Reblogged from Chris Guerrieri’s Education Matters blog

Time  Magazine with their Bad Apple Cover, saying it’s hard to fire bad teachers stopped being a news magazine and instead joined the blamed the teacher crowd. The article about silicon billionaires fighting against tenure missed the point entirely, because their cause is not about improving education by getting rid of tenure but instead it is about destroying labor and profiting off of education in the process.

Please don’t think for a moment that the Vergera court case in California was about doing what is best for teachers. No, it was all about destroying labor as are most of the education reforms being implemented.

The plaintiffs backed by a silicon valley billionaire claimed that teacher work protections, including tenure, were detrimental and unfair to poor and mostly minority students. How the judge came to agree is an assault to the senses.

If first year or relatively new teachers are cut before more experienced teachers that is not only tragic but it is not the fault of teacher unions either. Unions do not set budgets nor do they let teachers go. Yet instead of blaming politicians who seem to always cut education first, they somehow blamed work protections for more experienced teachers and this judge either bought it or was bought.

Education reformers would have you believe you can separate the relationship between teacher and student but the truth is you can’t. They are symbiotic… Read more>>