Diane Ravitch is encouraging everyone with an interest in education to write a letter [View all]

to President Obama and send it to him on October 17th. Here is my letter:


Dear President Obama,

I am writing to you today as one voice in a chorus of millions of educators, students, parents, and concerned citizens. I ask that you take a moment to hear our stories.

Mr. President, I worked as a special education teacher at a small elementary school just two blocks from your Chicago home. Perhaps you and your family have walked by it, Reavis Elementary at 50th and Drexel? Did you ever wonder what happened inside that small, crumbling, yellow-brick schoolhouse which sits just outside your affluent Hyde Park neighborhood?

And Mr. Obama, do you remember the friend you wrote about in your book, Dreams From My Father? You called her "Mary". Did you know that she dedicated more than twenty years of her life to the children of Reavis? I had the privilege of working with her during my first year of teaching. She was the most inspirational, kind-hearted, good, hard-working teacher I had ever seen. She had a way of making the children light up with joy. She worked endlessly, often losing sleep. You know her history, you wrote about it, she has not had an easy life.

I'm sorry to report her life has been made worse thanks to you, Mr. President. The pressure of test after test was all-consuming. Our administration was cruel, and our principal looked for reasons to belittle us, berate us, and to fire us. Instead of letting us, as professionals, be free to create relevant, engaging curriculum we were told we must write lessons a certain way, we must configure our board a specific way, we must put up the children's test data on the walls of the classrooms, and above all else, we must obey unquestioningly. We watched as the principal targeted the older teachers, or anyone who disagreed with him...

Poor "Mary". She knew as a veteran teacher that no school would ever hire someone her age. So she was stuck in that abusive school. She reminisced how things had always been hard teaching in an inner-city school, but they had been better years ago. The past few years had become unbearable, she told me. The year after I worked there, she was finally forced into early retirement. She will have to live on a reduced pension for the rest of her life. According to your administration, her years of dedication, loyalty, and practiced expertise mean nothing... So Mr. President, your friend "Mary" is now just another selfless soul thrown away in this barrage of teacher-bashing, deprofessionalization, and budget-cutting. This is the world of Race to the Top. Of cold competition, deceptive data, test scores, merit pay, unfair teacher evaluations, and a constant fear of school closures or massive layoffs...End Race to the Top now. End No Child Left Behind. Bring in actual educators to run the Department of Education.

Most of all, trust your teachers. Trust the people like "Mary."

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