A letter to the Chicago Tribune...printed but without the names of Paul Vallas, Ron Huberman, and Arne Duncan!

Dear Editor:
After reading the July 5 article about Marshall High School's "Turnaround," two things prompted me to write. First, I appreciated the balanced reporting by Azam Amed. This reporter allows readers to make their own judgement about the most recent policy of the Chicago School Board.
Secondly, I was struck by senior student Katrina Graham's comment, "People don't know this school like they think they do." That's when it became clear to me that school administrators like Chicago's Ron Huberman, New Orlean's Paul Vallas and Obama's Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who have had virtually no actual classroom teaching experience, can not possibly understand a fundamental truth about a public school. It is that school is a community, in the truest sense of the word, with comraderie, support, and a sense of shared purpose with other individuals.
I'm not just talking about the teaching staff. Support staff, para-profesionals and maintenance workers, parents and administrators, also make up this community of people committed to making school a safe, clean and engaging place for learning and growing. But creating community takes time. When the powers that be completely replace one of these vital groups with a new one (like the custodians in my school who were replaced by minimum wage workers for a private company) there is a sense of loss in that building.
Some people may say my opinion smacks of sentimentality, but I would argue that most of us believe in the adage, "It takes a village to raise a child." Part of that village is the family of workers and educators in a public school. The "turnaround" policy is devastating this family.

A letter to Bill Gates...but how do you find out his address?

Dear Mr. Gates,
If you really have time to read this, please give consideration to a couple of my thoughts on education.
1) As a teacher since 1968, I believe that the American Education system is NOT "broken." I agree with you that some schools have problems especially in our urban centers and rural areas. I taught in a high school district in an affluent suburb of Chicago where teachers now make in excess of $!00,000. Since jobs in this district were competitive, principals had a quality pool from which to pick. My best years there were the early 90's when class size was less than 25. In other words, teacher compensation and class size do make a difference.
2) Most teachers are in the profession because a) they love their subject and b) they like kids and c) they like the challenge of engaging students to acquire knowledge. They aren't in it to get rich or because the job is easy. In other words, most teachers are good teachers.
3) Our societal problems such as lack of living-wage jobs, drugs, gangs and violence in the streets are the main cause of our educational problems. It's not incompetent teachers. Please reconsider the reasons for this emphasis on inferior teachers. In other words, I would love to see you put your billions of dollars to create jobs, parental centers and early education centers in our cities' poorest neighborhoods.
4) And finally, please leave education in the realm of public institutions. Do not relegate it to profit-making ventures such as Phoenix University.
Thank you for your time and effort in reading this.

A concerned educator