If It Didn't Suck....

The only positive thing I can say about their series was that they included some comments by teachers in their editorial. I would challenged any of their staff, any of the writers of the article, any of the people in the wave of educational reform to come out of their ivory towers and come down into the trenches to deal with all the issues that we, as educators deal with on a daily basis. Not for a day, a week, but try it for a few months. Let us, the ones you labeled incompetent, or unfit, to rate you. See how you would fare in that situation. Administrators, at most, teach one class. One class is a breeze. Try five classes, three different preps and several rooms. And then have an observation letter with negative comments including that your chart paper is too small.
Now if I didn't already feel inadequate....

It is not impossible to fire a teacher. That accusation is ludicrous. Lifetime tenure does NOT mean a lifetime job. It means the right to due process. You want to criticize, you want to point a finger, clean up your own backyard.

Parents...RAISE YOUR KIDS. We are not babysitters, we are educators.
Administration...REMEMBER THE CLASSROOM, if you ever even taught in the first place.
Reporters...GET A SUB LICENSE and teach a few classes and see if maybe, god forbid you empathize with us, you can be unbiased in your next article.

The article also criticized the fact that our contract is 200 pages. First of all the contract is about half the size of a regular book and includes charts and other things including a table of contents and an appendix. Also, it is written in English. So read it. And how about this lets have Admin worry less about firing teachers and learn how to work with them to help those who truly need the help the most. The children.