Why We MUST Support Teachers Running For Elected Office
In Florida, only seven of the 160 state legislators are public school teachers, making decisions for the largest slice of the budget pie ($24 Billion or approximately 30% of the state’s general fund). No wonder things are such a grand mess.
How many of your state legislators are teachers, or know anything about public education at all? We have to change this on a national scale.
If what people understand is the bottom line, then let’s talk about the bottom line – the money going down the testing toilet.
Take Remedial Reading, for example:
Any student who fails the FCAT (renamed the Florida State Assessment or FSA) is mandated by law to take remedial reading, until they pass the test. This includes capable students, who may be AP, IB, or Honors students with straight As and amazing GPAs.
In an average high school in Florida, we now employ nine teachers to teach remedial reading six times a day, five times a week. Cost: $425,000 for salaries alone. For a single school. Can anyone really believe that all of these students need remedial reading instruction, especially when, according to progress reports, report cards, and teacher-developed tests, the vast majority of these students are performing adequately in school?
Students who would benefit from individualized, human-centered reading instruction, are being force-fed mundane, pre-packaged corporate curricula. This is the high fructose corn syrup of curricula. Like high fructose corn syrup, all the best qualities have been refined out to leave nothing but a sugary poison, which comes at a cost of approximately $80,000 per year or more per OCPS high school.
Let’s do the math (Remember – this is JUST for remedial reading)
What does it mean to say that we’re wasting $15.15 Million on remedial reading instruction in a single school district, in one state?
There are two main problems. First, for students who need reading instruction, meaningful curriculum has been sacrificed for exorbitantly expensive, standardized curriculum. Then, at the same time, students across the board (including many AP, IB and Honor students) are being made to sacrifice enriching and beneficial elective classes in order to fit remedial reading and test prep into their schedules, for the sole reason that they missed the cut score on the state’s standardized high stakes test, some by as few as a single point. The electives are what keep students interested, engaged, and wanting to go to school. For some students, it’s all that keeps them in school. It matters not that their body of work proves that they are proficient. What matters to the state is their grade on a single test, on a single day.
It is the LAW. A BAD law.
If policies dictating the measures above were being crafted primarily by educators, they would be able to discern and understand that the policy of remediating children based on the test scores from a single test, on a single day, would be harmful, could not but be harmful to children. I’d like to think that we would not have such inane policies.
Keeping all of that in mind, if we were to multiply $15.15 Million by the number of high schools in Florida, and even if we were to conservatively reduce that number by half, the numbers are staggering.
This is just a SINGLE facet of the entire Corporate Reform Agenda, which you can read about here (by Paul Thomas, EdD, one of the most incisive educators writing about education policy today.)
So what can YOU do about this?
When decisions are made about education policy, the decisions are being made primarily by non-educators, with one thing in mind – THE BOTTOM LINE. But our children are not commodities. They are not products. They are human beings. We need teachers in office to translate for the decision-makers, what policies mean in the classroom; what education laws enacted look like in the classroom; how it affects individual students’ lives every day.
More teachers in elected office would mean that students have a voice, teachers have a voice. Because right now, they don’t. Teaching is a profession and teachers don’t need corporate shills speaking for them. Those shills are really only looking out for their campaign donors. Teachers need to speak for themselves.
Teachers in office are able to inform decision-making and can communicate to fellow trustees the challenges that students and teachers face together in the classroom. It is crucial to have strong representation on important matters such as common core, class sizes, budget allocations/cuts.
CRITICALLY IMPORTANT: Increasingly, public school teachers are stepping up to run for elected office. Nationwide, we MUST stand behind the educators running for office – school boards, unions, city councils, state senate and congress. It is also important to support State Representatives outside of our own districts as well, because they have statewide impact. Find the ones with whom you agree, support them strongly and spread the word widely.
Joshua Katz is the Orange County high school math teacher, whose Ted Talk on the Toxic Culture of Education is currently burning up the internet with almost 38,000 hits. Today, he threw his hat into the ring for school board (District 1) in Orange County, the ninth largest school district in the country. In an interview yesterday, he says he believes the question not being asked in education today is: “Is this really what’s best for the student?” If not, WHAT is best for the student? And why aren’t we asking it, with the intention to elicit genuine discourse?
See Katz’ announcement here.
In addition to Joshua Katz, here are some courageous educators who have won office, are running for office, or running for re-election:
CALIFORNIA
Kevin Beiser is a high school math teacher in the Sweetwater Union High School District and is also President of the San Diego Unified School District, which was touted by Diane Ravitch as the best urban school district. He believes that being a classroom teacher enables him to share his perspective with his fellow trustees. He strongly advocates to keep the Beginning Teacher Support Program (BTSA), smaller class sizes at all grade levels-especially K-3, and dealing with Common Core roll out from the state. California ranks 49th in per pupil funding.
Monica Ratliff is a second generation teacher, who ran for school board in LAUSD, and outspent by $2 million, she still won. Read about her electionhere. She says, “One of the beautiful things about my election is my ability to remain independent. My commitment is to the students and the voters. I do think there’s a tendency to forget the nitty-gritty of the classroom. Every [issue] that comes my way, I look at in terms of how does this impact the classroom. It’s important to me that over time we provide more autonomy to our schools, to teach in a way they believe is best.”
FLORIDA
Karen Castor-Dentel is State Representative of District 30. She is a third grade OCPS teacher. Fed up with the reforms encroaching on her classroom, she ran for office. She was not expected to win. She did and we are grateful. She has brought meaningful legislation before the Florida legislature, such as the Ethan Rediske Act to protect medically fragile children from the harms of high stakes testing. This bill was summarily dismissed by the Florida legislature in favor of vouchers. We will continue to fight for the Ethan Rediske act. Castor Dentel’s mother, Betty Castor is Florida’s last elected Commissioner of Education. Her sister Kathy is a US Representative from Hillsborough County.
Regina Hellinger (District 3) has served public education since 1991. For over ten years, she has served OCPS as a teacher at Carver Middle School and Endeavor Elementary School. She was the 2011 OCPS Teacher of the Year representing Endeavor Elementary School. She is running for Rick Roach’s seat on the board as he steps down to run for State Senate. Regina Hellinger is for Smarter Spending, Smarter Collaboration, Smarter Students.
Pam LaRiviere (Lee County) During her 31 years as an educator in the School District of Lee County, she served as an elementary and middle school teacher; curriculum writer, developed and provided training for district staff; Reading Specialist; and Reading Coach. As a recent retiree, she has her finger on the pulse of the needs of teachers, students, and parents.
Rick Roach (District 13) is the former teacher and school board member who made national headlines by exposing the testing abuse in Florida. He is running for Florida Senate to build on his work as a strong advocate and a voice of reason on behalf of Florida’s students, teachers and families. Florida ranks 50th in per pupil funding.
Shannon Maureen Russell (Duval County - District 2) is currently a High School English III IT Academy Teacher, Head Union Representative, and Duval Teachers Union (DTU) Board of Director.
Michael Weston (Hillsborough County) is a former Math and Special Ed teacher in Hillsborough County, Florida is running for a seat on the Hillsborough school board. He believes that public education is a sacred duty – vital to our neighborhoods, states and nation. Education, he believes, must be about enriching young minds; not the burgeoning education industry. He says our leadership should respect learning more than measurement.
ILLINOIS
Tim Meegan - an independent candidate for 33rd Ward Alderman. “I’m not a politician or from a political family. I’m not a Republican or a Democrat. I am a husband, a father of two boys, and a social studies teacher at Roosevelt High School. I’m running for alderman because I want to protect the diversity and improve the quality of life for my neighbors in the 33rd ward.”
MARYLAND
Bess Altwerger is a teacher educator. After 25 years of teaching teachers at Towson University, the retired professor is one of 13 candidates seeking four open seats on the Howard County Board of Education. She is a member of the Steering Committee of Save Our Schools. Read more about Bess here.
MASSACHUSSETTS
Barbara Madeloni recently won the leadership of the Massachusetts Teachers’ Association, by taking a strong stance against kowtowing to the oligarchy. We need an army of Barbara Madelonis to stand up for the teachers, who are standing up for our children.
NEW YORK
Brian Jones is an educator and activist, who has become a leading voice in discussions about public education. He is the Green Party’s 2014 candidate for Lt. Governor of New York. Jones and the Green Party support progressive taxation, fully-funded schools, renewable energy, single-payer health care, $15 minimum wage and a New York that works for the 99%. Hear him talk about his platform here.
________________
Opt Out Orlando has not endorsed any of these candidates. It is your duty to learn more about your candidates so that you can be an informed voter in your local elections. Please share this information and urge your friends and family to become as informed as you… and then VOTE.
These are just some of the courageous teachers who are stepping up to the plate across the country. Helping our teachers to get elected has the potential to drastically shift the scales back in favor of our children.
If we, as a movement, were successful at installing just twoteachers onto each school board across the country, what would public education look like in just one year?
Find out if an educator in your district is running and donate to their campaign – with your time, talent and treasure.
And if there isn’t one, change that too.
Sandy Stenoff
Becky L. Noël Smith
Cindy Hamilton
How many of your state legislators are teachers, or know anything about public education at all? We have to change this on a national scale.
If what people understand is the bottom line, then let’s talk about the bottom line – the money going down the testing toilet.
Take Remedial Reading, for example:
Any student who fails the FCAT (renamed the Florida State Assessment or FSA) is mandated by law to take remedial reading, until they pass the test. This includes capable students, who may be AP, IB, or Honors students with straight As and amazing GPAs.
In an average high school in Florida, we now employ nine teachers to teach remedial reading six times a day, five times a week. Cost: $425,000 for salaries alone. For a single school. Can anyone really believe that all of these students need remedial reading instruction, especially when, according to progress reports, report cards, and teacher-developed tests, the vast majority of these students are performing adequately in school?
Students who would benefit from individualized, human-centered reading instruction, are being force-fed mundane, pre-packaged corporate curricula. This is the high fructose corn syrup of curricula. Like high fructose corn syrup, all the best qualities have been refined out to leave nothing but a sugary poison, which comes at a cost of approximately $80,000 per year or more per OCPS high school.
Let’s do the math (Remember – this is JUST for remedial reading)
$ 425,000
$ 80,000+
$ 505,000
X 30 OCPS high schools
$ 15,150,000
Are these remedial reading classes really helping these students to learn to read any better, when so many are already proficient in their AP, IB and Honors classes?X 30 OCPS high schools
$ 15,150,000
What does it mean to say that we’re wasting $15.15 Million on remedial reading instruction in a single school district, in one state?
There are two main problems. First, for students who need reading instruction, meaningful curriculum has been sacrificed for exorbitantly expensive, standardized curriculum. Then, at the same time, students across the board (including many AP, IB and Honor students) are being made to sacrifice enriching and beneficial elective classes in order to fit remedial reading and test prep into their schedules, for the sole reason that they missed the cut score on the state’s standardized high stakes test, some by as few as a single point. The electives are what keep students interested, engaged, and wanting to go to school. For some students, it’s all that keeps them in school. It matters not that their body of work proves that they are proficient. What matters to the state is their grade on a single test, on a single day.
It is the LAW. A BAD law.
If policies dictating the measures above were being crafted primarily by educators, they would be able to discern and understand that the policy of remediating children based on the test scores from a single test, on a single day, would be harmful, could not but be harmful to children. I’d like to think that we would not have such inane policies.
Keeping all of that in mind, if we were to multiply $15.15 Million by the number of high schools in Florida, and even if we were to conservatively reduce that number by half, the numbers are staggering.
This is just a SINGLE facet of the entire Corporate Reform Agenda, which you can read about here (by Paul Thomas, EdD, one of the most incisive educators writing about education policy today.)
So what can YOU do about this?
When decisions are made about education policy, the decisions are being made primarily by non-educators, with one thing in mind – THE BOTTOM LINE. But our children are not commodities. They are not products. They are human beings. We need teachers in office to translate for the decision-makers, what policies mean in the classroom; what education laws enacted look like in the classroom; how it affects individual students’ lives every day.
More teachers in elected office would mean that students have a voice, teachers have a voice. Because right now, they don’t. Teaching is a profession and teachers don’t need corporate shills speaking for them. Those shills are really only looking out for their campaign donors. Teachers need to speak for themselves.
Teachers in office are able to inform decision-making and can communicate to fellow trustees the challenges that students and teachers face together in the classroom. It is crucial to have strong representation on important matters such as common core, class sizes, budget allocations/cuts.
CRITICALLY IMPORTANT: Increasingly, public school teachers are stepping up to run for elected office. Nationwide, we MUST stand behind the educators running for office – school boards, unions, city councils, state senate and congress. It is also important to support State Representatives outside of our own districts as well, because they have statewide impact. Find the ones with whom you agree, support them strongly and spread the word widely.
Joshua Katz is the Orange County high school math teacher, whose Ted Talk on the Toxic Culture of Education is currently burning up the internet with almost 38,000 hits. Today, he threw his hat into the ring for school board (District 1) in Orange County, the ninth largest school district in the country. In an interview yesterday, he says he believes the question not being asked in education today is: “Is this really what’s best for the student?” If not, WHAT is best for the student? And why aren’t we asking it, with the intention to elicit genuine discourse?
See Katz’ announcement here.
In addition to Joshua Katz, here are some courageous educators who have won office, are running for office, or running for re-election:
CALIFORNIA
Kevin Beiser is a high school math teacher in the Sweetwater Union High School District and is also President of the San Diego Unified School District, which was touted by Diane Ravitch as the best urban school district. He believes that being a classroom teacher enables him to share his perspective with his fellow trustees. He strongly advocates to keep the Beginning Teacher Support Program (BTSA), smaller class sizes at all grade levels-especially K-3, and dealing with Common Core roll out from the state. California ranks 49th in per pupil funding.
Monica Ratliff is a second generation teacher, who ran for school board in LAUSD, and outspent by $2 million, she still won. Read about her electionhere. She says, “One of the beautiful things about my election is my ability to remain independent. My commitment is to the students and the voters. I do think there’s a tendency to forget the nitty-gritty of the classroom. Every [issue] that comes my way, I look at in terms of how does this impact the classroom. It’s important to me that over time we provide more autonomy to our schools, to teach in a way they believe is best.”
FLORIDA
Karen Castor-Dentel is State Representative of District 30. She is a third grade OCPS teacher. Fed up with the reforms encroaching on her classroom, she ran for office. She was not expected to win. She did and we are grateful. She has brought meaningful legislation before the Florida legislature, such as the Ethan Rediske Act to protect medically fragile children from the harms of high stakes testing. This bill was summarily dismissed by the Florida legislature in favor of vouchers. We will continue to fight for the Ethan Rediske act. Castor Dentel’s mother, Betty Castor is Florida’s last elected Commissioner of Education. Her sister Kathy is a US Representative from Hillsborough County.
Regina Hellinger (District 3) has served public education since 1991. For over ten years, she has served OCPS as a teacher at Carver Middle School and Endeavor Elementary School. She was the 2011 OCPS Teacher of the Year representing Endeavor Elementary School. She is running for Rick Roach’s seat on the board as he steps down to run for State Senate. Regina Hellinger is for Smarter Spending, Smarter Collaboration, Smarter Students.
Pam LaRiviere (Lee County) During her 31 years as an educator in the School District of Lee County, she served as an elementary and middle school teacher; curriculum writer, developed and provided training for district staff; Reading Specialist; and Reading Coach. As a recent retiree, she has her finger on the pulse of the needs of teachers, students, and parents.
Rick Roach (District 13) is the former teacher and school board member who made national headlines by exposing the testing abuse in Florida. He is running for Florida Senate to build on his work as a strong advocate and a voice of reason on behalf of Florida’s students, teachers and families. Florida ranks 50th in per pupil funding.
Shannon Maureen Russell (Duval County - District 2) is currently a High School English III IT Academy Teacher, Head Union Representative, and Duval Teachers Union (DTU) Board of Director.
Michael Weston (Hillsborough County) is a former Math and Special Ed teacher in Hillsborough County, Florida is running for a seat on the Hillsborough school board. He believes that public education is a sacred duty – vital to our neighborhoods, states and nation. Education, he believes, must be about enriching young minds; not the burgeoning education industry. He says our leadership should respect learning more than measurement.
ILLINOIS
Tim Meegan - an independent candidate for 33rd Ward Alderman. “I’m not a politician or from a political family. I’m not a Republican or a Democrat. I am a husband, a father of two boys, and a social studies teacher at Roosevelt High School. I’m running for alderman because I want to protect the diversity and improve the quality of life for my neighbors in the 33rd ward.”
MARYLAND
Bess Altwerger is a teacher educator. After 25 years of teaching teachers at Towson University, the retired professor is one of 13 candidates seeking four open seats on the Howard County Board of Education. She is a member of the Steering Committee of Save Our Schools. Read more about Bess here.
MASSACHUSSETTS
Barbara Madeloni recently won the leadership of the Massachusetts Teachers’ Association, by taking a strong stance against kowtowing to the oligarchy. We need an army of Barbara Madelonis to stand up for the teachers, who are standing up for our children.
NEW YORK
Brian Jones is an educator and activist, who has become a leading voice in discussions about public education. He is the Green Party’s 2014 candidate for Lt. Governor of New York. Jones and the Green Party support progressive taxation, fully-funded schools, renewable energy, single-payer health care, $15 minimum wage and a New York that works for the 99%. Hear him talk about his platform here.
________________
Opt Out Orlando has not endorsed any of these candidates. It is your duty to learn more about your candidates so that you can be an informed voter in your local elections. Please share this information and urge your friends and family to become as informed as you… and then VOTE.
These are just some of the courageous teachers who are stepping up to the plate across the country. Helping our teachers to get elected has the potential to drastically shift the scales back in favor of our children.
If we, as a movement, were successful at installing just twoteachers onto each school board across the country, what would public education look like in just one year?
Find out if an educator in your district is running and donate to their campaign – with your time, talent and treasure.
And if there isn’t one, change that too.
Sandy Stenoff
Becky L. Noël Smith
Cindy Hamilton