CA Gov Brown trusts the teachers in the classrooms, calls for local control. Blasts [View all]

[madfloridian]

Last edited Fri Jan 25, 2013, 05:30 PM - Edit history (2)

YvonneCA posted the video earlier. She is rightly proud of her governor.

MY Governor (Jerry Brown)CA Education...

I found a little more about the speech, some of it in transcript form. It is very impressive. Since he is blasting the policy of his own party, his own president....he is courageous. Good for him.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/24/californias-gov-brown-blasts-state-federal-education-policy/

California’s Gov. Brown blasts state, federal education policy

California Gov. Jerry Brown smacked state and federal education policy in his State of the State Address Thursday, calling for more local control of school issues and saying, “I would prefer to trust our teachers who are in the classroom each day, doing the real work – lighting fires in young minds.”“Equal treatment for children in unequal situations is not justice,” he said.

Here is more of the transcript:

The laws that are in fashion demand tightly constrained curricula and reams of accountability data. All the better if it requires quiz-bits of information, regurgitated at regular intervals and stored in vast computers. Performance metrics, of course, are invoked like talismans. Distant authorities crack the whip, demanding quantitative measures and a stark, single number to encapsulate the precise achievement level of every child.

We seem to think that education is a thing—like a vaccine—that can be designed from afar and simply injected into our children. But as the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats said, “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.”blockquote]

He praises the teachers for taking a stand. More and more of them are doing that now.

And early in his speech, he said:

I salute the teachers and the students, the parents and the college presidents, the whole school community. As the great jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, once said when describing what stirs people to action: “Feeling begets feeling and great feeling begets great feeling.” You were alarmed, you stirred yourselves to action and victory was the outcome.

Teachers in Seattle are risking their jobs to stand against high-stakes testing which does NOT include what students are taught in classes.

Teachers take stand against high-stakes test. Could get suspensions.

The teachers in Chicago stood up for the rights of teachers to teach and students to learn without outside interference by the Billionaire Boys Club.

Since I am retired I can write about the injustices being done to public schools by both parties now, and I don't have to fear retribution.

Sure, my posts drop, but I can either let that discourage me or just keep on doing what I can. I knew when I came back to DU I would not be allowed near front page because of my insistence on posting about education wrongs. So I will just do what I can.

Kudos to Governor Brown.