Elect Lily For NEA Vice President

In 1983 I was teaching 5th grade at Orchard Elementary, and President Reagan's Secretary of Education, Ted Bell, released "A Nation at Risk". It said, and I quote, "If an unfriendly, foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." Only 21 short years later, President Bush's Secretary of Education called members of the NEA "terrorists". Coincidence? We report. You decide.

* We know there are factors that affect your score that have nothing to do with how hard you study. Nutrition is a factor. Your parent's vocabulary is a factor. We know that if you don't speak English, you tend not to pass the test (Yes, I, too, was shocked). We know there are kids who do well on tests who don't succeed in their adult lives. We know kids who get mediocre test scores and grow up to become president of the … well; I'll let that one go.

A test is one tool that gives one type of information. You can't build a house with one screwdriver. And you can't build an education system with one test.

NEA does not oppose tests. We oppose the abuse of tests. We oppose claiming that one test can possibly give a comprehensive assessment of the multiple intelligences of our students.

* Teachers have never been against tests. We invented tests. It’s the misuse of tests that is our concern. And the public needs to understand that there are powerful people who have profited from the manipulation of test data.

This year, 68% of Florida schools got a plaque and a letter of congratulations from Governor Bush for receiving an A or B rating on state tests. A week later, a different letter went to parents in 77% of Florida schools – many of the same ones that were still hanging their plaques – that their children were attending schools that failed Adequate Yearly Progress. 3 (Only parents who were not responding to medication for schizophrenia were able to make any sense of this Manic-Depressive approach to testing – it helps if the voices explain it to you.)

There's a huge agenda to privatize prisons, Social Security, Medicare. It's always the same politicians that want to turn public institutions over to the profiteers. But the selling of a public school is the most sinister. To place a market model on boys and girls – who's profitable to teach and who's not – hiring Arthur Anderson clones to manipulate the numbers – commercials promising desperate parents that their child will get Nordstrom service at Wal-Mart prices.

* The mind boggles at the segregated society we could become. And this time, not just racial segregation. Segregation by income, by language, by religion, by test score. Do not be fooled by the pretty words and pretty promises they make."

It is an irony of biblical proportion for politicians today to use a word like “modernization” to talk about risking pensions in the stock market and a return to1929. But those attacking public institutions are shameless in using words that mean the exact opposite of their intent. It’s not surprising that attacks on pensions are growing. Because friends come and go, but enemies tend to accumulate. And these enemies have been accumulating for seventy years.

Without Social Security, half of America’s seniors would be living below the poverty line. It is the only source of income for 20% of all elderly people.

* We will speak up. We will show up. And we will protect, for ourselves and for our posterity, the greatest gift from the Greatest Generation – a stable, guaranteed Social Security.

Well, ten years ago, they said it was going to happen in 2029; but five years ago, they said 2037; then two years ago they said 2042; and now the Congressional Budget Office is predicting 2052 when I’ll be celebrating my 97th birthday.

(I think I’ve got time for a cup of coffee before this crisis hits.)

In 2001, the Administration renamed ESEA “No Child Left Behind”. The packaging was gorgeous. High Standards for All. Accountability. Closing the Achievement Gap. What’s not to love? We unwrapped this pretty package, and opened what turned out to be Pandora’s Box and an assault on common sense.

The good news, after 2014, there will be no AYP [Adequate Yearly Progress] formulas. The bad news is, the standard will be Perfection. California, Minnesota and Connecticut have all published research showing that 99% of their schools are doomed to be labeled failures in the coming years in light of the 100% must pass mandate. (99%, I believe, is a conservative figure.) All. The. Money. In. The. World…cannot fix a law that requires perfect children by the year 2014.

We also need to make it clear that NEA does not oppose tests. We oppose the abuse of tests. We oppose claiming that one test can possibly give a comprehensive assessment of the multiple intelligences of our students. We want amendments in the law that would measure the growth of an individual student from one year to the next. We want a school to be able to use multiple, appropriate measures of success and not just one multiple-choice test. We want accountability to recognize movement in closing the achievement gap.

...that year, the entire Houston district reported a total dropout rate of 1.5%. But an independent audit of the Texas Miracle showed that the dropout rate was probably closer to 50%. The unholy Texas Miracle seems to have been the model for No Child Left Behind. It’s a numbers game. We’ve seen it before.

Our coalitions must now include citizen groups who have no love for No Child Left Behind – and there’s a lot of conservatives in that group. We need coalitions that include Republicans, governors, state legislators, business leaders, taxpayer organizations and civic groups. We have to find the strategies to organize those citizens who still believe in the cause of public education - or who are insulted by the more and more transparent agendas of snake-oil salesmen and crony capitalists – or who are angry at the intrusion of the feds in local decisions - or who see it in their own financial interest to carry our water.

But underlying it all - it’s for a reason that’s so corny we hesitate to mention it. It sounds so hokey. But we stay year after year because we come to love those sleeve-tugging, homework-forgetting, all knowing boys and girls. We love our students. Mind you, we do not love them with that sticky sweet, cutsie, “Oh, I just love those darling boys and girls.” Teachers with that attitude are eaten alive by 2nd graders on the third day of school. Their pictures end up on milk cartons and we never see them again.
People who stay love their kids enough to insist on self-discipline. To nag them when we know they can do better. We love them enough to show pride in their accomplishments and successes. We didn’t get in this work to get rich. We don’t stay to get rich. But being treated and paid like a professional means that more and more people will consider joining us.

Merit Pay rarely pays for merit. This is not about merit – any more than our current ESEA law is about leaving no child behind. Just because you call it something pretty, doesn’t make it real.

Hold me accountable for doing my job as a caring professional; as someone who is constantly improving my skills; as someone who tracks my students’ progress in a multitude of ways and who creates opportunities to meet their diverse learning needs.