An Ol' Broad's Ramblings
Archive for Education
A Walk This President SHOULD Make…..
….but won’t!
H/T: Connie
Where Have The Sane People Gone?
Cuz Lord knows, they sure aren’t in the public school system!!
Boy Suspended for Bringing Swiss Army Knife on School Camping Trip
A 10-year-old California boy was suspended and threatened with expulsion after he brought a Swiss Army Knife on a week-long school school camping trip.
Tony Bandermann told Fox News that his son Braden was on a science camping trip with his class at Garden Gate Elementary School in Cupertino, Calif.
According to a school incident report, the boy showed the small knife to other students who then reported him to teachers. The incident report stated that law enforcement was also notified. However, no charges were filed.
I should hope to hell there were ‘no charges filed”!! This brings to mind Crocodile Dundee…
Once again, the public school system has made total asses of themselves. Now, I don’t know about you, but even when we girls went camping, we had knives. They were a part of the necessary package, and they were at least twice the size of that itty bitty thing the morons at that school consider a weapon.
Bandermann, who was out-of-town on a business trip, said he received a telephone call from the school’s principal informing him that his son had violated the school’s weapons policy. The punishment, she told him, must be immediate and severe.
“She threatened to expel him,” he said. “She kept telling me, ‘you can’t bring a weapon to school.’ A Swiss Army Knife is a tool not a weapon.”
Since he was unable to pick up his son, the principal put the boy in 24-hour isolation at the camp – held in a teacher’s lounge where he was forced to eat and sleep in solitude.
They put this little boy in solitude? Are they freakin’ serious?? He’s a little boy! The damage that could be done to this kid by their ridiculous overreaction to a ‘nail cleaner’ should earn them a big fat law suit! These are the people who are suppose to teach our children, help them grow up to be leaders? Is it any wonder we have a batch of pussies running the show if this is the type of ‘education’ that’s being handed out?
It’s YOUR Money!
First, we have John Stossel on our public education system. More money for administration, but no improvement in the quality of education. If you ask me, kids are being so dumbed down, they can’t answer simple question about their own country! Oh, they know who won in such and such a season on American Idol, but they have NO idea who fought for their right to be totally oblivious.
Next, we have Tom Sullivan. So, Barack Hussein Obama has decided how much you save for your retirement? YOU earn the money, YOU save YOUR money, but he says no, you can’t save that much, so will take it away from you once you hit that mark. Who gave him the right to say who can retire with how much? NO ONE!
And, on that note…. I have things to do today!
A Biter Learns A Lesson
Ohio day care worker allegedly bit boy to ‘teach him a lesson’
A southwest Ohio day care worker has been charged with assault for allegedly biting a 5-year-old boy to teach him not to bite others.
Court records show 56-year-old Robin Mullins of Cincinnati was arrested Thursday. Police say a visible bite mark was left on the boy’s arm in the suburban Cincinnati day care.
Police say the boy had been brought to the office of Andrew’s Friends Pre-School & Day Care for biting another child. A police report says Mullins bit the victim on the arm, leaving a mark, “to teach him a `lesson.”‘
Two things here: One, they should have contacted the parents. Two, one of the parents should have bitten the little turd!
Shocked? Don’t be! Apparently, no one has bothered to teach this kid not to bite other kids. It hurts. Being bit by a parent, the kid might have learned NOT to do that long before he hit the age of five. How do I know? I was a biter!
Yep, as a little tyke, I bit other kids, until one day, my mom had reached her limit of patience and telling me “Don’t do that!” So, what did she do? She bit me. I remember it well, and I was somewhere between 2 and 4. My memory isn’t THAT great y’know! But I remember that bite! And guess what!? I NEVER DID IT AGAIN!
So, the teacher left a mark. And? If she hadn’t, the kid wouldn’t have known the pain he was causing other kids. There was no blood, right? I wonder if the kid bit so hard, he drew blood on the other rugrats? The story doesn’t say, but in all likelihood, it’s a possibility. I speak from experience.
This teacher should not be charged with diddly. No, I don’t believe in abusing children, that is an established fact! There is a difference between discipline and abuse. This was discipline, NOT abuse!
The 3rd Amendment Is Important!
Without our ALL Bill of Rights, we are no longer have liberty!
Shared by Jerry.
Fighting The Union
I’ve never made a secret of my opinion of unions, especially the public sector ones. Private sector? Well, most aren’t too bad…the smaller shop types seem to be ok, but even then, I have issues. Teachers unions are NOT what is in the best interest of the children! The example given in this piece gives proof of that! Teachers who suck, can’t be fired. GOOD teachers, and yes, there are SOME, are passed over, laid off, and generally treated like crap if they don’t fall in line with the collective!
Many school districts in this country are FORCED to teach things that are contrary to reality. If anyone balks, then there is hell to pay. Most good teachers will end up in private schools, or find work elsewhere, not in their field of study, where there is no union forcing them to do things against their will, or conscience. I’ve known a few. The tales they can tell about the public school system would make most parents hair curl, if they were allowed to KNOW about such things.
NO ONE should be forced to join a union. NO ONE should be forced to follow union ‘rules’ if they are not a member. NO ONE should be shoved into a situation that goes against their personal beliefs. Yet, sadly, that is what has happened in so many of our schools. They are no longer education centers, for the benefit of our children. They are indoctrination centers, force feeding children pure pap!
I pray Kansas is successful in their quest to remove the power of the union from the schools. I hope they’ll also take a good long look at what is being taught, and make appropriate changes. Our children are our future. What I’m seeing coming out of the education system, K-12, and into college, makes me FEAR for our future.
Kansas Legislators Take on the Teachers Unions
James Sherk – Heritage The Foundry
Union contracts often pick winners and losers in the workplace. However, teachers unions may soon lose the power to pick losers—at least in Kansas. Legislators there are considering giving unionized teachers the option of negotiating for themselves.
The pain of union control is illustrated by Bria Klotz, a former sixth-grade teacher in Lawrence, Kansas. She won statewide recognition for her excellence in the classroom. She nonetheless got laid off when Lawrence Public Schools had to make cuts.
Why did she lose out? Her union contract called for seniority-based layoffs, so she was among the first to go. The winners? The more senior union members who got ironclad job security from the contract.
Teachers in Kansas (and the rest of America) have little say about union representation. Most education unions were formed decades ago. For example, Kansas passed its collective bargaining law in 1970. Few teachers who voted in those elections remain in the classroom. Most have retired, and their replacements were never asked if they wanted a union. In many of Kansas’s largest school districts—including Wichita and Topeka—not one current teacher voted for Kansas National Education Association (KNEA) representation.
America’s Poverty Pimps
So, I get the headline….
…then POOF! It vanishes, to be replaced by crazy North Koreans, all decked out in their fancy uniforms, bayonets attached. Lucky for me, I got enough sleep last night, I was able to find the story, from the UK Mail Online no less. Now you DON’T think Obama would allow his minions in the media to tell the truth about this, do you?
The number of Americans living in poverty has spiked to levels not seen since the mid 1960s, classing 20 per cent of the country’s children as poor.
Now, I gotta tell ya, this first paragraph really chaps my hide. Using children? Again? Children don’t have anything to do with the poverty, they are not the ones in poverty, it’s their parents, or caretakers, not the children themselves. Yes, the children do suffer because of Obama’s poverty pimping, but it’s the parents who are responsible for the children, not the government. I really wish they’d get this straight. Kids aren’t able to get jobs, unless they live in Bangladesh or some such place, not in the U.S.
It comes at a time when government spending cuts of $85 billion have kicked in after feuding Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on a better plan for addressing the national deficit.
I wonder why everyone fails to mention that the sequestration was Obama’s idea, and the Republicans called his bluff? Hmmmm… And yes, because it’s SO much more important for the Obamas to take their lavish vacations, investigate the sex life and penis size of New Zealand snails, studying algae in the Hawaiian Islands, and the list goes on and on, ad nauseam. do we really need to fund a robotic squirrel? I mean seriously? While our military is no longer being fed breakfast, Congress has no problem funding some of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard of in my life. Oh wait, there was that item when I was a kid in the paper I asked my dad about….”why do we need to find out why salmon swim upstream?” “Hon”, he said, “I have NO idea. That’s just what government does. It wastes our money, for no good reason.” Well, that short conversation taught me a lot. Nothing has changed since then. And THAT was in the 60s.
The cuts will directly affect 50 million Americans living below the poverty income line and reduce their chances of finding work and a better life.
Here’s a thought! How about we put congress on a budget, allow them to only introduce bills affecting ONE item at a time. Absolutely NO amendments that have nothing to do with issue at hand! I mean, wouldn’t that make more sense than for some yahoo in Podunk Michigan to add some ridiculous spending request for a rubber band museum to the all important, and only reason, for Congress to actually exist, the security of the United States of America? It’s too logical, I know. I’m just a foolish ol’ broad who has had to budget household for many years. I know you can’t spend more money than you earn, but then, I’m dealing with my own money. If I was dealing with someone else’s money, I think I would be even more cautious, but that’s just me.
As you read on in the article, you’ll see that it was private charities that did the most to aid people out of poverty, NOT the federal government, even though there are some federally funding involved, which there shouldn’t be at all. A charity is something people give to from their heart. I don’t think there are too many folks who give to the government from the heart. More like they are being robbed blind to fund a government that is tampering into areas they have no business being in!
Since Obama has taken office, this second time around, it’s my understanding the he signs into being an average 67 regulations a day. I might be off a bit, but not by much. Regulations that are putting businesses, well, out of of business. These are mostly small businesses that cannot afford the new regulations, and those self same businesses that employee a large majority of the American people. Now, tell me, if you have a 100 businesses, with an average of 25 employees, and they all have to shut down thanks to the ever increasing absurd regulations, that’s about 2500 people now out of work. Multiply that by thousands, all across the country, and yes, you are going to have families torn apart due to lack of funds to pay their bills, going on food stamps and whatever aid they can get.
The U.S. Census Bureau puts the number of Americans in poverty at levels not seen since the mid-1960s when President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the federal government’s so-called War on Poverty.
And so, it began. The Democrats supposedly wanted to life people OUT of poverty, when all they did was drive more in to it, on a regular basis, tearing apart the family unit. The number of out of wedlock births have sky rocketed, increasing the chance that those children will continue the cycle of poverty. In a 2010 study, that found that 29 percent of white children are born to unmarried women, 53 percent of Latinos and 73 percent of black children. Who has the highest unemployment rate in this country right now? I don’t think I need to tell you, you’ve heard it enough. In the urban cities, majority black, and majority run by Democrats, the number of unemployed is astronomical, by anyone’s definition. Why? Well, the policies of the poverty pimps, keep those folks on the plantation so they’ll keep voting for them, thinking they’ll get something for nothing, but that nothing is their self respect, and a lack of compassion for their fellow humans, failing education system, that teaches lies to the kids, convincing them they are owed something, and the churches are the biggest failures in these areas.
The answer to the problem? Well, it’s real simple. First, you get the government out of the way. Second, you put the federal government on a spending diet. The purpose of the federal government is laid out quite clearly in the U.S. Constitution. Anything past that, is unconstitutional. For way too long, our supposed representatives have been using that sacred document to wipe their collective hind ends. THIS MUST STOP….NOW!! Repeal all the absurd regulations that Obama and minions have placed on businesses. Safety, yes, paperwork, NO! KILL that damn ObamaCare crap, which is one of the biggest hindrances to small businesses, you know the ones that do most of the hiring. Get the government out of education! PERIOD! No ifs, and or buts! Removed government from the charity business. That also, is NOT their job. Before Johnson stuck his nose in, and decided the way to get blacks to vote Democrat, black families had problems yes, much discrimination going on, but they were better off than they are by today’s financial, and social, standards.
In order for anything to be accomplished, we must first remove the career politicians, on BOTH sides of the aisle! It will be a long road back to prosperity, but it CAN be done. And for the love of all that’s holy, we are NOT all equal! Some have talents that others don’t but we ALL have, or HAD, the equal opportunity to succeed, or fail, on our own merits. Some will succeed, some will not, but if the opportunity is there, and YOU don’t take it, it’s your own damn fault! And for the love of Pete, kill that damn political correctness crap! It’s destroying this nation in ways even I can’t imagine!
Let’s face a hard cold truth! The POTUS lies….a LOT! Congress lies….a LOT! And sadly, way too many buy into their lies, and the media aids in their lies. It’s way past time to return to the intent of citizen legislators. Serve your term, and go your ass back home to a REAL job and the REAL world!
Standing UP Against Tyrannanical “Educators”
University Files Charges Against Student who Refused to Stomp on Jesus
A Florida Atlantic University student who filed a complaint against his professor after he was ordered to stomp on the name of Jesus has been brought up on academic charges by the school and may no longer attend class, according to documents obtained by Fox News.
The “Notice of Charges” against Ryan Rotela is contrary to a statement the university released late Friday night saying no one had been disciplined as a result of the classroom activity.
“We can confirm that no student has been expelled, suspended or disciplined by the university as a result of any activity that took place during this class,” the university said in a prepared statement.
However, according to a letter written by Associate Dean Rozalia Williams, Rotela is facing a litany of charges – including an alleged violation of the student code of conduct, acts of verbal, written or physical abuse, threats, intimidation, harassment, coercion or other conduct which threaten the health, safety or welfare of any person.”
“In the interim, you may not attend class or contact any of the students involved in this matter – verbally or electronically – or by any other means,” Williams wrote to Rotela. “Please be advised that a Student Affairs hold may be placed on your records until final disposition of the complaint.”
There is no such thing as public higher education. It is now, and has been for quite a while, nothing more than over priced indoctrination. If a college can get away with crap like this, what do you think they are doing in the lower grades, that we PAY for through our tax dollars as well. Apparently, according to my 14 year old granddaughter’s teacher, Abraham Lincoln was a very bad man. We set her straight real quick, but what else is going on in these classrooms we DON’T hear about?
“The textbook reveals the agenda,” he said. “So-called intellectual enlightenment is stomping on everything that has held western civilization together for the past 2,000 years.”
Paul Kengor, the executive director of the Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College, told Fox News he’s not surprised by the classroom lesson.
“These are the new secular disciples of ‘diversity’ and ‘tolerance’ – empty buzzwords that make liberals and progressives feel good while they often refuse to tolerate and sometimes even assault traditional Christian and conservative beliefs,” Kengor said.
Kengor said classes like the one at Florida Atlantic University demonstrate the contempt many public institutions hold for people of faith.
This young man was standing up for his faith. The so called educator apparently doesn’t believe he has that right, and it seems that the college itself, agrees. So, what do they do? They make up a bunch of crap, and make it all HIS fault this even occurred. Well, it’s a good thing Todd Starnes has been Johnny on the spot with this story, otherwise, there would be some really stupid people believing the school has done no wrong. Oh wait…there will STILL be morons that believe everything that comes out of the mouths of libtard ‘educators’.
I’m totally dismayed that Rotela was the ONLY student that stood up against that feckless weasel!
Brainwashing Your Children
The current incarnation of public education is mostly a failure. Actually, anything the federal government runs is a failure, just take a gander at the Post Office! They are in debt up to their eyeballs, mainly due to union contracts, and the ridiculous retirement packages they are obligated to pay. The same goes for public education. Yes, there are some school systems in the country that actually educate kids, but if you take a look at some of the biggest systems, there is NOTHING to recommend them. New York City is a real good example. When 80% of your graduates can barely read, or do basic math, you’ve got a MAJOR problem. Los Angeles isn’t doing too well either.
Putting small children into classrooms is not a good idea! They don’t have the attention span of squirrel, yet Obama wants to get a hold of them, and use failed programs to indoctrinate your children. Using a 50 year old study that has never been replicated is not in the best interest of any child. What is in the best interest of your child is really up to you. In my personal opinion, children who stay home with their mothers do a lot better in life IF that parent takes the time to teach basic skills. HOME SCHOOLING would be best, but I realize that not all parents can manage keeping their kids home for the duration, and teaching them what the public schools won’t. Second choice….private schools! It’s always rather disconcerting to know that what I learned in the 4th grade, most high school graduates have never learned.
Why We Don’t Need Universal Preschool
The Foundry
In his State of the Union address, President Obama said he wanted to “make high-quality preschool available to every child in America” and “make sure none of our children start the race of life already behind.”
So Heritage experts took a look at the President’s plan to see if it would actually help America’s needy children get ahead in the “race of life.”
Another government-controlled, top-down, one-size-fits-all program—what could go wrong?
Look at the government’s record. As Heritage’s Lindsey Burke, the Will Skillman Fellow in Education, and research associate Rachel Sheffield point out in their new paper, “Washington already has a poor track record for K–12 education, with federal spending nearly tripling over the past three decades while academic achievement and attainment languishes.”
Teaching, The Sadist Way
Ouch! Teacher accused of making sixth-graders write on sandpaper until their fingers bled
A teacher at a public middle school in Florida has rubbed parents and school officials the wrong way with her highly unorthodox teaching methods.
The teacher, Anna Garrett, is on paid leave and under investigation because she allegedly used sandpaper to punish students who misspelled words during a spelling lesson, reports St. Petersburg CBS affiliate WTSP.
The alleged incident occurred on Jan. 23 in class in a sixth-grade class at Burns Middle School in Brandon, Fla., a rapidly growing Tampa area suburb.
Students and parents complained that Garrett forced the students to write previously misspelled words onto sandpaper repeatedly – until the coarse surface caused their fingers to bleed.
“We had to trace letters like ‘I’ and ‘J’,” 11-year-old Josh Sommer told CBS Tampa Bay. “By the end of the time, my whole table was bleeding.”
I’m all for kids learning how to spell correctly. I wouldn’t mind seeing proper punctuation either, but that’s another story. Apparently, penmanship is a thing of the past as well. 
Way back in the Stone Age, when I was in school, we learned how to spell words by writing them over and over, looking them up on the dictionary, learning the proper use of said word, etc. There was no sandpaper involved. Just a lot of repetition, which actually WORKS!
We have teachers who post pictures of themselves, drugged and naked. We have teachers having sex with their students. We have teachers who are mentally and emotionally abusive to students. Now, we can add sadists to that list? Is this the ‘education’ that parents pay their taxes to promote? No, I didn’t think so! But I can bet ya dollars to donuts, every one of ‘em are a member of their teachers union. Just sayin’.
A Choice I Can Get Behind!
It’s School Choice Week
The Foundry
The third annual National School Choice Week is officially underway. Once again, school choice advocates—including parents, teachers, schoolchildren and administrators, and many others—will come together to promote educational choice, with more than 3,600 events taking place nationwide.
School choice is something to celebrate, because it gives families the power to choose the best schools for their children—helping children to improve educational outcomes and increasing overall parental satisfaction.
School Choice Students Graduate at Higher Rates
For example, students who participate in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP)—a private school voucher program for low-income K-12 students—graduate at significantly higher rates than their peers, according to the results of a “gold standard” (randomized, control group) study. More than 90 percent of DCOSP students graduate high school, compare to just 70 percent of their peers.
Similarly, research reveals that students who participate in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP)—the nation’s longest running school choice program—for all four of their high school years had a 94 percent graduation rate, compared to a 75 percent graduation rate for their peers who attended four years of public high school.
School Choice Means Academic Gains
Research also shows that students who participate in school choice programs do better in school. In a review of all the “gold standard” evaluations of school choice programs in the United States, researchers found that nine of the 10 studies revealed positive, albeit generally modest, academic improvement for school choice students.
Parents Are More Satisfied with their Child’s Academic Experience
Parents of school choice students also report high levels of satisfaction with their children’s schools. In Florida, 93 percent of parents whose children participate in the McKay Scholarship Program—a voucher program for special-needs students—report being satisfied with their child’s school, compared to just 33 percent of parents whose special-needs children were enrolled in public schools. DCOSP parents are also more likely to report satisfaction with their children’s schools and are more likely to describe their schools as safe. And Milwaukee school choice parents also report high satisfaction rates with the schools their children attend.
Education comes in many forms—from private school choice to online learning, to charter schools and public schools and home schooling. Parents should be empowered to give their children the education that best meets their child’s unique learning needs. School choice makes this possible by giving families from every background the ability to set the course for the brightest educational future for their children.
This week, find out how you can get involved in National School Choice Week.
Rachel Sheffield is a research associate in the DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation.
Stop Wasting OUR Money!
When it comes to education, government is the biggest failure at all. Throwing money in one direction, only to see it caught on the wind and blown to parts unknown. That’s the government works. Pathetic! If people in government actually gave a damn ‘about the children’, they would get out of the education business! They’ve produced what could have turned out to be normal, well brought up kids, with thinking abilities, into mind numbed robots, parroting what the storm troopers in charge want them to say! (My youngest granddaughter inform me that her teacher said that Abraham Lincoln was a really bad man.)
The government has started numerous ‘programs’, spend billions of our tax dollars, with the mind set that it will “help” those less fortunate. In the long run, we can see evidence that such programs have done much more harm, than good. Isn’t it time to rethink the strategy? Head Start is a failure. It makes no sense to throw more money at a program that is not giving the desired results. That’s just plain ol’ common sense. Sadly, when it comes to common sense, those who make up the body of the federal government are sorely lacking!
When the Government Fails Completely
The Foundry
What happens when a government program simply does not do what it is supposed to do?
Head Start, the federal preschool program, says it “promotes the school readiness of children ages birth to 5 from low-income families by enhancing their cognitive, social and emotional development.” But the government’s own evaluations have shown that it just does not do this.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released its latest findings of a long study that followed Head Start kids all the way to third grade.
The findings: “by third grade, the $8 billion Head Start program had little to no impact on cognitive, social-emotional, health, or parenting practices of participants. On a few measures, access to Head Start had harmful effects on children.”
It Really Would Be “For The Children”!
Tennessee Considers Training And Arming Schoolteachers To Protect Against Shootings
Tennessee has emerged this week as a center of the “the answer is more guns in schools” sentiment following the Newtown, Conn. elementary school shooting.
A member of the Republican-controlled legislature plans during its upcoming session to introduce a bill that would allow the state to pay for secretly armed teachers in classrooms so, the sponsor told TPM, potential shooters don’t know who has a gun and who doesn’t.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam (R) has said the idea will be part of his discussions about how to prevent a shooting like the one in Newtown from happening in the Volunteer State.
As has been seen following other mass shootings, there’s a strong segment of the gun rights lobby that says the answer to events like the one in Newtown is more guns in more places. But they’ve said the recent massacre shows how important it is to put guns into elementary schools, where even gun-friendly states like Tennessee don’t currently allow them.
State Sen. Frank Niceley (R) told TPM on Tuesday he believes it’s time for that to change. He plans to introduce legislation in the next session, which begins Jan. 8, that will require all schools to have an armed staff member of some kind. The current language of the bill — which is in its early form — would allow for either a so-called “resource officer” (essentially an armed police officer, the kind which most Tennessee high schools have already) or an armed member of the faculty or staff in every school in the state. The choice would allow schools that can’t afford a resource officer to fulfill the requirement without having to pay for anything beyond the cost of the training and, presumably, the weapon. But Niceley said schools should use the wiggle room to train and keep on hand armed staff not in uniform.
That’s the best way to protect students, he said.
Off duty cops? Yeah…that would work. We also have many returning vets who need jobs, and they are already trained. Send them through some kind of ‘how to’ class, and voila! You have protected children. There are even folks who would be happy to even work for minimum wage, or a bit more….just so they can regain their dignity. We spent millions upon millions to support teachers, how ’bout we spend some of that to actually protect our children AND the teachers? Logic dictates a rational solution!
H/T: Tena
PAY ATTENTION!
Taking Control
As parents and grandparents, and in some cases, great grandparents, we’ve watched as the education we once received from public schools go downhill. Instead of being able to read, write, comprehend, and actually THINK, our kids are learning it’s all George Bush’s fault, the polar bears are dying (they aren’t… my granddaughter was surprised to learn the truth of their increase in numbers), and America was founded by greedy old white men, and a large number of them can’t even read at their age level, or write legibly!. Does anyone else see a MAJOR problem here?
Why is it that only seven states give the parents of the children the power to control their kids education? Because the government and the teachers unions won’t get out of the way, perhaps? They think they know what is best for the future leaders of our country? If what I’ve seen is any indication of our future generations, we are sunk!
I truly hope that more parents will speak up and take control back from the indoctrinators. Our children deserve the best, and they are being failed by the very system that should be educating them for the future, whatever paths they may take.
To be honest, I’m actually pleasantly surprised that the Hollyweirds would even take on such a topic, instead of shoving more sex, drugs, and violence down our throats.
Hollywood Steps Up in “Won’t Back Down”
The Foundry
A new movie opens in theaters today that couldn’t be more timely. The school year is hitting its stride, and the teachers union in Chicago just captured the national spotlight by strong-arming that city to meet its demands—at the expense of students and taxpayers.
The time is ripe for a story like Won’t Back Down, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis as mothers who can’t stand to watch their school fail any longer.
Gyllenhaal’s character is a single mom advocating for better educational opportunities for her child. Davis plays a teacher in the school who wants to improve it. This is a crucial partnership: parents and teachers working together to create a better future for students. While teachers unions have already denounced the movie, Heritage education expert Lindsey Burke has urged that criticizing unions and criticizing teachers are not one and the same.
Criticizing education unions for standing in the way of reform should not be conflated with criticizing teachers… The unions have blocked reforms such as performance pay and charter schools…have opposed alternative teacher certification that would help mid-career professionals enter the classroom, and have consistently fought the implementation of school choice options for children.
