Dear Michelle,
I remember when I was a young teacher in Boca Raton. I was invited to assemble a polo team to compete in for a cup at the local club. I immediately asked my fellow TFA recruit Scooter Nelson to join me and he had a friend who was an outstanding Number One. Unfortunately, I couldn't scrape together a 4th player and we had to cancel our plans to compete. I was embarrassed to have been unable to field a whole team.
Recently, I heard that you were forced to cancel your plans to debate Diane Ravitch at Lehigh University on February 6th because you were unable to find a third person for your side. I am happy to announce that I am willing to join your team. I believe my resume speaks for themselves, but as the Director of Last Stand for Children First, I've made a name for myself as one of the country's foremost education reformers. Through Last Stand's Project SLOW we have dropped the number of students in the bottom quartile on state tests in Louisiana from 25% to just over 15%. Our evaluation plan, which has been adopted in 9 states has caused more teachers to lose their jobs than Rahm Emanuel and Michael Nutter combined. We have streamlined new teacher training from our fellows from a time consuming 5 weeks to 5 hours and a showing of Freedom Writers on DVD.
In short, you, Rod Paige, and myself would be a dream team. I strongly believe in all the talking points of education reform, even the ones that contradict other education reform talking points. Together we can take on the status quo in a way that we have been unable to do in the 30 years of school reform going back to a Nation at Risk. I look forward to hearing from you and destroying Ravitch and her cronies in this debate.
Sincerely,
Myron Miner
(Last Stand for Children First)
