I find myself souring on teacher unions. The timidity of the teachers in the face of the Red Plan’s dislocations has been shocking but not surprising. Dr. Dixon has done more to put our teachers through a ringer than the last ten superintendents put together. And its possible that they ain’t seen nothin yet. The ones in their twenties and early thirties will talk about Dixon for years to come.
I once aspired to challenge Frank Wanner for the Union Presidency back before I was canned. I used to think about writing a book about my teaching called “The worst teacher in the world.” I might write it still if I live to be ninety but I’ve got four or five other books in mind to write first.
In some ways I can’t help but think that the teachers have only themselves to blame for sucking up the “too good to be true” plans of JCI and Dr. Dixon. When they began to sense the awful truth about it they swallowed their tongues.
Duluth was not an inner city school district. We were a fine district that drew 600 students from outside the area into our schools through open enrollment when I was on the Board to take advantage of our superior education. Today we are an exporter of students to other districts.
This brings me to the story about Education in Newsweek Magazine which came in the mail today. I highly recommend this article and several others that accompany it. The articles makes it plain that Newsweek’s reporters think ridding the schools of bad teachers is THE key to restoring our schools. They would probably consider Dr. Dixon a great hero because the Red Plan will give him unprecedented power to get rid of dead wood.
The Red Plan will be responsible for so many teacher layoffs that the DFT’s heads will spin. Maybe it was all part of Dixon’s plan from the beginning. I wouldn’t put it past him. How fortunate for him to have such patsies to deal with in the union. Frank Wanner loves to tell stories about the incompetent Superintendents he’s had to deal with in the past. I wonder if he’d enjoy hearing what Dr. Dixon really thinks about him?
