You’ve been invited back! Last January when we were first heard on nationwide talk radio, the phone calls from teachers, parents, and students so compellingly told the story about the REAL issues in education that the call-in show was extended an hour extra, and we were told to expect an invite for another show. Well, we all get another chance this Friday. Here is our chance to let legislators and parents once again hear that the real issues go far beyond the false mantra of “…bad funding, bad unions, bad children, and bad teachers.”
July 3rd: Your voice is critical to speak out about the failure of our schools. Please join us!
Education of today’s children is a disaster – with SAT and ACT reporting only one-quarter of those taking their tests are ready for college, with 48% of new teachers quitting the profession within their first five years, and with a rapidly increasing portion of our best teachers leaving or taking early retirement. According to the simplistic view of career DoE bureaucrats back in their cubicles far away from the realities of the classroom, the reason is lack of funding and the need for ever more inept mandates. The commentators blame it on a handful of “bad” teachers each year, and fail to see the 7,200,000 other good teachers trying to teach despite the system. Parents think the issue is children who don’t want to work and learn, not realizing how wrong that assessment of our children really is.
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Yet the one voice rarely heard is the voice of classroom teachers – the one stakeholder with the understanding and insights to help us fix the real problems.
This Friday night – July 3rd, 9:00pm EST, will be a rare exception when teacher voices from around the nation can be heard. WBZ radio in Boston, with the nation’s 7th largest radio audience, has taken a courageous stand to broadcast another segment covering the issues raised in Lifting the Curtain: The disgrace we call urban high school education (2nd edition). Chris Citorik, host Friday of the nationally acclaimed Dan Rea show is dedicating the show to a call-in format so that teachers can interact about the real education issues. In addition to their on-air million-plus audience in 26 states, the show will be live-streamed on the WBZ website.
We need more than just the handful of us who are outspoken whistleblowers and advocates for how to change the real problems that have destroyed the education of our children. Blogs like this one, or my blog on the Huffington Post, are a drop in the bucket compared to what the clear voices of classroom teachers and parents can achieve.
The show is certain to take on the most serious problems that career DoE bureaucrats and legislators carefully hide from parents:
- Teachers must try to teach a full lesson – even though non-teaching duties, micromanaging in-class mandates, and days out of the classroom combine to be the equivalent of removing an average of 35 minutes from every standard urban high school class
- Inept mandates by career DoE bureaucrats that micromanage and undermine education.
- Teachers forced by school administrators to promote children who have failed
- Teachers forced by school administrators to dumb down education to make sure everyone passes and the school is not sanctioned
- The culture of cronyism, and intimidation by their own school administrators, that pervades almost every school
- The impact of standardized testing on dumbed-down education and cancellation of arts and electives
- The way inclusion classes fail everyone in the class – especially the inclusion children
- A numerical minority of parents who have hijacked special education to get their child a free ride through high school with unlimited retests and the dreadful accommodation of “Gets an ‘A’ for doing half the work expected of the class.”
Here are the details. Please join us! Teachers, call in and be heard for a change!
Time: 9:00 EST
Radio: WBZ-AM radio 1030, Boston MA
Live stream: http://boston.cbslocal.com/
KIRKUS and CLARION both praise the acclaimed book “…from the unique perspective of a classroom teacher” about our failing education system. The 2nd edition of Lifting the Curtain: The disgrace we call urban high school education includes dozens of teacher submissions from across the USA and nine new chapters.
Lifting the Curtain 
I teach grades 1-5 self contained studenrs with moderate disabilities. I and my co worker who teaches students with severe disabilities must administer a computer generated test in math, reading, and writing. Most of my students do not read and the ones who do read at a kindergarten level. Most are still learning to write their full name and address. The students in the severe class are in wheelchairs, non-verbal, and most are unable to respond by pointing or with eye gaze. We must test all students in grades 1-8 and 15 yr. olds in our state. The test is all in gray and white with very few pictures and the third grade math has muliplication, fractions, and measurement. The writing portion requires them to actually write a story from a writing prompt! This is beyond even my highest students. We are expected to teach grade level material with no regard to the life skills these students will need to survive when they reach adulthood.
I feel testing these students should be about knowing their address, how to behave in emergencies and get help, as well as following simple recipes, clean, and begin to learn job skills, with many opportunities to learn as much functional readiing and math skills with basic writing like address, pnone number, parents’ names, etc. to help them fill out job applications, or be understood because much of the students have poor language sills.
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What an awesome and concise comment, Ms. Bach. You are spot on. I hope you can call in tonight and let people hear what it is really like inside our classrooms. I wonder if listeners have any idea about how much of the planned curriculum and lesson plan could not be covered as you have to stop the lesson and try your best to provide important accommodations to a half dozen learning styles and specific learning disabilities.
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