Dear Senator
Berger,
It has been a year since you took
the lead in the North Carolina Senate’s assault on public education and
educators. The thinly-veiled attack can
no longer be mischaracterized as “reform.”
What you have described as increased accountability fails the smell test
by parents, community leaders, and educators.
In fact, based on the widely recognized Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognition,
you fail on all counts.
Bloom’s Taxonomy consists of the
following levels of increasingly complex thought processes: Knowledge,
Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Evaluation, and Synthesis. Here are just a few ways in which your
methods and plans are fatally flawed.
· Knowledge Knowledge must be
based on facts, not opinions. You have
mistakenly built your foundation on fallacies.
You have trusted biased ideologically-based studies which claim the
following: Class size doesn’t matter.
Per pupil funding doesn’t matter.
Advanced degrees for teachers don’t matter. Teacher experience doesn’t matter. What were
you thinking?
· Comprehension Comprehension
implies that you understood the “facts” you cited, while nationwide statistics
show the exact opposite of all your
premises to be true. Beyond statistics,
countless surveys, studies and anecdotal evidence from parents confirm that all
of these things are of critical importance to them.
· Application You have failed to
properly apply even the limited information of which you availed yourself. Please slow down and think things through to
their logical conclusions!
· Analysis A year has
been ample time to see that across the state those who are charged with
ensuring the soundness of North Carolina public education are appalled at many
of your rash and unfounded judgments.
When we were nationally recognized for surpassing the 80% graduation
rate, for achievement in international comparisons, for long-term growth in SAT
scores, for leading the nation in nationally-certified teachers, and much more,
you declared our schools to be failures.
You cannot make statements like that lightly.
· Evaluation Among other things,
you have concluded that our teacher corps is the root of our problem and that
privatizing education as rapidly and completely as possible will solve North
Carolina’s problems. There is widespread
agreement that the vast majority of our teachers are highly competent and
dedicated. Poverty, especially in
single-parent families and in rural areas, has been the constant thread that
challenges schools in our state, regardless of the caliber of their
staffing. You need to re-evaluate, and quickly. Irreparable damage is being done to the
fabric of our state’s most critical institution, the education system on which
both our economic system and an informed citizenry depend.
· Synthesis Synthesis is the
highest level of cognition, and is dependent on the smooth inter-connection
with the other levels. When one is
ill-informed, when one fails to understand, and when one incorrectly applies
this misinformation, the result is as disastrous as when a builder sets a
crooked foundation and builds upon it with a faulty blueprint and substandard
materials. In your determination to
undermine teachers and public schools, thus fulfilling your expectations, you
have created a punitive system that would label 75% of teachers as
under-performing workers. Teaching,
which is by nature a cooperative, collaborative effort, would become a
competitive venture, pitting teacher against colleague for the elusive raise. Your plan puts principals, central office
staff, and boards of education in a no-win situation. Having attempted to force the education model
to fit your limited business model, you have done serious damage in a short
time. How can you pretend you want
students to be taught to “think outside the box” when at every turn, you seek
to put teachers, administrators, and schools IN a box? Statewide,
teachers are frantically exploring options in other states or in other
careers. Even many with decades invested
in their calling are wondering how much longer they can tolerate these
ill-conceived actions and unjust treatment.
And perhaps the worst side effect of all is that young people are being
discouraged from pursuing a career as a professional educator. Far from competing for the “best and brightest,”
North Carolina’s legislature is sending a clear signal that educators are
neither valued nor respected here. What
a tragedy. What drove you to embark on
this path remains a dark mystery.
I regret
having to speak so bluntly and negatively.
These comments may seem harsh.
But you are not a child. You are
an adult in a position of leadership and trust.
Yet you have willfully ignored and even ridiculed all opponents and
efforts to modify, moderate, or re-think your agenda. In doing so you have done and continue to do
great harm to the state you have been entrusted to lead. Please begin to listen to more voices and
weigh what you hear with more care. Then begin to repair what you have thus far
only damaged. You have certainly proven
that a
little knowledge is a dangerous thing!
