A Reality Check for Time Magazine- And A Wake Up Call for America's Teachers

Nearly two years ago, a group of 1,500 principals, including many of the most highly respected school  administrators in the the state, signed and circulated a petition to the Governor of New York protesting policies which were undermining public education and making their jobs more difficult. If you would believe Time Magazine, you would think they were protesting teachers tenure. But their petition NEVER MENTIONED tenure. It protested high stakes testing and teacher evaluations based on student test scores.

That petition never made the national news, much less the cover of Time magazine. But now Time chooses to give huge attention to a campaign by a Silicon Valley entrepreneur to eliminate teacher tenure in the nation's public schools.

What is going on here? Why is a campaign against High Stakes Testing by respected educators not worthy of coverage while a campaign by a billionaire against tenure from someone who has no experience teaching or administering a public school becomes the lead story of the week?
Time's campaign epitomizes everything wrong with the crusade for "School Reform" that has become a national obsession since the passage of No Child Left Behind.

It is financed and driven by business leaders, not educators. It has no support from teachers and school administrators and systematically ignores their voices. It chooses to totally disregard the best education research when it fails to support the application of a business model to classroom teaching and educational administration.

Demonizing teachers, and anointing CEO's and billionaires as saviors of public education, the way Time Magazine does, is not only a sure path to weakening public education, it creates momentum for a campaign to privatize public education a policy from which those attacking public education, especially those in the tech industry, are likely to profit.

The only way to fight back against this is to punish those leading the charge. It is time for a principal and teacher boycott of Time Magazine, and Time for Kids.

The sleeping giant has woken up. And she will NOT go to sleep until the national assault on teachers has come to an end