Random Thoughts on "Freedom to Teach"

by Phyllis Bush

Gov. Pence’s "Freedom to Teach" bill aims to pay effective and highly effective teachers more in exchange for forfeiting their due process rights. This would be done by increasing class sizes to allow school districts to have fewer teachers on their payroll. It is assumed outside management companies would be hired to administer the program.

The apparent plan of Pence and his brain trust is to bring in more TFAs and rookies so there will be a younger, less experienced, LESS EXPENSIVE, and more trainable work force who ostensibly won't question because that will be the only system that they know. They obviously must have forgotten that this cheaper, faster, better model didn't seem to work out so well for NASA.

Their mantra is whatever is good for business is good for the rest of us. What that really means is whatever is good for business is good for BUSINESS. The greed and lack of foresight are astounding and frightening. This chaos theory of creative destruction simply amounts to disrespect and lack of compassion for the helping professions. Perhaps the reason for this is because people who have chosen to teach or to work with those who are in need are too busy doing their jobs to fight back in an accountability competition which they did not choose and which has little to do with the professions that they (used to) love.

In the words of Tyler Durden,

The game is rigged, and “we the people” keep getting dealt the same losing hand. Even so, we stay in the game, against all odds, trusting that our luck will change.

One might ask if I have any solutions, and the answer is that clearly I do not. Those of us in NEIFPE have done everything that "good citizens" are supposed to do. We have written emails, letters, and op-eds. We have met and talked with legislators and presented them with research. We have testified at State Board hearings, and to what end? The reform agenda is set in stone, and while the people in power may pretend to listen and to pacify us with their talking points, nothing changes.

Can we continue to trust that our luck will change? From my vantage point, the only solution will be when the 1.3 million voters who voted for change in 2012 will re-channel that positive energy and that passion and get out of their comfort zones and begin to take our government back.

###