of teachers:
Lately I've been trying to figure out which has been the lowest performing US bank. Can't tell if it was Goldman Sachs. Must not have been because they're giving their chief, Lloyd Blankfein, a $9 million bonus this year. Maybe it was J.P. Morgan Chase because they needed a multi-billion dollar taxpayer bailout. But it couldn't be them because their headmaster, Jamie Dimon, is due a $17.9 million bonus.
Hell, whichever banks it was that nearly plunged this country into an economic Stone Age and martial law, they seem to have gotten a pass. Their excuse, "to big to fail", seems to have actually been bought. There has been no "reconstitution" or "turnaround" for anybody at Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, BOA, Wells Fargo, and their gambling buddies at AIG. What a strange form of accountability!
It's crazy. There are about a hundred teachers at this poverty-ridden community school in Rhode Island and if you added their salaries together and multiplied by a hundred you would not be even close to Blankfein's bonus. And even after the school's parents and the teacher's families and loved ones turned out in huge numbers to plead for justice. And even after it has been established beyond all doubt that a perfect correlation exists between a child's economic station and academic achievement as it is measured by standardized tests, these teachers are going to be destroyed.
Destroyed is a strong word but suggest another one for arbitrarily and unfairly taking a working mother or father's livelihood, men and women without stock options and investment portfolios to tide them over until another job comes along. The school's students are living in the most desperate circumstances Rhode Island suffers. But no excuses, dammit! Accountability will be served, as long as you don't summer in a Swiss chalet.
MoreI almost think it is too late to stop the destruction of public education in the United States.