Dear President Obama,
I gave you my vote in 2008 and I am still 100% glad that I did. Ib ve never doubted you in your 14 months so far and I think youb re fabulous. This is a letter commending your triumphs because you are an easy man to criticize; people love to throw stones at the TV screen knowing the President wonb t yell back.
As an American, Ib m fan of Healthcare reform. So committed, in fact, that I find myself in the minority for the first time in my life. Ib m a White, Protestant, Middle-class male with a Masterb s degree. Ib m from an upper-middle class family and so is my wife.
Ib m in the minority for this reason: Ib m prepared to pay more taxes for the same health coverage so that medical coverage could be provided to those less fortunate than I am. Ib m sure if everybody thought this way, web d have a bill already, but Ib m prepared to wait until we find a bill that people quit complaining about.
(And Ib ll tell any Republicans I know to put some of their energy into building bills instead of tearing them down.)
Unrelated to health care, I support several unpopular ideas and I figured that youb d like a voice in the trenches. So here it is from an educator:
Merit Pay is a great idea if properly and concretely implemented. I wonb t suggest what that system will be, but I can say from my own experience that teachers who stink are kept in the payroll way too long. Exciting and motivated teachers have little incentive to do a good job when tenured teachers get paid more to sit behind their desk and hand out worksheets. Itb s depressing.
NCLB is hated universally among teachers that I know. We all agree that the students in our classes need better skills and that a great way to measure that is test scores, but to claim that all schools reach an API score of 800 by the year 2014 is ridiculous. If you donb t know much about API, then you can trust me on this; itb s ridiculous.
We understand that the White House has bigger fish to fry than No Child Left Behind reform. For now, we teachers are fine to just b & not talk about it.
Itb s also pretty apparent that youb re not a big fan of people applauding you; I respect that and empathize. I giggled when Michelle motioned for the house to b sit downb during the standing ovation for her obesity plan.
All that to say that I think youb re great and I will support you until you do something crazy, like invade Canada
b & and probably even after that. They’ve been asking for it, eh.
~V