Monica Ratliff’s election to L.A. school board is ‘huge upset’
The fifth-grade teacher’s low-budget effort defeats Antonio Sanchez, who had $2.2 million spent on his behalf and was endorsed by the mayor’s reform coalition.

Her election night party? She jammed some 10 people into her one-bedroom apartment and then shooed them out at 11 p.m. — before the results were in — because she had to get up early to teach on Wednesday.

Her opponent, Antonio Sanchez, meanwhile, had more than $2.2 million spent on his behalf and an aggressive ground campaign of union volunteers and paid canvassers. He was endorsed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s Coalition for School Reform, which received major donations from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and L.A. philanthropist Eli Broad, among others.

Political observers shook their heads Wednesday as they tried to make sense of it all.

Ratliff, 43, had the lead from the get-go Tuesday, ending up with about 52% of the votes, or 20,243 to Sanchez’s 18,779.

“This is a huge upset,” said Charles Kerchner, a professor at Claremont Graduate University who studies labor and education politics. “Overcoming financial odds of this size … suggests a big difference in the allure of the candidates and the ability to make big money unattractive.”

When a vast tornado ripped into an Oklahoma elementary school, some teachers threw themselves on top of their students to shield them. They put their students’ lives before their own.

Some quick-thinking teachers huddled children into a bathroom. Though the roof blew off the school, the kids survived.

Some teachers were the first rescuers to pull surviving kids from the rubble, to comfort them, to keep them safe.

We’re sure we’ll hear more stirring stories about Oklahoma teachers who kept calm and protected their students during Monday’s tragedy. Guiding and protecting children is what teachers do……
That can’t be achieved if Chicago’s teachers fight every effort at reform, if they are in a perpetual war against those who lead Chicago’s public schools.

Teachers, be heroes.

I’m sure that Campbell Browen et. al will be issuing denunciations of this demonization.

well here we are, no one else
we walked to school all by ourselves
there’s dirt on our uniforms
from chasing all the ants and worms
we clean up and now it’s time to learn

numbers, letters, learn to spell
nouns, and books, and show and tell
at playtime we will throw the ball
back to class, through the hall
teacher marks our height against the wall

and we don’t notice any time pass
we don’t notice anything
we sit side by side in every class
teacher thinks that i sound funny
but she likes the way you sing

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-03-06/news/ct-met-cps-school-closing-class-size-20130306_1_class-size-state-records-high-schools

But who can unlearn all the facts that I’ve learned
As I sat in their chairs and my synapses burned
And the torture of chalk dust collects on my tongue
Thoughts follow my vision and dance in the sun
All my vasoconstrictors they come slowly undone
Can’t this wait till im Old?
Can’t I live while I’m young?

There will be no reform or educational change of any kind without the active involvement and approval of the people willing and able to teach the children.

The delivery and assessment of education in the United States has historically been rendered a system beholden to local interests. There exists 200 years of inertia towards this effort. At the same time, Washington with the blessing of influential political leaders, insists upon a collective measurement of educational attainment. We cannot have it both ways.

Any and all attempts to reform American education will fail unless the actors recognize and move beyond this essential reality of educational delivery and assessment in our nation.