Transferred Highland Park teacher resigns in impassioned YouTube video

[madfloridian]

Here are points from her rant. Good for her for speaking out.

Transferred Highland Park teacher resigns in impassioned YouTube video

HIGHLAND PARK — A video bombshell was dropped on top of an emerging controversy in North Shore School District 112 late Tuesday when one of the four teachers transferred out of Lincoln Elementary School posted a YouTube video announcing her decision to leave the district.

In the 10-minute video, entitled “In Pursuit of Happiness,” fourth grade teacher Ellie Rubenstein addresses the transfers and “false accusations” that have been leveled against some teachers in the school. She also laments the test-driven state of the education profession.

“This year alone, I have been a helpless witness as half a dozen dedicated, hardworking teachers were reduced to tears, shame and desperation because an administrator decided they disliked them for some arbitrary reason,” Rubenstein said. “These devoted employees were handed concern forms filled with false accusations and no opportunity for discussion was provided. They then received a less-than-glowing evaluation with no recourse or opportunity for appeal or dialogue — they were told their contracts were not being renewed.”

....“I was proud to say I am a teacher, but over the past 15 years I’ve experienced the depressing gradual downfall and misdirection of education that has slowly eaten away at my love of teaching.

[hedda_foil]

1. My children grew up and were wonderfully educated in what is now District 112.

I am near tears on learning what has become of what were, not so very long ago, some of the finest schools in this country. My 6 and 9 year old grandchildren are now enrolled in another public school district that bears many of the hallmarks of the once great Highland Park elementary schools. But they, too, are beginning to show the signs of strain as wonderfully creative and dedicated teachers are compelled to join the forced march of the common core curriculum on which they and their students are to be marched off a cliff that is too steep and narrow for any but the most rigid to survive. This is a recipe for national disaster. If it's ruining the best public schools in upper middle class suburbs like Highland Park, where parents value and support educators and education, I shudder to think of the fate of students in less affluent communities nationwide.

[madfloridian]

4. It's heartbreaking to me.

What's worse is that so few are taking a stance against this movement to cause good schools to fail so they can be turned over to charter companies.

Hi Hedda.

[hedda_foil]

7. Hello to you, dear MadFloridian.

I would still be in the dark to about ed deform (educational derangement syndrome?) If it weren't for your posts. I've been trying to educate my daughter about this, in the hope that she will bring her formidable intelligence and force of will to bear on the issue.

Her family is probably moving to London for the next two years due to a major work promotion for her hubby, and the kids will be going to a private international school there. She's interested in one that sounds amazingly progressive in all the right ways. I'll let you know more when I have more info about it.



Hedda

[Heathen57]

2. Damn, what a video

This teacher is exactly what is needed and here we allow the administrators build their little fiefdoms and then take out those who really care. Then they lament that the schools are not producing like they think they should.

It makes me sick to think that a teacher, such as Ms. Rubenstein are being squeezed out even though they are the ones who have been encouraging students since the early days of Public Education. I'm sure we all can all remember at least one teacher who inspired us. Now that time may be gone if we don't do something to get rid of the GOP sponsored fools.

[Iwillnevergiveup]

3. Over 100,000 views on You Tube

That counts for something. My heart breaks for this young woman who undoubtedly has endured steadily escalating stress that in turn jeopardizes her own health. And can totally relate to her feelings of frustration with the spiraling down of education in this country. The message I and many of my colleagues received on a daily basis in our classrooms was unmistakable: "We're betting against you."

[DLnyc]

5. +1,000,000,000

Teaching is a very difficult calling. It becomes more or less impossible when people with no background in education decide to try to turn schools into factories, teachers into robots and children into cattle.

This woman, and millions of other teachers like her, are the real American heroes. Sadly, instead of being celebrated, they are being cut down like so many blades of grass.

[madfloridian]

6. Totally agree.

[sigmasix]

8. welcome to teabagger America

this is the result of decades of right wing extremism conducting a war on America through the dismantling of American pre-eminence in education and science. Teabaggers have been passing laws that destroy all of our public goods and infrastructure. Recent surveys indicate Americans that self identify as republicans or teabaggers are very likely to believe in nonsense sciences like creationism, global climate change denialism and a 6 thousand year old earth. Right wing fundamentalists believe thier ignorance to be just as, if not more, valuable as an educated specialist's knowledge. Arranging our educational and research endeavors to coincide with the selfish desires of corporate lobbyist science and fundamentalist neo-christian anti-intellectualism. Teachers around the country are being systemically barred from doing thier job correctly and being paid a commensurate pay for the importance of thier work.
Right wing antiAmerican extremists are attempting to destroy quality education for the middle and poverty class. In 10 years public schools will be welfare schools. Underfunded because of the theft of federal education funds by well connected right wing charter school regimes and public funding of religious indoctrination. Teabaggers in some states have already passed legislature that allows charter and religious schools to employ individuals with no secondary education or educational training, as teachers. Any American that honestly cares about our future should be alarmed and horrified by the machinations of the right wing devaluation of education and knowledge.
Teachers getting minimum wage is not a sustainable model for successful educational endeavors and basic American notions of fairness and recompense for hard work and dedication, especially in secondary educational goals.
Fuck teabaggers and those that support them- why do these entitiled white people teabaggers hate America so much?

[midnight]

9. The Authenticity of our work environments have been replaced.. Depending on where you work and what

you do....the situations that cause this helplessness that reduce us to tears are many but the fact that our standards for working rights being eroded has brought this forward... I'm grateful that this women has posted this.... I hope this is just the beginning our our work force putting into words these important dialogues....

[freedom fighter jh]

10. Who's Behind This?

You could see this sort of thing take hold back in 2001 with the passage of Bush's No Child Left Behind law, with support from Ted Kennedy. But it must have started before that; when my older daughter started kindergarten in 2001 and I started paying attention, the PTA talk was already about how to raise the kids' test scores.

NCLB was bipartisan legislation. I believe Ted Kennedy meant well but was not paying attention. Once NCLB was in place, with federal ed funding tied to the acceptance of testing programs, the dominance of testing over everything else in education became inevitable. The program is based on the false premise that testing programs make good pedagogy. Its passage is a good example of the harm Congress can do when they pass legislation without paying attention to what they are doing. I suspect that's most of the time.

[madfloridian]

12. Unfortunately it is Arne Duncan allowing this to happen.

And he was appointed by President Obama. The president stands by him strongly. It is the privatization of public education endorsed by both parties.

[kmlisle]

11. If you want to understand why this is happening follow the money

Testing companies, online companies, media companies including all the major media, charter companies for profit via real estate schemes with major tax dodges run by hedge fund managers, bogus tutoring scams mandated by NCLB. The huge pool of public money for education became up for grabs and the people who might object (teachers, and now parents, school boards, PTAs) are being demonized in the process. The whole process of implementing NCLB was structured with profit in mind with a hierarchical structure that was top down with the people in charge having no real experience in public education. High stakes testing was a perfect scheme for this as it also controlled the people who might make the most trouble in the profit making process: veteran educators who have been reduced to fighting for their very profession while public education is dismantled around them - for a profit.

Veteran teacher - now retired who used to greet visitors in my last years with "Welcome to the Factory Floor" (waving at my students) "And these are the widgets"
ps - was lucky enough to be a science teacher with good principals for my last years and I actually occasionally got to teach! But even with good administrators and school climate we were trapped in a dysfunctional system that is disastrous for children.
Parents: Boycott the tests - put your kids in a good private school if you can afford it!

Public schools = democracy. Guess the reformers don't believe in it.

[madfloridian]

13. Excellent post.

Thanks for posting. We need more people here standing up for public education.

[kmlisle]

14. Thanks - I enjoy your posts on DU

From a fellow Floridian