"You Can't Fire the Bad Ones!" And 18 Other Myths about Teachers, Teachers Unions, and Public Education

Overturns common misconceptions about charter schools, school "choice," standardized tests, common core curriculum, and teacher evaluations.

Three distinguished educators, scholars, and activists flip the script on many enduring and popular myths about teachers, teachers' unions, and education that permeate our culture. By unpacking these myths, and underscoring the necessity of strong and vital public schools as a common good, the authors challenge readers--whether parents, community members, policy makers, union activists, or educators themselves--to rethink their assumptions.

William Ayers is an author, activist, and educator whose previous books include To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher and Teaching Toward Freedom: Moral Commitment and Ethical Action in the Classroom.

Crystal Laura is an educator and the author of Being Bad: My Baby Brother and the School-to-Prison Pipeline.

Rick Ayers is an educator and the author of An Empty Seat in Class: Teaching and Learning After the Death of a Student, and, with William Ayers, Teaching the Taboo: Courage and Imagination in the Classroom.

INTRODUCTION: “Rotten Apples”

MYTH 1: Teachers’ Unions Are the Biggest Obstacle to Improving Education Today.”

MYTH 2: You Can’t Fire the Bad Ones.”

MYTH 3: “Teachers’ Unions Represent a Flock of ‘Go Slow/Status Quo’ Sheep.”

MYTH 4: “Good Teaching Is Entirely Color-Blind.”

MYTH 5: “Teachers Have It Easy.”

MYTH 6: “High-Stakes Standardized Tests Improve Student Achievement and Effectively Detect Inferior Teachers.”

MYTH 7: “While Teachers and Their Unions Use Poverty as a Convenient Smokescreen for Their Own Failures, It’s Become Obvious That Grit and Merit Can Overcome Every Disadvantage.”

MYTH 8: “Teachers Are Made More Visible and Accountable in Charter Schools, More Competitive Through Voucher Programs, and Irrelevant with the Advent of Teacher-Proof Cyber Schools.”

MYTH 9: “Anyone Can Be a Teacher.”

MYTH 10: “Teachers Follow Popular Fads and Political Correctness Rather Than Teaching the Basics.”

MYTH 11: “Teacher Activists Are Troublemakers.”

MYTH 12: “Discipline Is the First Priority for Every Teacher, and It Is Especially Essential for Teachers in Urban Schools with Large Numbers of Black Students.”

MYTH 13: “Teachers Need to Set High Standards and Drive Kids Hard.”

MYTH 14: “Teachers Are Poorly Served by the Universally Dreadful Teacher-Education Programs Currently Available.”

MYTH 15: “Too Many Bad Teachers Have Created a Public School System That Is Utterly Broken, and the Only Solution Is to Wipe the Slate Clean and Start Over.”

MYTH 16: “Teachers Are Unable to Deal Adequately with the Disciplinary Challenges Posed By Today’s Youth, and We Need More Police in Our Public School Buildings to Do the Job and Maintain Law and Order.”

MYTH 17: “Teachers Need to Stick with Teaching the Great Lessons of Western Civilization in Order to Civilize Youth and Mold Them into the Good Citizens of the Future.”

MYTH 18: “Teachers Need to Focus Less on the Arts, More on STEM.”

MYTH 19: “The Truly Great Teachers Are Heroes.”

Acknowledgments
Notes