Tuesday, October 16, 2012

A Principal Writes to President Obama: Schools do not Need Your Punishment. We Need Your Support - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher

A Principal Writes to President Obama: Schools do not Need Your Punishment. We Need Your Support - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher:


A Principal Writes to President Obama: Schools do not Need Your Punishment. We Need Your Support

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As I have shared for the past week, I have volunteered to help Diane Ravitch collect and organize letters for the Campaign for our Public Schools, which will culminate on Wednesday, October 17. All the letters collected by then will be sent to the White House and to the Department of Education. Instructions on how to send a letter are at the bottom of this post.
Today, I received this letter from a Vermont principal. Please read, and then take a few minutes to write a letter of your own.
Dear President Obama,
I am elementary school principal and a former classroom teacher. My mother was a teacher, my mother's mother was a teacher, and my mother's mother's mother and father were both teachers. I am writing to you because I am deeply worried about the fate of the teaching profession, the fate of our public schools, and the fate of our students. Let me tell you why.
Back when I was a classroom teacher, I received a memo from my Assistant Principal addressed to all of the teachers in the testing grades at the school:
With the New York State Language Arts test just five weeks away, the memo read, all teachers