“Those in power, namely the Florida Legislature, have sold out education, crippling it with emaciated budgets. The trickle-down effect that began in Washington dripped its way into every school system across America. As the federal government micromanaged the states, they in turn micromanaged county school systems. Government offers assistance but that assistance always comes with strings attached. It is those strings that recently caused Tallahassee to press local school systems to spend $6 million on new reading and math curriculums, not because we needed them but because of Washington's ‘use it or lose it’ mentality. There was no discussion about where this money would be best utilized as our old curriculums had been in use long enough to fine tune and were working quite well. Government earmarks are palatable when money isn't an issue, but sometimes adjustments are in the best interest of all involved and retribution for noncompliance becomes problematic when quality education and teachers' jobs hang in the balance. For new teachers the dream of wearing that title has been stripped bare. Traditionally, teachers who vacated their profession did so sometime within their first five years of teaching. However, they left for reasons like crowded classes, insolent students or poor pay, but they hardly ever left because of budget cuts. At present, 522 first- and second-year teachers in Marion County have now become part of that statistical toll as they face the uncertain prospect of possibly entering the roll call of the unemployed simply because of budget cuts.”

-- Teacher Nancy Clyatt
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Read the opinion and post a comment on ocala.com.
http://www.ocala.com/article/20090412/OPIN...to-be-a-teacher-
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Thanks to Mark Pudlow for the clip and the lead.