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2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
A shocking revelation of teacher abuse long overdue Jul 23, 2008
First, let me point out that I am a retired school superintendent and I wrote the book, School Corruption: Betrayal of Children and the Public Trust. So from that perspective, I found Karen's book to be a shocking revelation even to me. Her incredible documentation of teacher abuse has opened up an entirely new category of school corruption. I am ashamed to admit that even though I spent five years researching corruption for my book, I did not identify the problem that she has exposed so powerfully and courageously.
Based on the words that are used to define "corruption", I categorized them as follows: cheating and deceitful practices, waste and mismanagement, and fraud and stealing, but teacher abuse does not fit the categories. Only one word fits "teacher abuse" and that is the word "evil" (one of the words that defines "corruption"). That is the only word to describe teacher abuse. So now I must add "evil practices" to my three categories.
What makes her book so compelling is the first hand accounts from so many different individuals who have been the victims of uncovering wrongdoing in school practices. They all chose ethical behavior and their concerns for students over their own careers. The real problem is why are board members, who are supposed to represent the public and students in monitoring school resources, so impervious to the plight of honest souls who are willing to sacrifice themselves if need be? The administrators retaliating is no surprise, but school board members participating in such retaliation is hard to understand and accept. Of course, as she points out, there are many others who participate in the retaliation by refraining to do anything about it and that includes the one group that should be protecting them--the teacher's union.
Now that the problem of teacher abuse has been exposed, one can only hope that support will be provided to those with such courage and ethics, and that actions will be taken to protect those who are certainly viewed as "whistleblowers."
Because of school scandals in many New York districts, legislative reforms were enacted. Among the original recommendations was protection of whistleblowers that would have provided action against those who retaliate; unfortunately, it did not pass as part of the reform legislation. It certainly would have been the kind of support honest souls needed, and would have encouraged others to expose injustices and corruption by school administrators.
Obviously, Karen is to be commended for her dedication and skill in exposing the truth about teacher abuse and by keeping the discussion and interest active through her National Association to Prevent Teacher Abuse. Perhaps her book and activism will be the catalysts for enacting reforms that will protect teachers who expose "evil practices." Let's hope so.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Forced out After Exposing 25 Violations of Texas Education Law May 28, 2008
I taught at Navarro ISD in Geronimo, TX. I taught there for the final 3.5 of my 10.5 years of teaching. The .5 is the buyout I agreed to instead of filing a whisteblower complaint in District Court against the Administration and Board of Navarro ISD. I filed over 2,000 pages of documented violations of Texas Education Law with the school district and the Texas Education Agency. Neither the school board, the TEA or the local newspapers did anything. 25 clear and documented violations of law and they did nothing!! I even turned my entire files over to the local newspaper, the Seguin Gazette...who did nothing. The bad part...I found out when I left that I was not the only one who had been ostracized, demonized, and essentially forced out of public education. I was one of many. But I would not go quietly!!!
Come on Oprah...I dare you to read the book and take the challenge to do an expose on what really happens in education in the U.S.
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Silent No Longer May 18, 2008
I'm sure that as word gets out about this book, there will be others who will share here a brief summary of their "treatment" by the current nightmare that is the education system. As Horwitz points out at the beginning of the book, it will be hard to believe the stories related within its pages; they are too frightening to believe. I can tell you that they are true; we're not makin' this stuff up. How could school administrators treat teachers so poorly? How could administrators be so uncontrolable? How can they act with such impunity? How could school boards be so blind, trusting, and in some cases, collude with these corrupt administrators? How could state boards of education look the other way when notified of these behaviors? How can the courts not see and give appropriate, legal relief to those affected rather than side with the corrupt school officials, further adding to the harassment of good, honest teachers?
Horwitz details ten years of data collection of these horror stories of individual teachers who have tried to protect their students and themselves from power-hungry administrators. The lengths to which these administrators go to eliminate concerned teachers is astounding: lies, bullying, destruction of careers, falsifying documents, coercing other teachers to join in the shunning of the targeted teacher. Those of us who have been through it understand that this is NOT an effort to weed out poor teachers, but is, in fact, an effort to weed out the good, vocal teachers who are morally opposed to the actions of these administrators in order to bring in inexperienced, pliant teachers, fresh out of college who will just be ground up by unreasonable demands of the overloaded system in a few years anyway.
My story includes the elimination of my ability to provide "rigorous" curriculum to my students by limiting my ability to use the National History Day curriculum in my classroom. It includes numerous verbal attacks from the principal and surrogates in the office staff as well as fellow teachers who needed to curry favor with the building principal for their own survival or protection. It includes constant reminders that "if you don't like it here, you can go someplace else." It ended with the witnessing of bullying of STUDENTS by the principal and my attempts to get SOMEBODY to do SOMETHING about it. My "inconvenient truth" gave the district grounds to get rid of me and allowed the principal to have a "leave of absence" for a year and return to the district by apply as an assistant superintendent in charge of teaching and learning. Oh, yes, and there was the "no trespass order" signed out against me and my wife (who "retired" six years early rather than continue to work under these people) by the administrator who originally refused to listen to my reports of abusive behavior by the principal. Nice little club they've got there.
Administrators will surely mount a counter-attack that these victims are just "complainers" or "crazy" or in some other way "deficient." The truth, however, is that it is the administrators themselves who are the deficient ones--devoid of morals and eager to control others in order to get what they want for themselves, NOT "for the children" as they so often claim.
This is a "must read" book for any parent who has children in public school as well as for any college student thinking about making teaching their career. A word of warning: don't.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
The Bible of School Corruption May 16, 2008
A scholarly and comprehensive work documenting what is happening to teachers all over the nation once they are targeted for "removal" from the classroom. This displacement takes many forms. It can be forced retirement, failure to be "reinstated", "reassignment" or outright termination of teachers from their careers that they have held for decades. It starts with harassment, a hostile work environment, and the infamous "U" rating which enables the public school hierarchy to dismiss teachers via "the process". False charges of incompetence usually close the deal of getting rid of teachers who have been anything other than "subordinate" to public school administrators who must fulfill their business agendas. It is the idealistic, competent, talented, committed teachers who are targeted. It is often those with outstanding skills and experience, those who cared, whose only crime was to speak out about the abuses are being hidden behind the closed doors of academia. They are replaced with "newbies," the younger, newly "certified" teachers, straight out of colleges, teachers training and certification mills, who, unknowingly, also face a limited shelf life in the present teaching system, before they too, are replaced, and their lives and careers are destroyed. For over a decade, Karen Horwitz has documented the heinous practice of teacher abuse that has infected our nations' education system and which only now rising into our common awareness. A must read for all concerned about education, our children and our nation's future.
8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
SHATTERING EXPOSE OF CORRUPTION IN EDUCATION May 12, 2008
A shattering expose of how the multi-billion dollar world of education in America has been turned into a business. This seminal work by an expert who has spent her entire life in the field of education pulls back the curtain and exposes the almost unbelievable degree of corruption that exists in the Wizard of Oz world of educating our nation's children.
It has become less about what is good for children and more about how tens of thousands of people, reaching to the highest levels of government have found countless ways to skim and milk the system of money that should be going towards helping educate children in the classroom.
Teachers nationwide who dare to expose this corruption, that manifests itself in countless different forms, (both within schools proper as well as inside the labyrinthian bureaucracies that control the funding), are dealt with swiftly and harshly.
I myself was one such Whistle-blower who attempted to report massive corruption, financial mismanagement and ongoing Federal Civil Rights violations occurring in schools in New York City. My reward for doing the right thing was that I was removed on trumped up allegations and found myself fighting a "David versus Goliath" legal battle for the past four years and counting.
Should anyone wish to know the real reason/s I was removed from my position, it is only necessary to visit the United Federation of Teachers website:
http://www.uft.org/news/teacher/top/axed/
There one will see a photograph of me being decorated by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in New York's City Hall as a "Teacher of the Year" for Exceptional Achievement in Education. I had designed, built from the ground up, and personally funded, the first premiere Medical Illustration Program in the United States for gifted Minority students. The goal of the program was to serve as a launching pad to propel those highly intellectually gifted students from socio-economically deprived backgrounds into Ivy League Universities and into careers including Medicine, as Physicians and research Scientists.
The success of this unique program was such, that it attracted the attention of Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist, Clara Hemphill.
But once I became a Whistle-blower the New York City Board/Dept of Education went after me with a blistering degree of vengeance and retaliation not witnessed in decades and has led to the Legal arm, known as NYSUT, of the United Federation of Teachers, filing a $ 30,000,000 (thirty million) NOTICE OF CLAIM against schools Chancellor Joel Klein, Esq. and the New York City Board of Education on my behalf.
My case, in the way the press and other assorted news media have reported the above story, in the most skewed and distorted manner possible, makes the case one of the poster children of Karen Horwitz's amazingly factually detailed book. Ms. Horwitz recounts dozens of stories, like my own, all part of an ultimately shocking and illuminating expose of how the world of Education has become a form of billion dollar "piggy bank" for those in a position to raid and feed at the trough of publicly funded Education budgets.
The countless stories of the fates that have befallen teachers nationwide and the abusive, often sadistic and illegal methods that have been utilized to retaliate against and silence teachers who have tried to report egregious wrongdoing and outright theft of taxpayer money is ultimately heartbreaking but a story that must be told.
This is a landmark and seminal book, painstakingly researched over a decade, that will hopefully serve and assist the long overdue need to expose the rampant theft of the enormous financial resources that are intended to educate our children. This monumental work will also hopefully call the public's attention to what has happened to the lives and careers of hardworking, dedicated educators nationwide, who at great personal and professional risk to their careers, have spoken out about WHITE CHALK CRIME: The REAL Reason Schools Fail.
David Pakter, M.A., M.F.A. Artist and Instructor of Medical Illustration
www.OldMasterPortraits.com david@OldMasterPortraits.com
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