Saturday, April 10, 2010

Miami teachers are on the move against Senate Bill 6/HB7189

Teachers of Miami-Dade County Call:
Take a personal or sick day, Monday April 12th to oppose Senate Bill 6/ HB 7189
Meet at: Tropical Park, 7900 SW 40th Street, Miami, Florida
We need to show our power and force Governor Crist to veto the bill!
We need to meet and organize ourselves autonomously as teachers from the bottom up!
Why we should oppose Senate Bill 6/ HB 7189:

- It’s a Tallahassee takeover of education at the expense of local collective bargaining
- It will give administrators arbitrary firing power
- It will destroy education by forcing it to focus on test taking tips, strategies and memorization techniques; rather than critical thinking, learning and understanding which can’t be measured in standardized tests
- It will increase inequalities by incentivizing teachers to abandon students with less parental support, financial tutoring means and family educational background in favor of schools with students with these background supports
- It’s an unfunded mandate that will take more money from public schools and put it in the hands of standardized testing companies
- It will take more time away from our students education in requiring class time for the administration of these new standardized tests in every subject
- It eliminates salary funding from areas with proven indicators of quality teaching: years of experience and higher education degrees
- It eliminates incentives for involvement in the National Board Certification program
- It makes teachers financial planning unstable by cutting their salaries in half and then basing the other half of their pay on varying student test scores on one high stakes standardized test at the end of the year
- It opens the door for greater nepotism and unstable and biased working environments by granting administrators excessive and arbitrary firing power

Please forward this information as widely as possible to all teachers, parents, community members and everyone you know to spread the word and support the struggle of the teachers against this attack on teachers and public education!

2 comments:

MCPS Teacher said...

I'll be out sick on Monday. But why would I go to Tropical Park? Is that so some glory hog can identify themself as "the leader" of this spontaneous uprising.

Stay away from school and stay away from rallies.

Miami-Dade Teacher

Anonymous said...

Solidarity is a must if we are to do this together, thats why we are gathering at Tropical park. Everyone is a leader in this task; there are no glory hogs. We should also focus on the state wide removal of those politicians who supported this bill.