Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (38779)	3/4/2004 4:29:02 PM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Honored teacher declines to meet with Cabinet official By Rhonda Stewart, Globe Staff, 3/4/2004 When the nation's top teachers met with Education Secretary Rod Paige in Washington on Monday, the 2003 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year was absent. From the start, Jeffrey R. Ryan -- who lives in Watertown and teaches at Reading Memorial High School -- said he had been unsure whether to attend the meeting, held to discuss the No Child Left Behind law. But Ryan made up his mind to stay home when he saw a newspaper article in which Paige called the country's largest teachers union a "terrorist organization." Paige apologized soon after the comment was made public and again at the meeting on Monday. "I made some inappropriate remarks," the secretary said in a statement to those at the gathering. "I apologized then, and I apologize now for them," Paige said. "If you took offense at anything I said, please accept my apology." For Ryan, and for the National Education Association, Paige's apology was not good enough. "I was incensed. I thought, How dare he say that, that essentially every teacher in America is basically as evil as . . . Osama bin Laden?" Ryan said. "I don't murder people. I don't throw bombs." Ryan said Paige's comments offended him personally as well as professionally, since a member of his church was aboard American Airlines Flight 11 when it crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. He said he's not sure what was worse, that Paige made the comments or tried to disown them later by saying he was joking. Before the meeting in Washington, Ryan fired off an e-mail to the Department of Education. He thanked officials for the invitation but made clear he wouldn't attend and doesn't support the educational changes being proposed. "I do believe, however, that the Bush administration is hostile to public education and that the No Child Left Behind Act is a disingenuous, cynical plan by which to attack the poor and the nonwhite," Ryan wrote. "I do not see, however, how I can justify leaving my own students in order to attend a meeting with a gentleman [Paige] who seems to harbor nothing but ill will and contempt for us all." Ryan said Joyce Dunn, Pennsylvania's 2003 Teacher of the Year, told him that -- unprompted by him -- she conveyed his concerns to Paige personally when she saw the secretary at the meeting. Ryan, who teaches American and European history, said he's glad Paige has apologized but the secretary should still step down. Reg Weaver, president of the NEA, is also calling for Paige's resignation and encouraging the group's 2.7 million members to e-mail President Bush and other elected officials to express their concerns. "Our members say they deserve more than unfair labels and mean-spirited apologies," Weaver said in a statement. "And our members say that if the Bush administration cannot work with the public school employees who educate these children every day, then it is time to find new leadership who can." boston.com lurqer