My AFT blogging friend NYC Educator reminds us once again what happens when you sit at the table only to discover that you’re the one being served…up.
Engagement, though, entails conversation, give and take. Inviting a person to be the featured speaker at your national convention, with no Q and A, is something else altogether. That, frankly, appears more an endorsement. The fact that you applaud this person wildly and ridicule anyone who’d question your choice serves to emphasize this position. But nonetheless, you maintain it’s engagement. So now you’ve engaged the guy who’s placed his billions of dollars behind, among other things, linking student test scores to teacher employment. Perhaps you’ve told him that there is no research whatsoever to support this move. Or perhaps not, since this “engagement” is not made public. But since you’re so modern-minded, and so engaging, you’d think there’d be some positive result. Instead, hundreds of DC teachers are summarily fired.
Fred Klonsky 