Re: “,” Aug. 2 Perspective essay.
As a retired teacher of 26 years in Colorado, I take great exception to this essay.
Michael Bennet was not ever a teacher — except for maybe visiting for the photo you published from October 2013.
He is a lawyer.
As superintendent of Denver Public Schools, he did not impress me. Three times, the voters of Colorado opposed vouchers, so his birthing of charter and magnet schools bypassed that vote and destroyed public education.
As for merit pay, 90 percent of teachers now get it. Very effective.
Let’s look at DPS’s CSAP scores from 2008 and 2009. I looked at reading scores grades 3 through 10. In 2006, 39.9 percent to 50.6 percent of these grades were at or above proficiency. In 2008, the reading scores ranged from 41.8 percent to 50.7 percent. As a teacher, what I see is 50 to 60 percent of kids failing to read and being passed from year to year, not the 1.8 percent improvement.
On Aug. 15, 2014, The Denver Post reported that “since 2008, scores from the TCAP and its predecessor the CSAP have gone up and down slightly, adding up to not much change in a state at the forefront of testing and considered a leader in educational reform.”
So we’ve had nine years of kids failing to read, an entire generation left behind.
I tire of politicians touted as heroes when they aren’t fit to walk into a classroom and teach. I have a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and English and a master’s degree in Education Technology, but I don’t tell senators how to do their jobs. Why should any of us listen to these lawyers as if they had PhD’s in education?
School superintendents need to cease coming from the ranks of law and business, and be educational leaders who have taught, and know what actually happens in a classroom. And what happens when you put charter and magnet schools in and leave the minorities out.
I’ve seen what No Child Left Behind has done. It’s not only left no child untested, it’s also returned our schools to the economically segregated 1950s, not just in Colorado but nationwide. It’s also gutted art, music, libraries, physical education, and counseling along the way.
Janis Houston lives in Thornton.
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