In what other profession... by David Reber

In what other profession... by David Reber

August 27, 2010

I’m going to step out of my usual third-person writing voice for a moment. 




As a parent I received a letter last week from the Kansas State Board of Education, informing me that my children’s school district had been placed on “improvement” status for failing to meet “adequate yearly progress” under the No Child Left Behind law.

I thought it ironic that our schools were judged inadequate by people who haven’t set foot in them, so I wrote a letter to my local newspaper. Predictably, my letter elicited a deluge of comments in the paper’s online forum. Many remarks came from armchair educators and anti-teacher, anti-public school evangelists quick to discredit anything I had to say under the rationale of “he’s a teacher.” What could a teacher possibly know about education?

Countless arguments used to denigrate public school teachers begin with the phrase “in what other profession….” and conclude with practically anything the anti-teacher pundits find offensive about public education. Due process and collective bargaining [and pensions] are favorite targets, as are the erroneous but tightly held beliefs that teachers are under-worked, over-paid (earning million-dollar pensions), and not accountable for anything.

In what other profession, indeed.

In what other profession are the licensed professionals considered the LEAST knowledgeable about the job? You seldom if ever hear “that guy couldn’t possibly know a thing about law enforcement – he’s a police officer,” or “she can’t be trusted talking about fire safety – she’s a firefighter.”

In what other profession is experience viewed as a liability rather than an asset? You won’t find a contractor advertising “choose me – I’ve never done this before,” and your doctor won’t recommend a surgeon on the basis of her “having very little experience with the procedure.”

In what other profession is the desire for competitive salary viewed as proof of callous indifference towards the job? You won’t hear many say “that lawyer charges a lot of money, she obviously doesn’t care about her clients,” or “that coach earns millions – clearly he doesn’t care about the team.”

But look around. You’ll find droves of armchair educators who summarily dismiss any statement about education when it comes from a teacher. Likewise, it’s easy to find politicians, pundits, and profiteers who refer to our veteran teachers as ineffective, overpriced dead wood. Only the rookies could possibly be any good, or worth the food-stamp-eligible starting salaries we pay them.

And if teachers dare ask for a raise, this is taken by many as clear evidence that teachers don’t give a porcupine’s posterior about kids. In fact, some say if teachers really cared about their students they would insist on earning LESS money.

If that entire attitude weren’t bad enough, what other profession is legally held to PERFECTION by 2014? Are police required to eliminate all crime? Are firefighters required to eliminate all fires? Are doctors required to cure all patients? Are lawyers required to win all cases? Are coaches required to win all games? Of course, they aren’t.

For no other profession do so many outsiders refuse to accept the realities of an imperfect world. Crime happens. Fire happens. Illness happens. As for lawyers and coaches, where there’s a winner there must also be a loser. People accept all these realities, until they apply to public education.

If a poverty-stricken, drug-addled meth-cooker burn downs his house, suffers third degree burns and then goes to jail, we don’t blame the police, fire department, doctors, and defense attorneys for his predicament. But if that kid doesn’t graduate high school, it’s clearly the teacher’s fault.

And if someone – anyone - tries to tell you otherwise, don’t listen. He must be a teacher.

Michael Madigan’s Rebuttal to the Chicago Tribune

July 18, 2012

Dear Members of the General Assembly:

As you know, the Chicago Tribune published several articles that implied conflicts of interest between my law practice and my position as Speaker. These articles provided ample speculation, but few facts. I have come to learn from individuals interviewed by the Tribune that the authors were provided information that directly contradicted the reporters' conclusions-but that information appears nowhere in the articles.

Despite the implications, it is clear that the reporters have failed to uncover any evidence of conflicts of interest or quid pro quo between my legislative acts and the interests of my law firm, or of any other unethical conduct on my part. They have failed to find any evidence because it does not exist. Yet they insist on publishing articles that imply, if not outright state, that I have engaged in inappropriate conduct.

None of my actions as Speaker or as an attorney have been inappropriate or violative of any applicable law or ethical rule, I have imposed requirements on my law firm and myself, beyond what is required by the law, to ensure ethical conduct, and I go to great lengths to make certain there is a clear division between my law practice and my actions as a public official, Any potential law firm client who seeks a State benefit is not accepted, lf a client requests my intercession with a State agency, I refuse. lf a client expresses an interest in legislation, I recuse myself from consideration of the bill,

Even though the Tribune consistently ignores information that might cast their stories in a considerably different light, I am grateful to share such information with you. Enclosed you will find information relevant to the implications, as well as several inaccuracies found in the articles.

With kindest personal regards, I remain

Sincerely yours,

MICHAEL MADIGAN

Speaker of the House

For his rebuttal: http://capitolfax.com/Madiganresponsechgotribarticles.pdf

Considering a Cat Crossing Highway 435 at 4a.m. in Kansas City (or Death Does Not Always Have the Right-Of-Way)

He may have come upon dozens of road kills himself,
Without reflecting upon his nine lives,
Or dodged hundreds of Kansas license plates
To return safely to wherever his cat instinct dictated.
But what he was doing on this channel of highway
Locked in the cross hairs of my headlight beams
535 miles from Chicago at precisely that moment
My car reeled forward, while juxtaposing cruise control,
Refueling and road construction with energy, motion
And velocity – a colossal calibration
For a near miss – may have some universal
Significance for philosophy or differential calculus.
    Call it metaphysics or mathematics.
    By any other name, it was luck.


“Considering a Cat Crossing...” was originally published in Damaged Wine, 1994.

Is This Any Way to Improve the Teaching Profession? By Diane Ravitch

This is President Obama’s vision for reshaping the teaching profession. I certainly agree with the idea that entry into teacher education programs should be selective and rigorous, but almost everything else about the program is odious.

The administration proposes a competitive grant program that would do the following [my comments are in brackets]: The proposed grant program calls for states and districts to undertake a comprehensive set of five reforms including:

• Reforming colleges of education and making these schools more selective [good idea, but today the biggest producers of teaching degrees are online "universities" that have no standards at all so it is hard to know how these diploma mills might be affected, if at all]
• Creating new career ladders for teachers to become more effective and ensure their earnings are tied more closely to performance [this is merit pay, the same policy that has failed over and over, tying teachers' earning to the test scores of students and calling it "performance"]
• Establishing more leadership roles and responsibilities for teachers, improving professional development, and providing autonomy to teachers in exchange for greater responsibility [no problem here, though I bet many teachers would like to have the autonomy to be freed of the high-stakes testing that NCLB and Race to the Top and Obama's waivers from NCLB require]
• Creating evaluation systems based on multiple measures rather than just on test scores [what a joke, just like the "multiple measures" now adopted in state after state where test scores are "only" 40-50% of the teacher's evaluation but outweigh all the other measures]
• Reshaping tenure to protect good teachers and promote accountability [in other words, no tenure at all, unless your students get higher test scores every year]

This is the same old test-based accountability of NCLB, with a new wrapper. Will the Obama administration ever look at the research? Might they look at the persistent failure of merit pay? Might they look at the National Research Council’s report on the meager results of test-based accountability? Must they continue to shove testing down everyone’s throat for the next four years?

Hey, I know Romney will be worse. But can’t Obama give us something positive to hope for in another term, some possibility of reforming his ruinous Race to the Top?

http://dianeravitch.net/2012/07/17/is-this-any-way-to-improve-the-teaching-profession/

Who Plunders the Middle Class in Illinois?

"[Many] corporations are not concerned with the common good. They exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress, kill, and lie to make money. They throw poor families out of homes, let the uninsured die, wage useless wars to make profits, poison and pollute the ecosystem, slash social assistance programs, gut public education [and public and private employees’ pensions], trash the global economy, and crush all popular movements that seek justice for working men and women. They worship only money and power… And so, even as Wall Street steals billions of taxpayer dollars…, we do not know what to do or say. We decry the excesses of capitalism without demanding a dismantling of the corporate state…" (Chris Hedges, The World As It Is, Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress 105-6).  

In Illinois, the rich and the poor are taxed at the same flat rate, despite creating a vast inequity. The concentration of wealth through unregulated corporate profit-taking for the wealthy few and the shifting of debts being proposed as part of pension reform are at the expense of middle-class public employees and other citizens. Pension reform is an attempt to bargain away the public employees’ rights to earn a decent income, their defined-benefit pension, and their dignity and self-respect.

In Illinois, the attempt to bust the public sector unions, to create a divide among their membership, to decrease the public employees' Cost-of-Living Adjustment in exchange for "access" to precarious health-care benefits, to increase employees’ contributions and their retirement age, and to shift the burden of the state’s pension costs to school districts and, thus, property owners is an exploitation of public employees.

"Cutting benefits by raising the retirement age or reducing cost-of-living increases is no solution... That should be obvious, but there are plenty of snake-oil-selling politicians who want to do just that. There is only one way to avoid benefit cuts, and that is by raising more revenue” (Economic Policy Institute, April 2012). 

When certain Illinois politicians wield power to impoverish some people by destroying their benefits and rights; when the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and the Civic Federation’s money not only influences the General Assembly’s decision-making policies but generates and perpetuates falsehoods and economic inequality, the people’s trust in the legitimacy of the Illinois state government degenerates into profound skepticism and resentment.

Without a doubt, corporatists are prosperous in Illinois. The Illinois General Assembly guarantees their affluence and will continue to do so. Our submission to corporatists’ corruption, extortion and oppression and our assent to the General Assembly's shameless hypocrisy, protection and perpetuation of wealthy powerful interests must be addressed.

"[Furthermore,] unions, organizations formerly steeped in the doctrine of class struggle and filled with those who sought broad social and political rights for the working class, have been transformed into domesticated partners of the capitalist class. They have been reduced to simple bartering tools. The social demands of unions early in the twentieth century that gave the working class weekends off, the right to strike, the eight-hour day, and Social Security have been abandoned” (Chris Hedges 106).  This accession also needs our urgent attention. 

-Glen Brown

A Better Alternative than Mayor Rahm Emanuel

(AP Photo/Sandy Bubar).

This honorary mayor also comes with an added bonus: increased tourism that will balance the lack of visitors to our crime-ridden city:

Alaska town: Feline mayor is the cat's pajamas

The Associated Press

Sunday, July 15, 2012 4:51 AM EDT

TALKEETNA, Alaska (AP) — The mayor of a sleepy Alaska town is feline fine.

The part-Manx cat clawed his way onto the political scene of Talkeetna, Alaska, through a write-in campaign shortly after he was born 15 years ago.

KTUU-TV reported (bit.ly/LYvzBV) Friday that residents didn't like the mayoral candidates years ago, so they encouraged enough people to elect Stubbs as a write-in candidate. The town has nearly 900 residents.

Although his position is honorary, Stubbs' popularity is real. His election earned him enough press to catapult the town at the base of Mount McKinley into a tourist destination.

Residents say they're happy that their stubby-tailed mayor is promoting tourism. The general store where Stubbs hangs out says it gets dozens of tourists a day asking for him.

———

Information from: KTUU-TV, www.ktuu.com

Please Don’t Steal My Pension

 (an emulation of John Prine’s “Please Don’t Bury Me” in G-C-D)

Woke up this mornin’, wrote another essay   

about sustainability,

And that unfunded liability of our State’s pensions

And that Committee of Chicago and their greed

Chorus:

So please don’t steal my pension and make me feel blue

I don’t want to work as a greeter and meet ‘em ‘til I’m through

So lower that fundin’ ratio; make the State pay debtors too

Tax the rich and the corporate, and the pensions will accrue

Don’t be duped by promises, legislators will not keep

Defined-contribution plans are savings that will seep

There’s a six-trillion-dollar deficit for holders of such heap

A defined-benefit pension plan is the only way to reap

(Repeat Chorus)

Let’s send our legislators to Afghanistan

Let’s hope that their replacements will do what they can’t

I met a Rep or two that didn’t understand

So I left her my research without any cash in hand

(Repeat Chorus)

Let’s generate more revenue, as fast as we can

A graduated income tax is the answer and best plan

Let’s redesign the legislators’ lack of attention span

Fire all their actuaries and the House’s Confidence Man

(Repeat Chorus)

I’m singin’ you this song, and I’m about to sigh

‘cause Illinois pension reform will likely be disguised

We must stand together against the wealthy and their bids

Because all parents need us; so do all of their kids

(Repeat Chorus)

for another pension ditty: http://teacherpoetmusicianglenbrown.blogspot.com/2012/07/dont-you-feel-all-right-teachers-lament.html