Teaching is a Profession, Not a Business.

My school exists as a part of the effort to close the achievement gap in Connecticut. Minority students from urban areas perform at much lower levels than their white peers in suburban schools. Many people ask why there is such a gap in the first place. A lot of it comes down to the ways in which racism has been institutionalized in our country. While that explains the origin of the achievement gap, institutionalized racism does not explain why the gap continues to grow, rather than recede. No one (except the occasional loud-mouthed bigot) seems comfortable offering an answer. Hartford, recently, has decided to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the one group of people who so doesn't need it: the teachers. In the above article, we are told that Hartford teachers should work longer days, get less sick time and have stricter work evaluations, according to a report released today by the National Council on Teacher Quality, an education think tank in Washington.