After reading about Gov. Walker’s plan to close some Green Bay public schools and replace them with charters, I’m beginning to believe the takeover of our public schools by big business and legislators like Walker is proceeding very well.

They say our public schools are failing. That’s not fully true. Some are, but it’s because of poverty. We don’t fund them adequately to overcome student poverty-related problems.

No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and Common Core were composed and implemented by Bill Gates and other member of the 1 percent without input from parents, teachers of early childhood students and early education experts.

The educational expectations, of especially very young children, are causing children great stress, enough to make them throw up, cry and get sick. The standardized testing by Pearson (a British multinational corporation) is a hoax. It has no background in education or teaching children. Its record of mistakes in the test questions, correcting tests, and delivering them on time is dismal.

I remember in the ’70s standardized testing was dropped all over the country because the tests were considered an inaccurate method of measuring the whole learning process. They basically measure memorization. Now they’re back and they’re quick, inaccurate and expensive.

The complaint of parents, teachers, children and administrators are growing louder because of excessive homework. Health care professionals are saying the stress of overburdening students causing sleeping problems is unhealthy. The curriculum being used now relies on demand-and-push as a method of teaching. I call it abusive because that method doesn’t respect the personhood of the student who becomes a yes person, not a creator.

In my teaching experience, I found children love to learn if they are presented with material they are mentally, physically and developmentally ready for.

We had a school in De Pere called the Wisconsin International School. It left with very little notice to parents and children. Teachers were out paychecks. A friend lost nearly $1,000 she paid as a retainer fee for the next year. They are suing but to little avail.

A year ago, the Center for Popular Democracy issued a report demonstrating “charter schools in 15 states ... had experienced over $100 million in reported fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement. Now there are millions of new alleged and confirmed cases of financial waste, fraud, and mismanagement reported.”

But we don’t yet have the necessary law to protect us from dishonesty in charter schools. How come?

Sen. Dave Hansen said, “Wisconsin taxpayers cannot afford to pay for two systems, much less a system of private schools that are not held accountable for providing their students quality education.”

We need our public schools to care for all our students. Finland, a world leader in education, manages it with great success.

Peggy Burns of Green Bay has a bachelor’s degree in kindergarten-primary education, a master’s degree in elementary eduction and 24 graduate credits in early childhood/educational exceptional needs.

Source: Green Bay Press Gazette