An Open Letter to The Seattle Times: Teachers: We Are Not The Enemy

Dear Editor,

I want to thank the Seattle Times for its unbiased and neutral coverage of the current negotiations going on between the Seattle School District and the Seattle Teachers Union. On Sunday, August 1st, your staff writer Leonard Pitts titles his beautifully balanced piece, “Teachers and teacher unions: Get on board or get out of the way.” Hardly, four days go by and on August 5th, your paper secures the services of two city council members to write a piece titled, “Seattle must get serious about education reform.” These timely articles aimed at swaying public opinion against the teachers and SEA are being published concurrently with Dr. Goodloe-Johnson violating the agreed to closed door negotiations with the Seattle Education System and sending by email and public post the district’s proposal directly to teachers, attempting to usurp the union’s role of being our collective bargaining agency. My, my, my it seems like we are getting the full court press; National Government, City Government and the local news media. It’s a shame that our local news media, has succumbed to being one of the new media outlets that instead of reporting the news has decided to promote its own agenda like the Fox news network. I have been a citizen of Seattle for nearly 60 years and I would have hoped for better from the Blethen family but I guess I am wrong.
So let me take a moment to address just a few of the unfounded and erroneous assertions that these two editorials are presenting as if they were fact and see whether you publish this and begin to offer the citizens of Seattle a more “fair and balanced” review of what is actually going on in this tidal wave of anti-teacher and anti-union sentiment which holds itself out as the most recent and again unsubstantiated effort at reforming the public schools.
Let’s talk about the national agenda to begin with. Please remember that under the Constitution the duty of education is the mandate of the states and local control. The founding fathers thought this worthwhile realizing that local people would better be able to say what type of education they would want for their children. Because of the dearth of funds to support education coming from the state of Washington which refuses to tax its citizenry commensurate with the cost of fully funding public education, districts and state governments cede their control and their local duties to the National Agenda because that is where the funding comes from.
So let’s go after the first misleading propaganda that our local council members made in their article. They write, “The evidence that reform is needed—and quickly—is convincing. Our state was embarrassed recently when we failed to qualify for President Obama’s Race to the Top education-reform competition.” First of all this sentence makes no sense at all. The evidence that reform is needed is because we didn’t qualify for the education-reform grants? Well a couple of things: first, most states didn’t qualify; second, most unions in the state signed on to the national agenda and had no responsibility for the failure of the state to get funds; and third, the current education reform agenda which demands accountability follows on the heals of the failed no-child-left behind agenda which caused a travesty around the nation as failing schools, failed even worse. And just like its predecessor that was conceived on little evidence this reform agenda of blaming the teacher and their unions has no facts to support its potential for bringing about true reform in the public schools.
Here let me give a shot at what is really the failure of public schools. It’s the failure of the states and whoever else to fully fund early education ages 2-5 where all children are taken from their homes whatever home they may have come from and put into environments where they learn a love of learning and the social skills to make learning possible. With this head-start all children will enter the k-12 public schools with an equal chance to succeed. But I digress.
Now let me get to the stuff in this article that bothers me the most because it exudes with the platitudinous arrogance under which the current educational system is burdened and by which teachers and students are constantly harassed. After listing the abysmal statistics of students failing to demonstrate baseline skills needed to be successful in college the writers go on to say, “What does education reform mean for the Seattle School District? It means higher academic standards and increased accountability. It means BELIEVING that every child can learn and must be prepared for college and the career of his or her choice.”
Ok, what is wrong with this picture? Here let me do the math for you. If only 34 percent of Seattle High School graduates demonstrated the baseline skills why would you want to make “higher academic standards”? It appears that 76 percent of the students can’t meet the baseline standards they are currently being asked to meet. I would think you would want to create academic standards where students can meet the baseline standards and when you’ve arrived there start raising the standards but not before. So much for “higher academic standards” but what about “increased accountability”? What the WASL wasn’t enough? I thought it was too hard and therefore having it as a requirement for graduation was delayed again and the test was watered down so even more kids could succeed? Oh, but these authors aren’t talking about “increased accountability” for students like holding students back in grades where they do not meet standard or requiring them to stay after school and come in on Saturdays to make up for the work they weren’t able to manage during the normal school day. No, these city council members are talking about “increased accountability” for teachers. As a matter of fact, the Seattle School District wants teachers to be accountable for the performance students do on these new unproven tests. Looks to me like that would mean 76% of the teachers in the Seattle School District would be fired on a rotating basis until finally 100% of these students succeeded at these tests. Does anyone really think that firing your teaching staff until you get the right teaching staff is really going to change the returns?
I love the affirmation the D.C. superintendent gets from the nation for crushing the unions and firing 260 teachers and putting another 17% of the four thousand on probation. Here’s where this BELIEF thing comes in? How many of you believe Ms. Rhea is going to be able to find replacements for those teachers to teach in the lowest performing most difficult schools in the Washington D.C. area? And how many of you believe that these new teachers are going to last? If you want to get discouraged about teaching, try teaching in one of these schools? But you want me to BELIEVE “that every child can learn and must be prepared for college and the career of his or her choice.” I can believe this. I can believe it until the cows come home but you know what? Some children are going to come into class and no matter what teacher is before them they are not going to learn and there are thousands of reasons why they won’t; emotional distress, drugs, indifference to name a few. But as a teacher my belief in kids every year remains unshaken until the same kids that failed the year before fail in my class as well. And each year I get more experienced and more veteran and become a true authority on children and students and what is possible to get them to do and what is not. That is my profession. That’s what you pay me for. But, no, you want me to BELIEVE that every child can learn. Yes, I do but that does not mean that they will. You want me to BELIEVE that every child must be prepared for college. Yes, I do but that does not mean that they will make the commitment to themselves to get there and that does not mean that they even prioritize a college education because after all there are great things that can be done outside of college educations. Bill Gates didn’t get a college education, nor did Andrew Carnegie. You want me to believe that every child should be “prepared for the profession of his or her choice”. You bet I believe that but for the most part high school kids have no professional aspirations and in the real world of America how many people can really say that they got a choice as to which profession or working environment they wanted for themselves.
And I could go on with the falseness of these platitudes that you allow to run in your paper but I want to end with a final accusation against this paper and you its editor. Your not doing your homework and your not doing the investigative journalism that it takes to come out with a meaningful analysis of just what this educational reform is all about or why a union is so very important for a working class of people like teachers who are not miners and truck drivers and they too just want everyone to just get along. But my oh, my it is certainly difficult to get along with a public prodded by the media, and business and a national government that has decided to lynch the Teacher.
Remember the teacher, the person who you remember that had the greatest influence on your life? Show a little respect when you decide that it is the teacher who has victimized the student and taken the public for all of its wasted tax dollars in this sham we call public education. Show a little respect. Mrs. Jones is still out there and she is still loving, nurturing and challenging her young charges to achieve in this ever more complex world. Here publish this article and title it. TEACHERS, WE ARE NOT THE ENEMY.