As of May 26th, 2013, another teacher has joined the list. (Click a name to go directly to the article about their public resignation.)
1. May 26, 2013 – Ron Maggiano
Award-winning Virginia teacher of 33 years.
“I have made this decision, because I can no longer cooperate with a testing regime that I believe is suffocating creativity and innovation in the classroom. We are not really educating our students anymore. We are merely teaching them to pass a test. This is wrong. Period.”
2. May 21, 2013 – Ellie Rubenstein
“But over the past 15 years, I’ve experienced the depressing, gradual downfall, and misdirection of education that has slowly eaten away at my love of teaching. The emphasis in education has shifted from fostering academic and personal growth in both students and teachers, to demanding uniformity and conformity. Raising students test scores is now the only goal, and in order to achieve it, the creativity, flexibility, spontaneity that create authentic learning environments is eliminated. Everything I love about teaching is extinct.”
3. May 6, 2013 – Deborah S. Howard
“This is how I am feeling about the current state of education ‘reform’. I feel I am doing a disservice to my students by subjecting them to unnecessary stress and anxiety via these soon-to-be nationalized, high stakes standardized tests.”
4. April 8, 2013 – Gerald Conti
A New York teacher of nearly 27 years.
“I realize that I am not leaving my profession, in truth, it has left me. It no longer exists.”
5. March 10, 2013 – Abby Breaux
A Louisiana teacher of 25 years.
“I hear often that teachers don’t teach any more. We don’t! You have made us information pushers, test givers, and paper passer outers. LET US TEACH!”
6. December 2012 – Stephen Round
A 2nd grade Providence, RI teacher for nearly 11 years.
“Rather than creating lifelong learners, our new goal is to create good test takers…our students are now relegated to experiencing a confining and demeaning education.”
7. October 2012 – Kris Nielsen
From North Carolina.
“I quit because I’m tired being part of the problem. It’s killing me and it’s not doing anyone else any good. Farewell.”
8. September 2012 – Adam Edgerton
From Boston.
“I quit teaching because I was tired of feeling powerless. Tired of watching would-be professionals treated as children, infantilized into silence. Tired of the machine that turns art into artifice for the sake of test scores.”