I could tell you very specifically how Dr. Thompson failed in his duties, but that I am forbidden to by him under the pain of "immediate dismissal." I have a list of four terrible wrongs committed against me personally. The unjust muzzling of the opposition is one way to assert one's authority. Like many of us in the lower echelons of Naples who are over the barrel, I do not have the luxury of disobedience. The one thing I can assert is that the only really valuable thing going on in CCPS is going on in the classrooms between the students and the books they study. That should be paramount and held sacred. All the rest that we get so agitated about should be subordinated to the flesh and blood environment in the classroom. Measuring devices that are inaccurate do not provide "facts." You yourself sweep one big lump under the carpet when you sidestep, "The way that [Thompson] was brought into the community." The CCPS is not broken. I will match what goes on in my classroom with any in the world. It is, indeed, world class. And all I've had this year is grief produced by administrators. ___________ Silence is betrayal. A Superintendent has various weapons at his disposal for requiring silence from his subjects. The public is easily handled after that. Psychological operations conjure up images of our military playing mind games with the enemy. PSYOP is all this and much more, for there are essentially two great forces in warfare, the physical and the moral. These two forces suggest two distinct approaches to accomplishing a goal. One a "direct" approach, concentrating on the opponent's physical forces, and the other an "indirect" approach, focusing on moral forces. Pick your enemy carefully: the bigger he is, the harder he will fall. Use the physical. Better not burn down his house, but what's more physical than what makes up a teacher's world? Fabricate and charge an enemy teacher with terrible offenses that will appall his sense of self-esteem. Take the teacher's already meager pay away from him. Temporarily deprive the teacher of his room, his students, his books. In our surveillance society one probably should not put zips on a teacher's hands and a cement bag over a teacher's head in order to demand his silence. But one can more subtly practice the same methods. As in mock executions. Call the enemy teacher into the office for discipline with increasing frequency over a period of a few months. Make up the charges if you must. Conjure up images of his children and wife. Tell him he is guilty of some grave indiscretion. Tell him his family's lives are at stake if he is not silent. Punish the children and the wife a little if you can do it discretely. Make the enemy teacher worry about them. Play bad cop/ good cop. Can a powerful public figure conspire to use such weapons with impunity? If a spokesperson teacher must be silenced but is so good and popular that it is difficult to catch him doing something wrong, fabricate it. Then demand he keep silent about the charges under the threat of immediate dismissal. Create unbearable stress in his classroom, among his students, in his family and the enemy will choose to remain silent, freely choosing betrayal at the behest of advisors. He will obsess about the fabricated reality the PSYOP-wise Superintendent controls and his self-destruction cannot be anything but the teacher's own fault. Take down one or two teachers this way. Other teachers will see the cost of being an outspoken enemy of so powerful a man and will retreat into their safely silent holes. But be careful of doing it in a building named for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. _________________ Fair and accurate? How about measuring my performance by how many of my students go on to succeed in college or business or life? How about listening to the voices of experience instead of some abstract construct that "ranks" the United States "low" among developed nations. One of my students was accepted last week at the University of Chicago with a full-tuition scholarship to the $50,000/ year top-tier class of 2012. But don't measure other teachers by my "scores." It's unfair because I have more formal education in my subject area than your heart surgeon does in his/hers. The FCAT? My students are past taking that test before they get to me. Just cut us all some slack and let natural competition take us to the stars. It's only fallout from GWB's religious enthusiasm that has us chasing each other's tails. Artificial measuring devices like FCAT tests (and undue emphasis on them) cut us down and make us perform less well than the natural market forces. The sky is not falling. America is doing very well. Don't believe what the Daggetteers want you to. Right now, our former students are enrolled and successfully performing at Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Notre Dame, USMA, USAFA, USNA, the University of Chicago and other top-notch colleges. Our former students are practicing ethically in careers around the world. Measure that. Our coaches have not asked school authorities for cement fields and fake grass. Who has sold this idea to us? Who has sold us on the outrageous investment CCPS has given to the technology corporations--the universal surveillance technology? Who has sold us on the value of absolute uniformity across all schools in the system? Perhaps the opportunists who are after $1.4 billion of CCPS taxpayer money! Who knows better how to judge that than classroom practitioners and coaches on the fields? It's apparent that we need less capital funds and more operating funds. Who needs more capital funds? The corporations who sell our administrators all these expensive, silly new bells and whistles like synthetic turf or super-size double flat screen two-way TVs. Expensive new package programs by Daggett & Co. will not improve CCPS.