Today proud CTA members joined thousands of educators, parents and community members across the nation to support students, teachers and public education in the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) National Day of Action. Successful demonstrations were held at several OCPS Schools, including outstanding ones at Lovell and Metrowest Elementary Schools. I attended the Day of Action at Anne Beers Elementary School in Washington, DC where AFT President Randi Weingarten and Rep. Keith Ellison spoke to a crowd of several hundred. Congratulations to of the teachers, and others who joined together to get our message out.
Our message is that public schools are the cornerstone of American society and must not only be preserved, but strengthened. Orange CTA stands with the nonpartisan movement to fully fund public schools that provide a quality education to every child. Education is a human right.
Educators must be provided with the tools and resources they need to ensure that all students reach their highest potential. Educators must have a seat at the table when education policies are decided. For public education to succeed we must ensure that all children are given equal opportunities regardless of zip code. Economic disparities must be dealt with because health, hunger and poverty do affect academic outcomes. Community school models that provide health care and other services should be established to meet the needs of students and their families.
Teachers must be given the autonomy to ensure academic success, provide pathways from school to work, and utilize strategies that prepare students to be effective citizens not just in the future, but today. Service learning, project-based learning and career and technical education programs develop academic and life skills, make learning fun and teach lessons that can be applied outside of the four walls of the classroom. These have been pushed out of OCPS schools as teachers are forced to teach to the test. We must allow teachers to teach what matters. Teachers should not be forced to teach the same lesson on the same day in the same way to different classes of students regardless of their individual needs or levels of understanding just to be able to produce data for administrators and vendors. We must never reduce students or teachers to mere test scores or data points.
We must empower teachers to be skilled leaders so we can strengthen our schools and profession. For too long we have allowed teachers to be the scapegoats for everything that is wrong with the public schools and everything that is perceived to be wrong with them. We need to stop blaming teachers and recognize that poverty, lack of opportunity, and systemic racism are the real blocks to student achievement. For students to have the best teachers in every classroom we must secure higher salaries and better benefits, initiate a fair evaluation system, encourage teacher autonomy, end the testing madness, and improve working conditions. We must find common ground to do what is best for OCPS teachers, knowing that teachers' working conditions determine our students' learning conditions. Students cannot be first, if teachers are last.
I ask you to stand up and to speak out to defend our profession and public schools at every opportunity you can –at faculty and PTA meetings, at the school board, in letters to the editor, and with neighbors and friends, today and every day.
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