The Baker Administration is just not happy with current remarks by the pinnacle of the Massachusetts Teachers Association concerning a plan to boost the minimal rating required to go the MCAS.
“I do have to say I found many of the remarks made by the MTA president, just in some respects, a wild misjudgement of what family and kids want out of their education,” Gov. Charlie Baker stated Thursday.
“The idea that project based learning, which has never been more popular, is a bad thing; or the idea of learning a skill that you can put to work in some way for the rest of your life is exploitation; or the notion that somehow this whole thing about teaching kids skills that they can use to get a job and build a life and career is a bad idea, and too narrowly focused; just cuts against everything I’ve heard from parents, and from families, and from kids, and from teachers, for many years,” he stated.
Baker was talking in response to an assertions by MTA President Max Page on the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s August 15 assembly, the place the MTA chief accused board members of “being obsessed with a test invented some 20 years ago” that solely instructed them in regards to the wealth of a scholar’s group, not their capability for achievement.
“You’ve fetishized an approach to education that is at the very least outdated and at the most destructive of our schools and communities,” Page instructed board members earlier than they voted to boost the minimal MCAS scores for the subsequent 5 courses of freshman college students.
Baker thinks Page is lacking the purpose.
“The reason we have 7,000 more seats in vocational and technical schools today than we had when we took office is because people like them,” he stated. “His comments disturbed me because they cut against all I believe that most parents want out of their kids education, which is an education that will make it possible for them to be an enormously successful adult.”
Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Jeff Riley additionally took problem with Page’s remarks.
“At the end of the day the MTA speaks on behalf of a certain constituency and that’s the teachers, or some of the teachers in the Commonwealth,” he stated. “We have to have some accountability, and some understanding of where our kids are functioning. At the end of the day the one thing we don’t want to do is to lie to parents and say your kid is ready for college and career if in fact they are not.”
Page instructed the Herald Thursday that the governor is “intentionally distorting my words and what MTA members believe.”
“We provide the best education in the country, we have a core belief that the purpose of school is to nurture thinking, caring, active, caring, committed adults. We see the MCAS as undermining that effort,” he stated. “That was the point to say the board is going in the wrong direction. MTA members are committed to educating the whole child.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”