Believe it or not, even in a heavily regulated work environment, interesting items sneak through the filters and land in my inbox. I shared the voter registration set-up yesterday. Today it came in the form of the abstract to an article in a professional journal. Not the entire article, but just the summary abstract that described it.
Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Obama administration pumped $100 billion into public K-12 and higher education, saved over 300,000 education-related jobs, doubled spending on special education services, and added $10 billion to Title I programs to serve disadvantaged students. A year later, Obama championed another $10 billion to save more teacher jobs.
So far, so good. This sounds like basic Daisy, stereotypical teacher talk, right? Teacher = Obama Backer.
Wrong. We teachers are intelligent beings and independent thinkers. We do not vote as a block; we vote as individuals. We pay attention to our associations’ endorsements, but we don’t follow those recommendations automatically. Here’s the rest of the abstract:
Both major national unions — the NEA and AFT — have endorsed Obama’s reelection bid. But they have not done so on account of the money. Unions haven’t fully embraced several significant Obama education policies, including his support for including student performance on tests as a measure of teacher performance, more charter schools, and measures that would make it easier to fire ineffective teachers. What’s developed is a complicated, evolving relationship between the administration and the teacher unions.
Contrast that with Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker who has absolutely no relationship, evolving or otherwise, and – oh, let’s not go there.
And on an entirely different note, check out this real life math problem I posed to the math teachers with whom I teach.
If I want to order 60 copies of a book from a commonly-utilized bookseller, the book costs $2.99 or 75 bonus points and bonus points are awarded 1 pt. per dollar spent. How many books do I need to buy with cash to get the rest with bonus points!
Extra credit: I’ve already accrued 312 bonus points from other past purchases.
Have fun!!
No one answered my email yet. Maybe they’re waiting for me, a reading and writing verbal linguistic type, to prove my worth. Readers, it’s up to you. Can you help?