Francine, I can tell you, as a retired public school teacher of 26 years, in a very disadvantaged school district, the teachers are often amazing and do incredible work with children who often come to school shadowed by the pains of poverty, community neglect, and fear that their lives will never get better. Our Republican governors over…
Francine, I can tell you, as a retired public school teacher of 26 years, in a very disadvantaged school district, the teachers are often amazing and do incredible work with children who often come to school shadowed by the pains of poverty, community neglect, and fear that their lives will never get better. Our Republican governors over the years cut school funding by billions of dollars and the state is struggling to catch up. I received a decent salary, but purchased or found all the materials for my students, made sure they regularly had books of their own, and did other things for them I thought could give them hope in a brighter future. Other teachers in my district did the same. I know there are teachers in some cases who are racist, homo/transphobic, xenophobic, and misogynistic and proudly display that, but I saw very little of that among my colleagues and I served in between 5 and 9 schools each year for 19 years. Maybe extra efforts should be placed on recruiting future educators, high-quality positive training for teachers in our colleges and universities and treating teachers as the professionals they are, more knowledgeable about teaching subjects like reading, math, science, social studies, and the arts than most parents, despite what Republicans would have us all believe. The fact that Tim Walz was a public school teacher and understands the challenges schools and their inhabitants face, should position him and Harris well to work toward improving our public schools for the benefit of all, helping our young people to be the best-educated, most talented, most creative most wonderfully diverse work force we have ever had.
Ruth, I also spent years in education at the public school in a small community that was very Catholic, so we had the private school next door. That was a problem in itself in terms of passing school budgets and up the canyon (North Santiam Canyon) people believed some story that we discriminated against their students. So they didn't vote for the budget either. Now the state pays for most school budgets and local budget votes usually have to do with bond measures. I was the librarian as well as teaching some classes, often individual or small, and I spent my own money and time on the library including buying paint and hiring a student to paint the area where my aides sat. Many of our teachers helped students in many ways including taking them in. We did have all the negative things you mentioned and usually, it resided in what i call the coaching corner. The district hired some teachers because they could coach and the booster club hired the football coach and we had some real doozies there. I saw many student teachers including one who should have never received a teaching certificate because our female students complained about him. But he passed muster anyway and was hired at a nearby district where it didn't take long for him to get in trouble.
Michele, a librarian, Oh how I wish we had a librarian in our district. We have no libraries, minimal art and music programs, a good sports program, and a few after school projects that help. People have no clue that librarians are essential as are the arts, government/civics classes, and personal finance courses. It's just so sad our kids are so poorly regarded. When I hear Republicans claim to love children, I know they are lying through their teeth, unless they mean just their own children and even then, I am not so sure.
Always a good sports program. We had three reasons for bad teachers: they could make more money elsewhere; in the early days there were no people trained for special ed; really bad teachers were hired because they could coach and some of them lacked any kind of integrity as well. Having said this, we also had some coaches who were good teachers. I think Walz exemplifies the latter. Rs do not care about children, especially the children of others, but I am like you, some of them do not care about their own. If they actually cared about children, they would not be against helping those who have less. They would provide for child care, preschool, Head Start and the rest. And most of all, they would do something about guns as we now have had another tragedy.
I should also say I was the last real certified librarian. The next person was all about tech and headed that for the district. He wanted out of the classroom. The person in the library was not certified, but classified. She may still be there.
Michele, that is what is happening in so many places, except, of course, the wealthy districts who demand libraries and librarians. The rest of us get what the Republican legislators say we're worth, and poorer districts in their view are worth little or nothing. Ugh!
Yes, I know. I am often amazed at what people say in terms of public schools. And they are convinced the poor are all criminals. One of the things that I loathe about death star is that he gives carte blanche for people to be their ugliest selves.
Michele & Ruth, I read through your exchange and as myself, “Why haven’t parents and Democrats fought much harder over the years to defend and fund public education?” It just seems to me that Republicans and private sector advocates have found it way too easy to push their private schools agenda while public schools were underfunded and often cast aside in lower income communities.
Now is a time to stand up for public education and offer solutions to help young people and their families see the immense value in a good education including technical and general/liberal studies.
What are your thoughts in response to my unsolicited and unscientific observations?
John, wow! the whole issue is far too complicated than just Democrats sitting back and letting Republicans do their damage to our public schools. In so many states over the years, Republicans have ruled because they have been able to gerrymander to the point that Dems have no say. Only when Democratic governors happen to win could schools be saved with a veto. Republicans did not just start lying, cheating, and sneakily cutting away at our rights; it has been going on in places since the days of the New Deal. In my state, if community governments didn't go Republican, they got no funding from the county and often from the state either. I hope enough Democrats are waking up to what is being done to all of us that we can turn this insanity into something that can help everyone, even the crazy public school-hating, child dismissing Republicans.
I can speak for only Oregon. For years the property tax funded most of the school budget. So every year we had to go to voters and ask for money. One years we could not start school on time and kids were frantic. I know that some of our teachers voted no on budgets because they were safe. When a property tax measure passed a la California, the state took over most of the school funding. School measures here generally are bonds for repair or new buildings. There are so many false ideas about teachers. They are often paid monthly, so that they get a paycheck in the summer months. So that translates somehow to getting paid for no work. Here in Oregon we have PERS pensions. I happen to be tier one which is the highest tier. Now there are lower tiers for newer retirees. This causes a lot of resentment and it would take too long to explain this. We were at a neighborhood dinner (the last one, btw) and one of our neighbors (who has plenty of money) went on a tirade about PERS. My husband worked for the state. And so did the host, but she was looking at me, a teacher. The district where I worked was in a very Catholic community and our kids thought the kids who went to the Catholic school were somehow better. This, of course, is BS and I could write a book. Up the canyon where logging prevailed, most people were originally from the upper south and they could also make more money in the mill than we made. So not much interest in education from many of those kids. The difference there was usually the parents' education. As for the legislature and the governor....usually D, but Rs have taken to walking out when they are against something....usually climate issues, etc. Oregon also has the kicker which is based on what the state economists forecast as what taxes would equal. If that number is over what they predict, then all taxpayers get a kicker. I think if the tax is fair, it is fair, but this will not change as far as I can tell. We often use our kicker as a donation somewhere. In the south after desecration, private schools grew and now there are also plenty of religious schools because dear me, students will be corrupted in public schools. In our English classes if someone objected to a book, I had the student in the library with alternative books. I know of one family who home schooled their children at a great cost to the kids. They finally admitted it wasn't a good idea, but they belonged to a cult up the canyon. Also there has always been a large anti-intellectual strain in this country. If you have further ideas or questions, we can continue this and thanks for your post.
Michele, you are so right about this. Teachers are an easy target because somehow rich white men just happen to have stories of the horrible teachers they had, forgetting that their horrible behavior probably along with their belief in their superiority, made their teachers' attempts to teach the class seem negative. Wealth even lets kids act like bullies to everyone they and their parents think are not good enough. If people actually valued all children, even their children, the schools would improve dramatically.
I taught government class for a few years. It was a required class as I told them. They had to pass it for graduation and I was required to teach it. So, I told them to make the most of that situation and I said i really didn't care about their grade as long as they passed. What they earned was up to them. I had exactly one student who failed....he failed twice. But he was from a family that did not value education and happened to typical of some who lived up the canyon.
Please remember, though, that it's not only teachers who got hit, and hit hard. All of U.S. schools got targeted by the far-right foundations of the 1971 Powell memo.
The new Heritage Foundation and the older, but enlarged Hoover Institute sought to shame and silence all public-spirited teachers, K-12 and "higher." The new ALEC organized first, for years, to have state legislatures reduce funding for all levels of public education.
All Americans who graduated from schools from1980 on have one thing in common. All learned permanently to avoid reference to any humanities. All learned to avoid reference to any "others" in any groups. And, for the benefit of the standardized testing billionaires, only groups, categories, and abstractions existed anymore. Easily labeled. Machine gradable.
No individuals anywhere. Except in the arts, which had no place in schools anymore.
An excellent reply, Phil, on what has gone on at the national level. I despise standardized tests as does every teacher that I know who really cares about education. No Child Left Behind....my rear.
Well, death star thinks the same about himself. He is an excellent example of what happens to children born to wealth who got away with everything. I knew several kids of wealth when i was growing up and they all went to a private school in the east to be finished or some place like Cranbrook in Michigan for the boys. If they were troublesome, they went to military school. I have to say that wealth did not save them from having problems including one who committed suicide. And one who I grew up with all of my school life, was murdered several years ago. One of the things that happened to me was that I learned to be very polite to my elders, one of those things they probably learned at prep school when they weren't doing things they shouldn't. I also owe a lot to a wealthy family who were friends of my father. So, while so many act horribly, there are some exceptions.
You are a hero. Your message is so important. Yes, I have hopes for the Democrats winning the Presidency and Congress and Senate. And I think you are right that having Walz in the administration will be very helpful. I was shocked this year that the Ann Arbor Public Schools are dropping Art and Music. That is shocking to me. It’s a money issue they say. Thank you for all you did is a teacher and for documenting it.
Francine, thank you. I, like so many other teachers, think I had the best students in the world. I like the idea of having a former teacher (OK, once a teacher always a teacher) as VP. I know he cares about kids and equity, two critical elements in our lives.
Thank you so much Ruth. I watched one republican governor after another destroy Special Ed. They cut funding and services. My classroom budget for one year was $80.00, divided into half at the begging of the year and the other $40.00 after Christmas. Guess who bought what was needed.
My husband once said to me at tax time, “it’s a good thing I have a good job, or we couldn’t afford for you to teach”. We both laughed.
Phyllis, people have no idea what teachers do for their kids, but they sure can support loud-mouthed oafs like Vance and Trump who insult and denigrate teachers. Maybe if they would vote for Democrats who actually care about their kids, better teachers would be recruited and hired and better future teachers would be given aid to attend college. It is most of the red states' schools, often private and religious as well, that suck. Value children and the public schools will improve.
We don’t have enough tax dollars to have excellent schools. The wealthy donors keep lobbying to pay less in taxes and their bought-and-paid-for elected representatives salute and say “yes, SIR” over and over. All the data show that after the 1970s the tax dollars dried up, poverty and income disparities increased.
Francine, I can tell you, as a retired public school teacher of 26 years, in a very disadvantaged school district, the teachers are often amazing and do incredible work with children who often come to school shadowed by the pains of poverty, community neglect, and fear that their lives will never get better. Our Republican governors over the years cut school funding by billions of dollars and the state is struggling to catch up. I received a decent salary, but purchased or found all the materials for my students, made sure they regularly had books of their own, and did other things for them I thought could give them hope in a brighter future. Other teachers in my district did the same. I know there are teachers in some cases who are racist, homo/transphobic, xenophobic, and misogynistic and proudly display that, but I saw very little of that among my colleagues and I served in between 5 and 9 schools each year for 19 years. Maybe extra efforts should be placed on recruiting future educators, high-quality positive training for teachers in our colleges and universities and treating teachers as the professionals they are, more knowledgeable about teaching subjects like reading, math, science, social studies, and the arts than most parents, despite what Republicans would have us all believe. The fact that Tim Walz was a public school teacher and understands the challenges schools and their inhabitants face, should position him and Harris well to work toward improving our public schools for the benefit of all, helping our young people to be the best-educated, most talented, most creative most wonderfully diverse work force we have ever had.
Ruth, I also spent years in education at the public school in a small community that was very Catholic, so we had the private school next door. That was a problem in itself in terms of passing school budgets and up the canyon (North Santiam Canyon) people believed some story that we discriminated against their students. So they didn't vote for the budget either. Now the state pays for most school budgets and local budget votes usually have to do with bond measures. I was the librarian as well as teaching some classes, often individual or small, and I spent my own money and time on the library including buying paint and hiring a student to paint the area where my aides sat. Many of our teachers helped students in many ways including taking them in. We did have all the negative things you mentioned and usually, it resided in what i call the coaching corner. The district hired some teachers because they could coach and the booster club hired the football coach and we had some real doozies there. I saw many student teachers including one who should have never received a teaching certificate because our female students complained about him. But he passed muster anyway and was hired at a nearby district where it didn't take long for him to get in trouble.
Michele, a librarian, Oh how I wish we had a librarian in our district. We have no libraries, minimal art and music programs, a good sports program, and a few after school projects that help. People have no clue that librarians are essential as are the arts, government/civics classes, and personal finance courses. It's just so sad our kids are so poorly regarded. When I hear Republicans claim to love children, I know they are lying through their teeth, unless they mean just their own children and even then, I am not so sure.
Always a good sports program. We had three reasons for bad teachers: they could make more money elsewhere; in the early days there were no people trained for special ed; really bad teachers were hired because they could coach and some of them lacked any kind of integrity as well. Having said this, we also had some coaches who were good teachers. I think Walz exemplifies the latter. Rs do not care about children, especially the children of others, but I am like you, some of them do not care about their own. If they actually cared about children, they would not be against helping those who have less. They would provide for child care, preschool, Head Start and the rest. And most of all, they would do something about guns as we now have had another tragedy.
I should also say I was the last real certified librarian. The next person was all about tech and headed that for the district. He wanted out of the classroom. The person in the library was not certified, but classified. She may still be there.
Michele, that is what is happening in so many places, except, of course, the wealthy districts who demand libraries and librarians. The rest of us get what the Republican legislators say we're worth, and poorer districts in their view are worth little or nothing. Ugh!
Yes, I know. I am often amazed at what people say in terms of public schools. And they are convinced the poor are all criminals. One of the things that I loathe about death star is that he gives carte blanche for people to be their ugliest selves.
Michele & Ruth, I read through your exchange and as myself, “Why haven’t parents and Democrats fought much harder over the years to defend and fund public education?” It just seems to me that Republicans and private sector advocates have found it way too easy to push their private schools agenda while public schools were underfunded and often cast aside in lower income communities.
Now is a time to stand up for public education and offer solutions to help young people and their families see the immense value in a good education including technical and general/liberal studies.
What are your thoughts in response to my unsolicited and unscientific observations?
John, wow! the whole issue is far too complicated than just Democrats sitting back and letting Republicans do their damage to our public schools. In so many states over the years, Republicans have ruled because they have been able to gerrymander to the point that Dems have no say. Only when Democratic governors happen to win could schools be saved with a veto. Republicans did not just start lying, cheating, and sneakily cutting away at our rights; it has been going on in places since the days of the New Deal. In my state, if community governments didn't go Republican, they got no funding from the county and often from the state either. I hope enough Democrats are waking up to what is being done to all of us that we can turn this insanity into something that can help everyone, even the crazy public school-hating, child dismissing Republicans.
I can speak for only Oregon. For years the property tax funded most of the school budget. So every year we had to go to voters and ask for money. One years we could not start school on time and kids were frantic. I know that some of our teachers voted no on budgets because they were safe. When a property tax measure passed a la California, the state took over most of the school funding. School measures here generally are bonds for repair or new buildings. There are so many false ideas about teachers. They are often paid monthly, so that they get a paycheck in the summer months. So that translates somehow to getting paid for no work. Here in Oregon we have PERS pensions. I happen to be tier one which is the highest tier. Now there are lower tiers for newer retirees. This causes a lot of resentment and it would take too long to explain this. We were at a neighborhood dinner (the last one, btw) and one of our neighbors (who has plenty of money) went on a tirade about PERS. My husband worked for the state. And so did the host, but she was looking at me, a teacher. The district where I worked was in a very Catholic community and our kids thought the kids who went to the Catholic school were somehow better. This, of course, is BS and I could write a book. Up the canyon where logging prevailed, most people were originally from the upper south and they could also make more money in the mill than we made. So not much interest in education from many of those kids. The difference there was usually the parents' education. As for the legislature and the governor....usually D, but Rs have taken to walking out when they are against something....usually climate issues, etc. Oregon also has the kicker which is based on what the state economists forecast as what taxes would equal. If that number is over what they predict, then all taxpayers get a kicker. I think if the tax is fair, it is fair, but this will not change as far as I can tell. We often use our kicker as a donation somewhere. In the south after desecration, private schools grew and now there are also plenty of religious schools because dear me, students will be corrupted in public schools. In our English classes if someone objected to a book, I had the student in the library with alternative books. I know of one family who home schooled their children at a great cost to the kids. They finally admitted it wasn't a good idea, but they belonged to a cult up the canyon. Also there has always been a large anti-intellectual strain in this country. If you have further ideas or questions, we can continue this and thanks for your post.
Michele, you are so right about this. Teachers are an easy target because somehow rich white men just happen to have stories of the horrible teachers they had, forgetting that their horrible behavior probably along with their belief in their superiority, made their teachers' attempts to teach the class seem negative. Wealth even lets kids act like bullies to everyone they and their parents think are not good enough. If people actually valued all children, even their children, the schools would improve dramatically.
I taught government class for a few years. It was a required class as I told them. They had to pass it for graduation and I was required to teach it. So, I told them to make the most of that situation and I said i really didn't care about their grade as long as they passed. What they earned was up to them. I had exactly one student who failed....he failed twice. But he was from a family that did not value education and happened to typical of some who lived up the canyon.
Wealth even lets kids act like bullies… hmm, where have we all seen that?
Why haven't they fought harder, John?
That's the Q.
Please remember, though, that it's not only teachers who got hit, and hit hard. All of U.S. schools got targeted by the far-right foundations of the 1971 Powell memo.
The new Heritage Foundation and the older, but enlarged Hoover Institute sought to shame and silence all public-spirited teachers, K-12 and "higher." The new ALEC organized first, for years, to have state legislatures reduce funding for all levels of public education.
All Americans who graduated from schools from1980 on have one thing in common. All learned permanently to avoid reference to any humanities. All learned to avoid reference to any "others" in any groups. And, for the benefit of the standardized testing billionaires, only groups, categories, and abstractions existed anymore. Easily labeled. Machine gradable.
No individuals anywhere. Except in the arts, which had no place in schools anymore.
An excellent reply, Phil, on what has gone on at the national level. I despise standardized tests as does every teacher that I know who really cares about education. No Child Left Behind....my rear.
Michele, and Trump lets people believe their ugly selves are "beautiful, just beautiful."
Well, death star thinks the same about himself. He is an excellent example of what happens to children born to wealth who got away with everything. I knew several kids of wealth when i was growing up and they all went to a private school in the east to be finished or some place like Cranbrook in Michigan for the boys. If they were troublesome, they went to military school. I have to say that wealth did not save them from having problems including one who committed suicide. And one who I grew up with all of my school life, was murdered several years ago. One of the things that happened to me was that I learned to be very polite to my elders, one of those things they probably learned at prep school when they weren't doing things they shouldn't. I also owe a lot to a wealthy family who were friends of my father. So, while so many act horribly, there are some exceptions.
You are a hero. Your message is so important. Yes, I have hopes for the Democrats winning the Presidency and Congress and Senate. And I think you are right that having Walz in the administration will be very helpful. I was shocked this year that the Ann Arbor Public Schools are dropping Art and Music. That is shocking to me. It’s a money issue they say. Thank you for all you did is a teacher and for documenting it.
Francine, thank you. I, like so many other teachers, think I had the best students in the world. I like the idea of having a former teacher (OK, once a teacher always a teacher) as VP. I know he cares about kids and equity, two critical elements in our lives.
Thank you so much Ruth. I watched one republican governor after another destroy Special Ed. They cut funding and services. My classroom budget for one year was $80.00, divided into half at the begging of the year and the other $40.00 after Christmas. Guess who bought what was needed.
My husband once said to me at tax time, “it’s a good thing I have a good job, or we couldn’t afford for you to teach”. We both laughed.
Phyllis, people have no idea what teachers do for their kids, but they sure can support loud-mouthed oafs like Vance and Trump who insult and denigrate teachers. Maybe if they would vote for Democrats who actually care about their kids, better teachers would be recruited and hired and better future teachers would be given aid to attend college. It is most of the red states' schools, often private and religious as well, that suck. Value children and the public schools will improve.
We don’t have enough tax dollars to have excellent schools. The wealthy donors keep lobbying to pay less in taxes and their bought-and-paid-for elected representatives salute and say “yes, SIR” over and over. All the data show that after the 1970s the tax dollars dried up, poverty and income disparities increased.