Michelle Rhee is smiling.

[BrotherIvan]

54. Air Traffic Controllers

As the offspring of a teacher this sickens me. My mother taught 41 years in an impoverished and dangerous neighborhood. Thankfully, she retired with a pension that allowed us to take care of her until her death. At her memorial former students came, generations of families my mother taught, and told me how she changed their lives. Three of them became teachers and credit my mother with the inspiration.

In that time of stability, when she and her fellow teachers who all were long timers, administrators came and went. Some better than others, some so bad that parents and teachers demanded she be replaced. But the tenured teachers made the school a stable place and a focus of the community it served.

Anyone who has a child had better stand up for public education and that means teachers. If they think cowed, underpaid teachers with no job security working hours they are not paid for are the solution to education they are sadly mistaken. But by the time they figure it out it will be too late. I doubt they will be able to fill the need for teachers, but that's ok, send your kid to some mill with uncredentialed teachers with little experience in the classroom.