“The single most important activity any church group can undertake to support public education is to find ways to nurture the primary positive relationship between child and teacher." ---UCC Public Education Task Force, 2005
In this spring of 2010, we seem to be caught up in a wave of scapegoating public school teachers. Last month a Central Falls, Rhode Island school board fired the entire staff of the community’s high school as one of four strategies the President and Secretary of Education are prescribing for schools deemed “failing” under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The President declared: “…if a school continues to fail its students… there's got to be a sense of accountability. And that's what happened in Rhode Island last week at a chronically troubled school…”
What happened in Central Falls has broader significance because it epitomizes the “turnaround” model, one of four school reform plans being required for states and school districts to qualify for “Race to the Top” money under the federal stimulus.
And we recently learned, the "turnaround" model is one of four school reform plans being proposed by President Obama and the U.S. Department of Education in its March 13, 2010, “Blueprint” for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
What is the anti-teacher ideology being pushed into public education policy?
That this “Off with their heads!” strategy is part of a broader ideological attack on public school teachers has become clearer in recent weeks. In an inflammatory March 6, 2010, article, Newsweek Magazine shamelessly attacks public school teachers. Proposing that massive teacher firings will quickly and neatly solve the challenges for struggling public schools, the authors lay out the argument being made by those who believe that it is possible to create a corps of superstar teachers in every school to guarantee the universal 2014 proficiency now demanded by the No Child Left Behind Act. An easy "solution": throw out the old and bring in the new.
In her “Bridging Differences” blog each Tuesday on the website of Education Week, education historian Diane Ravitch has been exploring the failed logic as well as the folly of this kind of argument. On March 16, Ravitch uses her blog to refute the Newsweek attack on public school teachers. Ravitch’s new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, scrupulously dissects the myth that school firings are some kind of solution to school achievement gaps and explains how such a myth has been constructed.
Here are resources to help your congregation support public school teachers
In the church we have been working to prevent the scapegoating of teachers for several years. The UCC Justice & Witness Ministries 2006 Message on Public Education featured a cover story, “Federal Law Felt as Attack by Public School Teachers.” Maybe these next few weeks would be a good time to revisit this resource in your adult education class or social justice committee. Use the web version or let us mail you printed copies by request. In that resource you will also find a Prayer for Teachers . Available in bulletin-insert format is A Litany for Education and Schools ,” prepared by the National Council of Churches Committee on Public Education and Literacy.
Whose Child Left Behind? Why?, a 2005 report by a four year United Church of Christ public education task force, lifts up the need for communities to support public school teachers. (We have a limited number of printed copies that we can provide by request. ) We know that, along with all the rest of us, school teachers are looking to discover ways to improve the way schools serve children and families. Critiquing public schools and insisting that public schools do a better job cannot mean throwing away the public schools in the poorest and most abandoned communities, nor can it mean throwing away the teachers in those schools. There are 4.6 million public school teachers in the United States today. Our best strategy is to support those professionals as they seek to serve the children in their care. Here is the 2005 judgment of the UCC’s public education task force :
“Education is a human endeavor of caring that depends on the dedication of teachers, principals, and other school staff. Learning best takes place in an environment where teacher and child have developed a personal relationship that makes each child feel valued... The single most important activity any church group can undertake to support public education is to find ways to nurture the primary positive relationship between child and teacher."
