melinda,
Below, one of our readers responds to our blog post “My name is Andrea Rediske, and I am Ethan Rediske’s mother. Please Pass #EthansAct! #EyesOnDOE“
“The tests given to our children claim to be criterion referenced meaning that all students should be able to provide a correct response to any question on the test. Yet the questions for these are ‘field tested’ each year doubling the testing time. The test makers then exclude questions that most students answer correctly. The tests are not criterion based.If you were to be required to administer tests to special needs students, who cannot read the questions or the reading passages upon which the questions are based, your heart would break for them. They are subjected to taking the same amount of time testing as peers who are capable and know they have no chance of ‘passing.’Each and every year the state department assesses performance on the tests of the entire population who took the test, and then manipulate the ‘cut score’ number of questions answered correctly to pass. In Literacy 11th grade AR state exam the cut score has been raised each year. At last calculation this score equals an 85%. The test is to be based on a minimum standard of performance. Should that equal a B, a student can pass a class in most systems with a 60 percent. None of what is happening makes any sense.The benefits are going to the test makers, internet providers, and the computer companies whose sales will sky rocket when Common Core testing requires all students be tested online.How many of our special needs students have access to computers, can type, and read from a computer screen? How many schools have the needed resources to test every child in every grade online?Where in all of this testing is a benefit for students? Does anything change instructionally, based upon test data at a state or national level except for more constricting sanctions?” ~ Tins Hayley
Lloyd Lofthouse wrote a review of Diane Ravitch’s book, Reign of Error in his blog post “A Bloody Rain of Terror on Teachers, a book review of Diane Ravitch’s Reign of Error” . Lofthouse discusses the nation’s two testing policies – No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top:
“But “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top” demands that every child finishes first and on time—something that has never happened in the history of any country in the world. These two Washington DC programs supported by the critics of public education are impossible to achieve and are nothing more than a bloody path to guaranteed failure.”
“…impossible to achieve and are nothing more than a bloody path to guaranteed failure.”
Bill and Melinda, can you answer Tins Hayley’s question please?
We repeat: “Where in all of this testing is a benefit for students?”
We want to end all high stakes testing. In the meantime, let common sense prevail and join Opt Out Orlando to pass #EthansAct in Florida, then in every state. (Click on #EthansAct link to support this bill in Florida. Look for your “Opt Out” options across the country at http://www.UnitedOptOut.com . )
Susan and Katie, Teachers and Co-authors of Teachers’ Letters to Bill Gates
Posted in Ethan's Act, High Stakes Testing Tagged #EthansAct, #EyeOnDOE, Bill Gates, Bill Gates Advice, Diane Ravitch, Ethan Rediske, Ethan's Act, High Stakes Testing, Lloyd Lofthouse, Melinda Gates, NCLB, No Child Left Behind, Opt Out, Opt Out Orlando, Pearson Test Profits, Race to the Top, Reign of Error, RttT, Teachers' Letters to Bill Gates, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Tins Hayley, United Opt Out 5 Comments
Do Bill and Melinda Gates have the right to affect our childrens’ lives for an eternity?
Dear Bill and Melinda,
You and Melinda went to school. You have kids in school. You, Bill — are anexpert at developing a software company, despite having never graduated from college. Melinda, you are an expert at business, per your Duke University degree. You are both experts at running a foundation. Arne Duncan has expertise as a basketball player, albeithe was not good enough for the Boston Celtics’ cut.
You are experts – yes – but not at teaching or education, because you didn’t ever teach and you are not qualified to do so.
Yet, your corporate reform education policies are going to affect our children for an eternity.
Public schools aren’t taught by people with merely the limited skill sets you possess - expertise in software, business, or basketball. While teachers may share some of those skills too, instead – public schools are taught by those of us who are professional teachers. We’ve gone to college specifically for the profession of education. We completed our student teaching experiences successfully. We were observed and evaluated to be proficient by our field supervisors. We passed highly qualified status state exams. We jumped through all of the required hoops. We earned our degrees in very specialized skill sets – the profession of education. And now, we have earned the right to teach because we are experts. Even then, we continually take on professional development, like doctors - to improve our expertise.
After all, public schools are required to have highly qualified teachers because as Henry Brooks Adams says: ”A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
Should America be listening to you as if you are education experts at all?
As non-experts in the profession of teaching, do you have the right to set education policy through corporate reforms that in turn affect our childrens’ lives for eternity?
Sarah Blaine writes about this eloquently in her blog. She requested that we print an excerpt. We want you both to read it. We want our readers to see it in its’ entirety. Here is Sarah’s post, called “The Teachers” below:
“We all know what teachers do, right? After all, we were all students. Each one of us, each product of public education, we each sat through class after class for thirteen years. We encountered dozens of teachers. We had our kindergarten teachers and our first grade teachers and our fifth grade teachers and our gym teachers and our art teachers and our music teachers. We had our science teachers and our social studies teachers and our English teachers and our math teachers. If we were lucky, we might even have had our Latin teachers or our Spanish teachers or our physics teachers or our psychology teachers. Heck, I even had a seventh grade “Communications Skills” teacher. We had our guidance counselors and our principals and some of us had our special education teachers and our study hall monitors.So we know teachers. We get teachers. We know what happens in classrooms, and we know what teachers do. We know which teachers are effective, we know which teachers left lasting impressions, we know which teachers changed our lives, and we know which teachers sucked.We know. We know which teachers changed lives for the better. We know which teachers changed lives for the worse.Teaching as a profession has no mystery. It has no mystique. It has no respect.We were students, and therefore we know teachers. We denigrate teachers. We criticize teachers. We can do better than teachers. After all: We do. They teach.We are wrong.We need to honor teachers. We need to respect teachers. We need to listen to teachers. We need to stop reducing teachers to arbitrary measurements of student growth on so-called objective exams.Most of all, we need to stop thinking that we know anything about teaching merely by virtue of having once been students.We don’t know.I spent a little over a year earning a master of arts in teaching degree. Then I spent two years teaching English Language Arts in a rural public high school. And I learned that my 13 years as a public school student, my 4 years as a college student at a highly selective college, and even a great deal of my year as a masters degree student in the education school of a flagship public university hadn’t taught me how to manage a classroom, how to reach students, how to inspire a love of learning, how to teach. Eighteen years as a student (and a year of preschool before that), and I didn’t know shit about teaching. Only years of practicing my skills and honing my skills would have rendered me a true professional. An expert. Someone who knows about the business of inspiring children. Of reaching students. Of making a difference. Of teaching.I didn’t stay. I copped out. I left. I went home to suburban New Jersey, and a year later I enrolled in law school.I passed the bar. I began to practice law at a prestigious large law firm. Three years as a law student had no more prepared me for the practice of law than 18 years of experience as a student had previously prepared me to teach. But even in my first year as a practicing attorney, I earned five times what a first year teacher made in the district where I’d taught.
I worked hard in my first year of practicing law. But I didn’t work five times harder than I’d worked in my first year of teaching. In fact, I didn’t work any harder. Maybe I worked a little less.But I continued to practice. I continued to learn. Nine years after my law school graduation, I think I have some idea of how to litigate a case. But I am not a perfect lawyer. There is still more I could learn, more I could do, better legal instincts I could develop over time. I could hone my strategic sense. I could do better, be better. Learn more law. Learn more procedure. But law is a practice, law is a profession. Lawyers are expected to evolve over the course of their careers. Lawyers are given more responsibility as they earn it.New teachers take on full responsibility the day they set foot in their first classrooms.The people I encounter out in the world now respect me as a lawyer, as a professional, in part because the vast majority of them have absolutely no idea what I really do.All of you former students who are not teachers and not lawyers, you have no more idea of what it is to teach than you do of what it is to practice law.All of you former students: you did not design curricula, plan lessons, attend faculty meetings, assess papers, design rubrics, create exams, prepare report cards, and monitor attendance. You did not tutor students, review rough drafts, and create study questions. You did not assign homework. You did not write daily lesson objectives on the white board. You did not write poems of the week on the white board. You did not write homework on the white board. You did not learn to write legibly on the white board while simultaneously making sure that none of your students threw a chair out a window.You did not design lessons that succeeded. You did not design lessons that failed.You did not learn to keep your students quiet during lock down drills.You did not learn that your 15 year old students were pregnant from their answers to vocabulary quizzes. You did not learn how to teach functionally illiterate high school students to appreciate Shakespeare. You did not design lessons to teach students close reading skills by starting with the lyrics to pop songs. You did not miserably fail your honors level students at least in part because you had no books to give them. You did not struggle to teach your students how to develop a thesis for their essays, and bask in the joy of having taught a successful lesson, of having gotten through to them, even for five minutes. You did not struggle with trying to make SAT-level vocabulary relevant to students who did not have a single college in their county. You did not laugh — because you so desperately wanted to cry — when you read some of the absurdities on their final exams. You did not struggle to reach students who proudly announced that they only came to school so that their mom’s food stamps didn’t get reduced.You did not spend all of New Years’ Day crying five years after you’d left the classroom because you reviewed the New York Times’ graphic of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and learned that one of your very favorite students had been killed in Iraq two years before. And you didn’t know. Because you copped out and left. So you cried, helplessly, and the next day you returned to the practice of law.You did not. And you don’t know. You observed. Maybe you learned. But you didn’t teach.The problem with teaching as a profession is that every single adult citizen of this country thinks that they know what teachers do. And they don’t. So they prescribe solutions, and they develop public policy, and they editorialize, and they politicize. And they don’t listen to those who do know. Those who could teach. The teachers. ” ~ Sarah Blaine, The Teachers, Parenting the Core
What do you and Melinda think? Are you experts at our profession? What gives you the right to act as if you are experts — wealth and power? Do those two things allow you to circumvent democracy and take over our profession? Do you think you have the right to affect the lives of our children for an eternity?
We don’t think so. How about our readers? Teachers, and parents, what do you think?
Susan DuFresne, Integrated Dual Endorsed Special Ed and General Ed Kindergarten Teacher, Co-author of Teacher’s Letters to Bill Gates
Posted in Profession of Teaching, Teachers Tagged A seat at the education policy table, A teacher affects eternity,Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Common Core, Common Core Myths, Experts, Henry Brooks Adams, HIghly Qualified, highly qualified status, Melinda Gates, Myths of Common Core, Parenting the Core, Profession of Teaching,Professionalism, Sarah Blaine, Students, teachers, teaching, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Teachers 3 Comments
My name is Andrea Rediske, and I am Ethan Rediske’s mother. Please Pass #EthansAct! #EyesOnDOE
Dear Bill and Melinda,
A national wave of empathy and outrage was created when the state of Florida demanded a child named Ethan Rediske take the FCAT high stakes test. Despite the fact that Ethan was on his deathbed at the time, and despite the fact that Ethan qualified for special education; Ethan’s family had to prove that he could not possibly take the FCAT.Unfortunately, this story needs a much better ending, as subsequently Ethan has since passed away as of February 7th. We here at Teachers’ Letters to Bill Gates extend our greatest sympathy for Ethan and his family.
Out of respect for Ethan and his family, we have offered to extend their appeal to all who read this: Pass the Ethan Rediske Act!
We hope that by sharing Ethan’s story here, our readers can help give Ethan’s family their wish as they presented it to the Florida Department of Education in a speech shared with us today.
A group called Opt Out Orlando escorted Ethan’s courageous mother to speak before the Florida Department of Education.
Andrea Pratt Radiske spoke on behalf of her son, on behalf of all children with special needs, and on behalf of any children who suffer pain and suffering from high stakes testing. Please watch the video of her speech and read it below.
We would like to broaden her message to call upon the common sense and morals of all corporate reformers, President Barack Obama, Secretary Arne Duncan, all legislators, governors, state school officers, school board members, superintendents, principals, teachers, parents, and students to stop the madness of high stakes testing of children with special needs.
Here is her speech before the DOE and the video of her speech:
“My name is Andrea Rediske, and I am Ethan Rediske’s mother. Before you peg me as merely an angry and grieving mother, let me tell you a little bit about myself: I am an educator. I have a Master’s degree in microbiology and have been an adjunct professor of microbiology for 11 years. I have a passion for education and I know how to write an exam that accurately assesses the abilities of my students.Not only was the Florida Adapted Assessment inappropriate for the level of my son’s abilities, it endangered his health – the long, stressful testing sessions requiring him to sit in his wheelchair caused pressure sores, fluid to pool in his lungs, and increased seizures and spasticity that contributed to his deteriorating health. Only after climbing a mountain of paperwork and garnering media attention was Ethan granted a medical waiver for the FAA. Despite assurances at his IEP meeting that the waiver would be granted again for this school year, the school district demanded paperwork proving his continued medical fragility.The insult to this injury was that he was on his deathbed – the school district and the state of Florida required a letter from hospice care stating he was unable to take the FAA. This incident caused anguish to my family and his teacher, and shows a stunning lack of compassion and even common sense on the part of the Department of Education. His exceptionally talented teacher faced threats and sanctions because she continued to work with him even though he wasn’t preparing for the FAA. I wonder if these administrators are more concerned with policy, paperwork, and their bottom line than the children they have been elected to serve.You may ask yourselves, if this is such a problem, why isn’t there more public outcry from the parents of disabled children?I am here to tell you why: Parents of disabled children are exhausted. We spend our lives simply keeping these children alive. We juggle doctor’s appointments, therapies, medications, and continually battle the insurance company to secure their medical needs. At the end of the day, we don’t have the strength to climb the mountain of paperwork to exempt our children from these inappropriate tests.To the Department of Education: I hope a better understanding of how these tests were damaging to my family and to other families like ours will help you make better policy decisions in the future. Please don’t force any other family to suffer as ours has.I call on the legislature of the State of Florida to not only pass the Ethan Rediske Act, which would exempt disabled children from the rigors of high-stakes standardized testing, but I implore the legislature to go further and to enact legislation that allows any student who experiences pain and suffering as the result of high-stakes standardized testing to opt out of these tests.Thank you,Andrea Pratt Rediske
The pain and suffering our children and families with special needs is already more than most of us have to endure. To be subjected to the bureaucracy and high stakes tests is inhumane. Common Core is increasing testing by twenty fold. This testing madness is inhumane.
Parents who wish to know more about opting out their children from high stakes testing in Florida may contact Opt Out Orlando or United Opt Out . Parents across the US who want to find out more about opting their children out of high stakes testing can find their state at http://www.unitedoptout.com .
Every state has children with special needs. Every state needs to pass an Ethan Rediske Act!
What do you think? Do you think children with special needs should be subjected to high stakes testing? Should any of our children be subjected to labels as failures, denied graduation, and subjected to high stakes testing? Should every state pass an Ethan Rediske Act?
Susan DuFresne, Integrated Kindergarten Teacher – Special Education & General Education, Co-author of Teachers’ Letters to Bill Gates
*Update: We have had a request from Ethan’s mom and Orlando Opt Out: Please use the hash tags #EthansAct and #EyesOnDOE when posting this link. Thank you!
Posted in Andrea Pratt Rediske, Ethan Rediske, High Stakes Testing, Special Education Tagged Andrea Pratt Rediske, Bill Gates, Common Core, Department of Education, Disabilities, Ethan Rediske, FCAT, Florida DOE,Florida FCAT, High Stakes Testing, IDEA, Melinda Gates, Opt Out Orlando, Special Education, Standardized Testing,Students 7 Comments