(This letter was originally sent to one member of the General Assembly. As the 2020 session begins, we asked for permission to publish this as an open letter to all legislators. The author is the 2020 Kentucky High School Teacher of the Year.)
Dear Representative,
Thank you again for reaching out to meet up and talk about public education and politics.
You’re right, there is too much of a divide between Republicans and Democrats, but local leaders (Citizens and Representatives) on both sides of the aisle have an opportunity to bridge that gulf. Thank you for expressing a desire to transform our toxic political divide and focus on areas where we have common ground.
I am one of 40,000+ public educators in Kentucky who know that our schools have become responsible for meeting all of the Maslow and academic needs of our kids. Throughout my career, I have experienced the rewards of helping kids achieve their highest potential as they use our schools as vehicles of personal and social transformation. You know that schools are homes for many of our kids, and that by investing in public education, we are investing in people, knowledge, and passion for a better way of life.
This is why it has been so frustrating for me and so many of my colleagues, our students, and our communities that the current Republican establishment has taken a cut-first approach to public education and teachers’ pensions to balance the budget. This is why it is so frustrating when individuals like Betsy Devos and Wayne Lewis come to power at federal and state levels as they champion voucher programs and charter schools that will steal precious and dwindling resources from our public schools. In my mind, public money needs to be invested in public schools, and never in private or for-profit charter schools. Investing in those schools is just another form of segregation from the haves and have-nots, another kind of red-lining, another way of stacking the deck in favor of those with privilege and against those who have typically been targets of a system designed against them. I am left asking, Why? Why would our representatives do this? Why do they not look for the funding we need to fulfill the mission ahead of us?
With teacher strikes across the nation, we know we are not alone in our struggle to fund public education like it needs to be. And many, like me, are wondering how we can keep giving tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy, and then argue there is no money left to invest in new and necessary resources for our schools, so that we can meet the Maslow and academic needs of our students.
You asked me what are the 3 things that mean the most to me as a public school educator.
After careful reflection, here is what I see:
Educators need a seat at the table.
There are those who have tried to lock us out of our own capital. Those who crafted legislation against us behind closed doors that threatened the funds and resources we depend on. We have an educational commissioner appointed by Governor Bevin. We’ve all heard Bevin’s deceitful, scapegoating rhetoric, and I am yet to hear a kind word about JCPS from Commissioner Lewis. Educators need a seat at the table.
Please make sure we are involved and welcomed into every meeting, session, and bit of legislation involving public education. We are the ones who have studied this craft, developed our pedagogies, who work with students/families all year round, and who dedicate our lives to empowering our most important resource: our people.
Thank you for publicly saying that “Teachers must be included on our state’s Board of Education.” I hope you sponsor and vote for legislation that gives us more of a voice and allows our expertise and experience to be a lens that is welcomed in every conversation in the capital that involves public education. Please help return KDE to a nonpartisan entity populated by people who know and have vast experience in the field of education.
We have to change the test-driven culture of public education.
If we measured student success by how many standardized tests a kid takes per year, America would surpass every other school system in the world. One of the crises we face in education is our testing culture. The Washington Post reports, “The average student in America’s big-city public schools takes some 112 mandatory standardized tests between pre-kindergarten and the end of 12th grade — an average of about eight a year.”
I’ve taught at two schools: one rural and mostly white; the other urban and made up of 45 diverse cultures. In Oldham County, my kids’ test-scores could compete with anyone in the nation; their socio-economic status was also much higher. At the school I teach at now in JCPS, the kids are not outstanding standardized-test-takers. Many of them come in below grade-level and have “learned” they’re “failures” because they’ve scored low on standardized tests their whole lives.
What I’ve seen is that when we make test-scores our priority, we fail kids. We fail to engage them with authentic learning that can be transformative. We fail to connect education to their passions. We fail to help kids find their purpose and path in the world.
Help us replace the crippling test-taking culture of our public schools with resources for the mental health needs and authentic, deeper learning practices we know engage kids and better prepare them to be leaders in the world they are entering.
Take a hard stance against charter schools and voucher programs for private schools — and advocate for universal pre-kindergarten.
Charter schools and private schools do not require the same test-taking culture of our public schools. Funding them will take resources away from us. Give us the educational freedom those schools have, invest more in us, and set ALL kids and schools up for more success in life and education by championing a universal pre-k program.
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Thank you again for your time and energy. I hope to talk more in person in the near future. I believe we are stronger together. This shouldn’t be a Republican or Democrat thing. Instead, it’s a doing-right-by-kids thing. And for this to happen, we must overcome our political divides and do what’s right.
Sincerely,
Matthew Kaufmann, Ed.S.
2020 Kentucky High School Teacher of the Year
Educator at The Marion C Moore School in JCPS