Glenn Grothman – State Senator or Walker Education Policy Puppet? « Badger Democracy
The primary "conservative" deception about education revolves around the idea that, somehow -- and they can't say how of course, since this is a lie -- teachers get worse the more experience they acquire.
Imagine making this same argument with Wall Street CEOs... or State Senators.
More deceptive yet, these supposed conservatives avoid mentioning the murderous hiring process teachers have to go through. No State Senator could endure the years of vetting and testing required.
If politicians were forced to go through the same hiring process as teachers -- huh, only teachers would end up running state (and national) legislatures.
Huh. There's an idea. (Barbara Jordan, we miss you!)
Anyway, thanks to our friends at Badger Democracy for this nice write up of Glenn's latest folly.
In a letter to constituents, and Wednesday on “Sly in the Morning”, Senator Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) extolled the education-saving virtues of Act 10, saying it was “…the best thing we could do for our public schools.” Grothman went on to say that “Wisconsin Schools are just not that great right now,” citing recent test scores as signs of an education emergency that only eliminating collective bargaining could remedy. Specifically noting that the “…most recent test scores show that black kids have the worst scores in the country…” and “…white kids scored lower than the national average.” Grothman stated his belief that collective bargaining is a roadblock to student achievement that had to be removed – for the sake of the kids. According to Grothman, there are too many “bad teachers” protected by unions that are “too hard to get rid of,” and that “people shouldn’t need an Education degree to teach.”After speaking with Senator Grothman today two things are very clear – first, he was not very familiar with the full data from the scores, admitting that Governor Walker seemed to have “cherry picked” the scores he cited. The Senator was merely repeating the information he was given by Scott Walker, trusting its accuracy – even out of context. The other issue that was perfectly clear is that he (and the other Republicans) are behaving as puppets to Scott Walker and the Corporatics pulling HIS strings – believing every bit of misinformation being fed to them to demonize teachers and their unions. The best thing for Wisconsin and our children is for this propaganda to be exposed and debunked, so that a real debate about education can take place.[...]
3 comments:
I worked in a school for almost 10 years and there wasn't any years of vetting to get a teaching job. Many of them were fresh out of college. I saw teachers sitting around doing crossword puzzles,reading novels, etc. when it was their planning period. Then they would take home work to do and groan that they spent so much time at home getting ready for the next day. I also was told to do some of the things that in my opinion were things teachers should be doing, not their aides. But through all of their moaning and groaning,these teachers were back to teach the following school year instead of looking for something that gave them what they wanted in a job. They didn't have to stay, they could have gone else where. Teachers have nothing to groan about, they get good pay good benefits for less than a full year of work. Call in sick when they weren't, etc. Teachers are NOT ABUSED in any way!
I'm sorry you worked in such a lousy district. Truthfully, if this is what passes for oversight during the first few years before k-12 tenure, then I agree that they should fire the lot of them.
Why didn't you report your issues to an administrator?
You never moaned and groaned?
Why didn't you get a teaching degree or an administrator's license?
Do many teachers work after school on homework and work during during the school day?
Did you shadow or survey a sound portion of the teachers to get your data?
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