StudentsFirst Asks Florida Allies To Hit The Blogs, Win A Gift Card

 That’s the point, Catherine, is that you do not put students first. Your Quixotic battle against unions has nothing to do with student achievement. 22 states have gotten rid of unions. It has not helped their educational outcomes. 17 are in the bottom half. 5 are okay, and none are in the top 10 for education.

Fight for early childhood education. That has an 8 to 1 return on investment. Meanwhile, the biggest fight you pick has no correlation to improved student outcomes. Your motives are transparent.

If you cared about kids you would fight for the 8 to 1 ROI, almost exclusively. Instead you fight, almost exclusively, for the thing that has no relationship to outcomes.

Some past writings from Catherine Durkin Robinson:

Then the Latinos (who only had accents when they said the word Latinos) went all apesh*t on Todd. …

The Mexicans had Mexicans on the brain. They wouldn’t shut up about themselves.

Finally,
the air thick with nastiness and too many “my people were wronged
worser than your people” nonsense, I turned my baby blues to Officer
Todd and raised my hand …
Almost turned to the Latinos and said, “Put that in your mojitos and slurp ‘em down, b*tches. Next time – show some g*ddamn respect.”

http://outinleftfield-temp.blogspot.com/2007/10/democratic-dinner-or-race-riot-you.html

Those who disagree with you are not an “organized and well funded campaign of hatred”. They are professional, career teachers who are being blamed for the problems in the school that they did not cause and who have seen the damage groups like Teach for America have done to the schools.  

Now we are having to deal with things like our public schools being defunded and replaced with for-profit organization running charters that will leave the real schools with the real teachers with only students no one else wants. And the charters have not proven any better.  The Recovery School District which oversees them have the worst test scores in Louisiana.  And now the charter school teachers do not even have to have a college education!  Most are conservative religious and they can use curricula that doesn’t just slant history but rewrites it. So the unconstitional support of religion is coming and has come to Louisiana through groups like yours. 

Catherine, this is the kind of group you are supporting. You list some progressive causes here that say you have worked with but I cannot see this as fitting your efforts to destroy public education.  It is as oxymoronic as a gay Republican.  (I know one of those, by the way.)  And unless you have worked to keep the Iberville Truck Stop tiger at home with his loving, Christian family, you might be as blind to the goals of the privatization/corporatization  as you are to the real goals of PETA and its legal arm ALDF. 

Your enemy is not the unions.  Unions exist to ensure equitable treatment of teachers, to help us when the principal does not like us because we are older, have a disability, are the wrong race, teach special education and advocate for our children, or because we won’t have sex with him.  Unions exist to improve the schools by helping teachers create a positive work environment that is beneficial to both them and the students and to create opportunities for teachers to become better teachers.  Happy teachers are good teachers. If you love your work it flows over into your children.

Students First does not put children first.  Michele Rhee is not a teacher but clearly is some kind of weird, unelected politician.  I am not saying there are no bad teachers, but  frankly most of the bad ones I have met have been relatives or in bed with administrators or are Teach for America.  That includes an alternate certified who had a special relationship with a popular principal and who bullied other teachers, paraprofessionals (both hers and mine) and her and my students.  It also includes one who was only semi-literate and openly racist, but was the first cousin of an Associate Superintendent and the wife of a principal. She hit her kids. The kids couldn’t talk.  She was immune from any discipline although the Vision teacher reported her and she got a plum of a transfer that would make any special educator jealous. There may be a few bad teachers.   But most are average to superior and I taught for 27 years.  Inner city, special ed.  The kinds of kids the parochials and charters are not going to accept.  The kind a TFA could injure or kill.  One almost did! Didn’t even know you don’t hold a child down in a chair when he is having a seizure!  The para swooped in, picked up the child and put him somewhere safe. 

Teachers are not the cause of the problems in the schools and we will not stand for being scapegoated.  We are now enraged.  We are family.  We are being told we are of no more value than day laborers, expendable, not professionals, not worthy of job protection, that any enthusiastic 22 year old with a good GPA can teach!  The real problem is, and the conservatives know this, is that teachers tend to be outspoken and moderate to liberal politically.  We are advocates and the only advocates a lot of kids have. We don’t want any Joe Blow with a college degree (or not, in a charter) to be able to call himself a teacher any more than we would want a housekeeper who works at a hospital to call himself a doctor.  Would you have your child’s tonsils removed by a plumber or your heart bypass done by an engineer?  THEN WHY DO YOU ADVOCATE FOR NON-TEACHERS WITHOUT EDUCATION DEGREES TO TEACH SCHOOL.  

I think I am finished.  If you are really an advocate and activist you will change your tune. You will support PUBLIC schools and REAL teachers.  You will tell these extreme rightists that the way to get good teachers is to only take the ones with one and planning to get another degree in education. You will not allow conservative governors to balance the budget on the backs of the public schools.  You will push Teach for America to require its workers to get education degrees and extend their term of service to 5 years so that the schools will get at least 3 years of a competent teacher out of the deal.  You will support teachers, public schools and the eradication of the factors that lead to low achievement that teachers have no control over.  You will support tenure.  You will work with and not against the unions.  And as for your friend’s son, maybe he was having too many alternate certified and Teach for America’s over his classes and that was why mama was looking for a better school.