Our working conditions are out students' learning conditions. ----NYC HS Teacher Megan Behrent (MORE).
UPDATE: There are 2 clips, the 2nd didn't include Megan Behrent of the Movement of Rank and File Educators. Megan points out that the more important question than bad teachers are the fact that 50% of the teachers leave within 5 years. Also raises need of support to give teachers best chance to be best they can be.
Alter: Adult interest groups not always best for children. We're not bashing teachers.
Ha. Doesn't he mean only the unions are adult interest groups? As if TFA and DFER and Students First and Success Charters are not adult interest groups.
Alter uses ed deform code words: adults interests, not children and he and the other ed deformer on the panel still try to shift focus to the so-called "bottom." She said, "we know there are bad teachers." Hey there are bad pundits like Alter -- probably bottom 1% - and does he always have to talk about himself? HE shows his support for teachers through donors choice or HIS nephew is in TFA and is going to stay -- want to bet Alter's nephew is not in the classroom in 5 years?
In the 2nd clip Megan doesn't get to say a word while Alter blathers and the other ed deformer gets the last word. Harris-Perry had to make her point over Alter's interruptions and attempt to steer the conversation away from her criticism of KIPP - which he actually accomplished. With the only teacher in the room relatively muted, she promised Megan a return appearance. Megan should have spilled coffee on Alter when he began to talk.
See below the jump for a transcript of part 2:
>>> keynesian consultant group makes it clear, it is racial. african-american and latino students are behind the white counterparts in school. here in new york city, half of the public schools are more than 90% black and hispanic making new york one of the most segregated school systems in the country behind only dallas and chicago. segregation may no longer be the law, but it is in so many schools the reality. back here with me are lila leff, and jonathan alter, and megan behrent, and daniel denvir and once again, jonathan and i were in a shouting match over it. and that is where i want to go because it is a passionate subject, and nobody thinks that what is currently happening -- and this is the point, i agree with the first seven pages of the romney white paper and nobody thinks that what is happening at this moment is sufficient, and even as i was doing the introduction i looked around the table and i realized that my goodness in most of the cities in the country, even if they are white majority cities and the public school population is dramatically racial mi minorities and here we are having this conversation and where the black and the brown family parents, and so i will play the role of the black girl here, so when we talk about the failing public school, we are overwhelmingly talking about failures that impact the community that i live in. i live in the 7th ward of new orleans, and i don't like what i see happening in the kip school. i am distressed by the movement away from teachers unions that can actually fight for teachers. teaching for 15er yees at the hi -- 15 years at high performing universities like princeton, i have many who say i want to go into the teachers for america and none of them say, i want to be a teacher. it is like people are dipping in and out and not systemic reform.
>> my nephew is in teach for america and staying to be a teacher and in fact in a kip school, and to me it is anti-intellectual and anti-empirical to say that the kip schools are bad, and the evidence is in, melissa, and we have 15 years of rock solid evidence that the top performing charter schools and not the crappy ones, but the top performing one and the crappy ones, i agree should be put out of business just as crappy conventional schools should be put out, but to criticize kip and teach for america and by the way, principals all over the country want the teach for america's energy in their schools.
>> my critique for the teach for america, and i send my students there, and i think it is great for the young people who go in to be teachers, but it is designed to be a program for people who did want to be teachers but going off to do other things in the world and you need to go spend time in a urban classroom and change your perspective and that is incredibly important.
>> it is designed to get the wealthier kids in the public school system.
>> and then on to a career that educational reform afterbardwards.
>> i feel like we could spend the rest of the time talking about charter versus traditional public and not talk about the kids you are talking about right now which is to solve the problem for young people in the country to get the education they need to be prepared to be on fire about the learning and to want to participate in the democratic process and die to go to college, andoard we are failing the students whether it is charter or traditional public, and if we spend the next four years fighting about that one point, we are going to miss it. we need to agree what sxel lens looks like in a school and mobilize around it with a lot of ways to do that and unless smart people like us can come around the table to get into the conversation and the getting into the weeds to create systems aligned for support, we are going to continue to fail.
>> and you are talking the most sense, and that is what we have to get beyond the thing of corporate educational reform or me on my side union hacks, and that is the way romney is talking, and that is not helpful, but both sides have to tone down the rhetoric.
>> and dan el y, -- daniel, i want to hear of the policies.
>> well, we need to allow the teachers to teach if we want to inspire the love of learning in the lifelong intellectual passion. what the no child left behind has unleashed is the exact opposite. curriculums have been eviscerated. literature, american history, arts, music, science, and everything that is not being tested is being cut. even p.e. and recess. and so --
>> there is no school, but test prep.
>> it is test prep boot camps for the poor, and liberal arts educations for wealthy well well-to-do districts and you talked about segregation in the intro of "the new york times," we have done some good work on that recently and long had segregated schools and what the high stakes test regime has done is to for mallize it into two totally different schools, liberal arts for the wealthy and test prep camps for the poor.
>> lila, the last word on that.
>> research shows that the tests are one metric for measuring progress and they measure the progress that records how you will do on the next test you take, but the grade point average and the noncognitive skills like being able to think and reflect on the learning go to college completion and higher learning, so we have to align our schools around more complicated metrics and these are not impossible things to measure, but it feels really important, and by the way, we are failing the rich kids, too, because we are not creating the thinkers and not looking for the next entrepreneurial skills, but look looking for the right answer and that is dangerous.
>> thanks to everyone for being here and having this conversation for me, and this conversation is not going away and thank you to lila, and daniel and meghan and jonathan. much more on the issue on mhp.com. and is this democracy that we watched from
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The opinions expressed on EdNotesOnline are solely those of Norm Scott and are not to be taken as official positions (though Unity Caucus/New Action slugs will try to paint them that way) of any of the groups or organizations Norm works with: ICE, GEM, MORE, Change the Stakes, NYCORE, FIRST Lego League NYC, Rockaway Theatre Co., Active Aging, The Wave, Aliens on Earth, etc.
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