MACE. The South's

Toughest & Most Feared

Union for Teachers!

Mad Advocates Creating Empowerment!

     MACE believes that this current BLAME THE TEACHER CULTURE is radically wrong and that radical measures have to be employed accordingly.  MACE radically defends classroom educators.  Radically, not illegally.  MACE is always armed with the U. S. Constitution and the State Statutes.  The problem is that so many school systems are “gangsta” by their nature and in their scope.  School systems have tried to “ban,” to no avail, MACE and its officials.  MACE officials have been falsely arrested and falsely incarcerated standing up for teachers.  Most of the charges are summarily dismissed.  Not one charge has been prosecuted.  What other so-called unions (full of abusing administrators in their membership ranks) fight for teachers like MACE?  MACE believes in No Teacher Left Behind.  MACE.  Radical Responses to Radical Situations.  MACE.  The Teachers Union For Teachers Teaching In Tough Situations.  MACE believes that angry and abusive administrators are ruining our public schools and that student-thugs are running our public schools.  There is epidemic violence in our public schools.  Children deserve futures, not funerals.  So many of today’s administrators simply lack guts; they are weasels.  They kiss up to the students, the sudents’ parents, and their administrative bosses downtown, but they kick down toward the teachers.  Kiss up & Kick Down.  They actually think that this is how you run a school.  These so-called administrators are gutless and clueless.  This is MACE’s position.  So, be WARNED.

MACE Pickets Centennial Academy!

Teachers, Are You Feeling Frustrated, Overwhelmed, & Disemboweled? 

Tired of Snap-shot, Drive-by Evaluations?  No Support for Discipline? 

Feeling 100% Undervalued as a Professional Educator? 

Don’t Quit!  Join MACE.  Don’t Teach Without It!

    MACE knows the issues.  MACE knows what you are going through.  Dr. John R. Alston Trotter founded MACE in 1995 upon this clarion mantra:  “You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions” (©MACE, 1995).  Dr. Trotter has been a teacher and administrator in several Georgia school systems and came from a long line of Georgia public school educators.  Dr. Trotter and the MACE Staff know that the main issues in public education are (1) defiant & disruptive students, (2) irate & irresponsible parents, (3) angry & abusive administrators, (4) forcing teachers to give students grades that they do not truly earn – which is another form of systematic cheating, and (5) the asinine drop-by bubble-the-circles evaluations which are often used against teachers in a manipulative, punitive, and retributive manner.

     These days, teachers are so disrespected.  They feel downtrodden, frustrated, overwhelmed, and disemboweled.  Unlike GAE and PAGE, MACE represents only teachers, not administrators.  The MACE representation is aggressive when you need aggressive representation.  Administrators know this.  In fact, MACE is the South’s most aggressive teachers’ union.  Others have seen MACE’s phenomenal success, and they make the same claim.  But their claim is hollow.  It’s a sham and a farce.  MACE walks the walk and has been providing its teacher-members effective aggressive representation for more than 25 years.  When administrators find out that you are a member of MACE, they suddenly get “religion.”  Don’t Teach Without MACE!

For more information about MACE, visit the MACE website (TheTeachersAdvocate.Com) and/or call the MACE Office (770.716.2727 or 770.716.7838) and leave a message.  Someone will return your call.  When you go to the MACE website, look for the link to the MACE Magazine! 

Dear Dr. Beasley:

I know that you are not be as old as I am, but I have followed your career for the last twenty years or so and see that you have matriculated throughout a few schools and school systems from DeKalb County Schools to Port Arthur, Texas and back to DeKalb County Schools and down to the Clayton County Public Schools.  By the way, in my career, I started off at DeKalb’s Southwest DeKalb High School, and I also spent some very good and eventful years at the old Jonesboro Jr. High School in the early 1980s.  I also was a teacher in the Athens area and a school administrator in both South Georgia and North Georgia.  But, my greatest experience was living with and also teaching for my father who was a legendary teacher/coach/administrator in the Muscogee Country School District (this is the appellation that this system has been using for decades).  Like my father, I could discipline the students and run a very taut ship, and the disciplined students still respected me and him and lauded our fairness and kindness as a public school educator.  And I learned from my father that you always praise the teachers in public, and if any criticism was in order, you did this only in private.  You always allowed the teachers to save face.  We both realized that if you treated teachers with such fairness and allowed them to maintain their dignity that they would always go the extra mile to serve the students.  In short, leadership by inspiration is much more effective than leadership by intimidation.  Of course when I founded MACE on September 1, 1995, MACE’s mantra was announced to the world:  “You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions” (MACE, © 1995).

Over the past two years, the MACE Office has received a sortie of complaints about Principal Rochelle Harris at Mount Zion Elementary School.  The complaints range from the constant derision of the teachers and the condescending upbraiding of the teachers in public and even the egregious violation of the State’s Complaint Law (O.C.G.A. 20-2-989.5).  It has been reported to the MACE Office that when one of the MACE Members filed an official complaint with Principal Harris that Principal Harris ostentatiously tore up the complaint form in front of the complaining teacher.  The State Code of Georgia Annotated specifically states that the complaining teacher has to file the complaint with his or her immediate supervision for the Level One hearing.  The State statute also specifically states in paragraph eight of the above-referenced statute that “the complainant has the right to present relevant evidence, to examine witnesses, and to be heard at each level.”  This statute also has a provision against administrative reprisals against the teacher for filing the complaint.  Principal Harris apparently engaged in an egregious and flagrant violation of the law as it pertains to Georgia educators.

It has also been reported to the MACE Office that after MACE conducted a picket in front of Mount Zion Elementary School in the 2019-2020 school year, Principal Harris and the lunchroom manager cornered one of the MACE Members the day after the picket, “taunt[ing] me in a bullying manner.”  I assure you that treating this teacher who has been teaching for over 20 years in the Clayton system “in a bulling manner” right after the MACE picket violates the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.  The Court has ruled unequivocally that union membership is freedom of association within the penumbra of the First Amendment and that such alleged action by Principal Harris created what The Court describes as “a chilling effect” on the First Amendment.  

Dr. Beasley, I have only cited a few illustrious matters at the school, but MACE is officially requesting that your office investigate and address this sordid situation at Mount Zion Elementary School.

Respectfully:

John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD

Chairman of the MACE Board

c. School Board members

     I have been dealing directly in public education in Georgia for the past 46 years, as a teacher, coach, administrator, and teacher advocate.  I’ve experienced a thing or two in public education.  I also grew up in a family of public school educators, immediate family and extended family — teachers and administrators.  Public education is in our blood.  I authored a tome (about 675,000 words) on the ills of public education in America entitled, The MACE Manifesto: The Politically Incorrect, Irreverent, and Scatological Examination of What is Wrong with American Public Education.

     When you shine the calcium light of truth on what is the chief problem in American Public Education (APE), there is one enormous problem which affects everything going on in public education: The teachers have been stripped of their authority in the classroom.  That it in a nutshell.  In the old days, the teacher was the king or queen of his or her classroom.  The teacher’s word and authority was sacrosanct.  The administrators trusted the teacher’s professional knowledge, judgment, and wisdom.  After all, the teacher was a professional, having earned at minimum a bachelor’s degree in education.

     The MACE Mantra from the inception of MACE has been this: “You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions.”  This an axiomatic truth.  It cannot be successfully disputed.  It is a law (principle of action) just as is the law of gravity.  You may try to dispute it or ignore it but you do so at your own peril.  Walk off the roof of a house and see what happens.  The same is true of MACE’s Law of Learning.  Denigrate teachers, undermine teachers, and question  teachers in front of students and parents and see what happens.  Chaos emerges and takes over a classtoom.  Learning does not take place.  I still never cease to be amazed at how EDAs (educational dumbasses) masquerading as “school leaders” think that they can improve learning by running roughshod over classroom educators.  They are operating upon a false theory.  It cannot be done.  MACE calls this “leadership by intimidation.”  It doesn’t work.  What works is “leadership by inspiration,” but how many of these types of school administrators are still around?  They are a vanishing breed.  Near extinction.  If you teach on a staff with an inspiring administrator, count your many blessings.

     One thing about the intimidating administartors is this: They are bullies, and they get nervous when they hear that MACE is is around.  There’s not an administrator in the state whom MACE is afraid of.  Contrariwise, they all have a healthy respect of MACE.

     MACE is about the protection and empowerment of classroom educators…one member at a time.  For 25 years, MACE has richly earned its reputation.

Nearly 32 Years of Aggressively and Effectively Representing Classroom Educators!

By Dr. John Trotter 

       Teachers like me defending them and fighting for them when some ignorant-ass and abusive administrator starts messing with them.  They know that I will metaphorically eviscerate and literally humiliate the jackass and dumbass administrator (via grievance hearings, articles on the MACE website and other sites, letters to the superintendent and to the school board members at their home addresses, speaking before the school board, press conferences,  pickets, etc).  This is no hollow talk.  I have been representing teachers going on 32 years and going on 26 years with MACE.  The teachers know that there in not a more aggressive and more effective teacher advocate in Georgia and the entire nation than yours truly.  Like Coach Bear Bryant wisely said, "If it's true, it ain't bragging."  There's only one Dr. John R. Alston Trotter, and MACE has him.  The MACE Mantra for 25 years:  "You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions."  MACE. Don't Teach Without It!

MACE:  Still Protecting & Empowering Classroom Educators....One Member at a Time in These Turbulent Times!

By Dr. John Trotter 

     For teachers, parents, and students, these are turbulent, stressful, and ambivalent times.  Are the physical schools going to start back up full speed like before their shut down in late March or will the online learning procedure remain in effect for the foreseeable future or will a hybrid approach be implemented in August or September?  These are questions which no one seems to have the ready answer at this time.  This pandemic is certain and deadly, especially for the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions.  Will school systems take into account elderly teachers (50 years old and older -- when teachers begin to get AARP cards in the mail) and teachers with pre-existing conditions (heart conditions, diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, etc.)?  Will school systems exempt these teachers from immediately returning to the physical school buildings and will the State of Georgia defray the costs and continue to fully pay these teachers for working from home in some capacity?  The vulnerable teachers -- for no fault of their own -- should NEVER be penalized in any manner of form.  These teachers should be worked with to enable these physically vulnerable teachers to continue to contribute to the education of the children, though in a slightly different capacity.  It is the position of MACE that the vulnerable teachers should be protected, enabled to educate the children in a different capacity (online interaction, etc.), and should not be penalized one scintilla.

“Mr. Barnes, I wanted to let you know how thankful I am that you worked everything out for me!  Not only did you send a letter for me (thanks Mr. Haynes and Dr. Trotter), but you helped me get a contract, and on top of that negotiated with central office to get my transfer approved.  Words cannot express how thankful I am!  Every dime that I have spent for my membership is well worth it!” – Jackie Warren.

Two Pertinent Articles are Reprinted…

The MACE Thesis & Why You Came to MACE!

MACE Metaphorically Guts Abusive Administrators!

When you say "MACE,"

Administrators Listen!

You abusive school administrators had better not get MACE fired up. MACE didn't invent the picket; MACE invented DquadA. Direct Action Against Abusive Administrators. No other teacher organization in Georgia has DAAAA, and each is feckless in their feeble attempt to help teachers. The MACE Members, however, expect and are provided aggressive and effective advocacy. When you say "MACE," administrators listen. This is a fact, Jack.

When We Had Discipline!

By John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD

          Fall of 1981. I was a 27 year old assistant principal of a large public high school and in charge of all student discipline. You could hear a pin drop in the halls. The teachers told me that all they had to do was to threaten a student with sending him or her to my office and the student would straighten up immediately. I learned from the best, Daniel D. Trotter, Sr., that discipline did not have to be severe but it had to be sure. And, it had to be fair and consistent. The bozos who run our public schools these days simply don't get it. I call them EDAs (educational dumb asses). They think that they should indulge the students, coddle them, and listen to their "side" as to what happened in the classroom. They even take the student's word over the teacher's. This is unconscionable, unfathomable, and outright stupid and idiotic. The students who were sent to my office knew that they were going to get something for being sent there -- a paddling, detention after school, suspension, etc. There was never a free trip to my office. Never. The teachers knew this but more importantly the students knew this. When the school year first started, students would say, "Let me tell you what really happened." I would stop them in mid-track, stating: "You don't have to tell me what happened. Mrs. Smith already wrote it down." [At the beginning of the school year, I asked the teachers to do two things: (1) when they sent a student to see me for a disciplinary infraction, to please write me on paper at least one complete sentence telling me about the infraction and (2) close their classroom door when the bell rung and not let any student into the classroom without a note signed by me.] I would ask the student, "Do I have on a black robe?" The student would respond, "No, sir." I then stated: "I'm not here to judge. I'm here to execute." [These days, the nitwit administrators conduct a mini trial on each incident, ignore the write-up entirely, or just blame the teacher.] They occasionally would respond in a bewildered fashion, "You always believe the teacher." I would casually respond: "You are exactly right. Now put that on the streets." The word spread very quickly: "Don't get sent to the office. You gonna get something!" Did any teacher ever get it wrong? Of course. Very occasionally. But, I met quietly with the teacher and behind closed doors. I NEVER chewed out a teacher. [Again, I learned this from my father. Always generously and publicly praise the the teachers but gently and softly criticize them in private.] The teachers diligently work their tails off when they are treated professionally. When, as an administrator, you respect the knowledge, discretion, judgment, and wisdom of the teacher, the teacher wants to work untiringly because the teacher does not want to disappoint you. If the teacher screws up, let the teacher save face by personally admitting to his or her class or privately to an individual student that he or she made an honest mistake. The students respect this honesty.

     Today, the teacher's dignity is assaulted. In disciplinary actions, the teachers are abandoned by administrators or even blamed by the administrators for the malevolent actions by the students. It is truly unconscionable the way these petty, ignorant, insecure, angry, and abusive administrators treat teachers. This is why our public schools are out of control. This is why they are war zones. The students and their parents are essentially in control. The teachers have been disemboweled. They have no authority. They have no power over the students in the classroom. The administrators will not support them. In fact, if the teacher writes up a student and sends the student to the administrator, the administrator takes umbrage at what the teacher just did and starts writing up the teacher. The administrator will put the teacher on some kind of numbskull self-improvement plan. Finally, the administration will begin the corporate execution of the teacher. This is pure evil. This kind of outrageous assault on teachers resulted in the foundation of the Metro Association of Classroom Educators (MACE) in 1995. MACE doesn't play, and administrators know this. Quite frankly, MACE scares the hell out of administrators. MACE's mantra has always been this: "You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions." MACE protects and empowers classroom educators...one member at a time. MACE is the most aggressive and most effective teachers union in the South. MACE is for teachers teaching in tough situations. MACE. Don't Teach Without It! Don't wait too late to join. MACE. Mad Advocates Creating Empowerment (MACE).

MACE Knows the Issues!

     "MACE knows the issues in public education. There are essentially four issues: (1) Defiant & Disruption Students; (2) Irate & Irresponsible Parents; (3) Angry & Abusive Administrators; and (4) Systematic Cheating -- not just on standardized tests but also when administrators force teachers to give students grades that they did not earn. Educrats try to treat a lack of learning as mechanical/technical breakdowns when they are really motivational breakdowns. The students just refuse to learn. They lack motivation, and the motivation to learn is a cultural phenomenon" -- Dr. John Trotter.

The Choice is Clear!

Teacher Blame Syndrome (TBS)

MACE Is Fired Up Against Teacher Abuse!

     MACE. Fired up against Teacher Abuse. This condition is widespread and out-of-control. Little small-minded, insecure, petty, and vindictive administrators are provided lethal weapons -- dumb-ass, circle-the-bubbles "evaluation" forms which are used in a manipulative, retributive, and punitive manner against any teacher who displays gumption, integrity, backbone, and character. These angry and abusive administrators become more dangerous than monkeys dancing on powder kegs with a handful of Bic lighters. But, there is one union that gives them much pause. When you say "MACE," they listen. MACE. Don't teach without it.

Aggressive Attorneys Defend MACE Teachers!

By John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD

     For years, MACE Teachers have benefitted greatly from aggressive legal representation from superb attorneys. I attended law school with two of these gentlemen at Mercer University (Preston Haliburton in the fedora hat and Judge Andy Ramay on the right with Norreese Lamar Haynes in front of the MACE Office a few years back). In the photo with me is Steven Frey. He has represented me from time to time when school systems try to take me on. They are helpless! LOL! Finally, Thomas Florio is MACE's General Counsel. He is very aggressive and effective! Attorney Florio's mother is a retired Georgia school teacher. Judge Ramay and Counselor Haliburton both serve as Of Counsel with MACE.

Meet with MACE Leaders. 

Just Call the MACE Office (770.716.2727).

     Dr. John Trotter (L), Chairman of MACE Board of Directors, and Ben Barnes (R), CEO of MACE, were meeting with Smyrna Elementary School teachers in Cobb County on the occasion of this photo.  Dr.  Trotter and Mr. Barnes have had two meetings with Smyrna teachers this school year.  MACE leaders and associates are ready to meet with teachers whenever they are asked.  Just call the MACE Office (770.716.2727) and make an appointment.  MACE meets Georgia teachers literally all over the State.  Unlike GAE and PACE, MACE only represents and defends classroom educators, not administrators and supervisors.  And when you say “MACE,” the administrators listen.  MACE has richly earned its reputation in 23 years.  MACE empowers classroom educators…one member at a time.  The Choice is Clear!  Don’t wait too long to join MACE.  MACE membership is strictly confidential.  

You Cannot Ape MACE!

John R. Alston Trotter, BA, MA, EdD, JD

     Recently I was talking to a friend who manages a Marriott Hotel in North Carolina.  He told me that a teacher was checking out of his hotel and he struck up a conversation with the lady.  The lady told my friend that she was heading back to Georgia, and she also mentioned that she was a school teacher.  My friend asked this teacher if she had heard of MACE.  The woman got excited and told my friend, “MACE saved my job!”  My friend was excited to tell me this.  This story could be repeated countless of times because in MACE’s 22 years, MACE has saved many teachers’ jobs, and MACE has empowered teachers throughout Georgia to do their jobs without a snoopervising and petty and vindictive administrator breathing down their necks.  This is what MACE does.  MACE does not purport to do anything other than to protect and to empower classroom educators…one MACE Member at a time. 

 Dr. Trotter relaxing after a Clayton County picket.

     MACE doesn’t do spelling bee contests for students.  MACE doesn’t give apples to school board members during American Education Week.  MACE doesn’t give teachers cute little tote bags or raffle smart TVs during new teacher orientations.  Quite frankly, MACE is flatly not a tea and crumpet group flitting around and giving out Peanut M&Ms during pre-planning week.  These cute and fluffy activities are not our thing.  MACE doesn’t do this.  Pure and simple…MACE kicks ass, and this is why you came to MACE!  You want MACE to fight for you when an administrator comes attacking you.  Or, when an unruly student and his or her unreasonable parents blame you for all of the student’s shortcoming and actions, and your administrator just sits blithely by and allows them to attack you…and then proceeds to start giving you negative evaluations for the whole damn mess.  This is why you join MACE!  MACE protects and empowers Classroom Educators…one MACE Member at a time, and MACE does this better than any teachers’ union in the South!

     In recent years, people have looked at MACE’s phenomenal success and have tried to mimic MACE’s success.  They apparently think that they can go to the MACE website and use a MACE brochure, steal MACE’s terminology and classic phrases, and simply ape MACE.  They cannot do it.  They do not have the knowledge, understanding, wisdom, chutzpah, insight, or courage to do what MACE has been doing since 1995.  They do not have that magical portfolio, so to speak, to be able to ape MACE.  The depth of MACE’s understanding of educational issues coupled with the ability to break down what is happening in the public schooling process and to identify the motivation for certain crazy actions by superintendents is unmatched and simply cannot not be duplicated.  Phrases like “snoopervision,” “educrats,” “educational sluts” (for superintendents), and “Leadership by inspiration, not intimidation” are MACE originals.  MACE’s original mantra since MACE’s inception in 1995 is this unalterable, inexorable, and unchallenged principle of action:  “You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions.”  This is the MACE Law of Learning.  You will not find this law anywhere except in the literature of MACE.  As the MACE Founder and Chairman of the Board, I have been interviewed and discussed in newspapers, journals, and blogs throughout this country (from Savannah to San Francisco, literally), in Bermuda, public television, and even in the White House Rose Garden (by a reporter from Education Week asking President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan about my stated opinion about removing the staff from a “failing school” but not addressing the real problem, viz., lazy and unmotivated students who refuse to do any work).  MACE has real opinions about public education, and, as Chairman, I am not afraid to state MACE’s positions, and I am called upon for MACE’s position on educational matters by local news media and by far-flung media like The Christian Science Monitor.  In fact, this past week, a production assistant for CBS called me, wanting me to be on an upcoming program about a changing America, including a changing public education.  I told the young lady that if we can work out the logistics, that I would be willing to be on the program.  Why do they call MACE?  Because MACE has a distinct voice and a clarion vision about public education, not because MACE serves the best coffee rolls at a teacher orientation.

     Other organizations and would-be organizations do not have a philosophy of learning.  None.  They do not have a clarion vision of what is being done in the public schooling process and what should be done.  For example, they do not grasp how administrators use the evaluative process manipulatively, retributively, and punitively.  The angry and abusive administrators impose a crazy-ass, stupid, and completely ineffective Five-Step disciplinary process on teachers simply because they are too afraid to deal with the defiant and disruptive students and their irate and irresponsible parents and/or they are too lazy and incompetent to support the teachers in disciplinary matters.  MACE understands what is happening and why it is happening.  MACE clearly understands that order is the first law of the Universe and that teachers have to have order in the classroom.  Order in the classroom cannot be established if the students and their parents perceive (and they do) that the teachers do not have the backing from the school’s administration.

     MACE has richly earned its reputation as the most aggressive and most effective teachers’ union in the entire South.  MACE invented and promulgated the D-QuadA System.  The D-QuadA System stands for Direct Action Against Abusive Administrators.  When MACE perceives that an administrator is abusing a teacher, MACE jumps into action.  MACE pickets the administrator; writes a scorching and enlightening letter to the superintendent or against the superintendent and copies this letter to the elected school board members’ home addresses; writes or assists the teacher in rebuttals against skewed and biased evaluations; writes articles about the situation; files grievances and represents the teachers during the grievance hearings; and/or evaluates the administrator(s) on MACE’s now-famous Administrative NI List on www.theteachersadvocate.com.  MACE guarantees its members in good standing representation in any job action against the teacher.  (Of course, if a teacher comes to join MACE with a train wreck, so the speak, MACE has to evaluate each such case separately.)  I guess you could say that MACE has its own multi-step process.  Administrators seem to get the point.  Therefore, when you say “MACE,” administrators listen.

     MACE’s keen understanding of the educational issues is beyond question (see The MACE Manifesto: The Politically Incorrect, Irreverent, and Scatological Examination of What is Wrong with American Public Education, 2014, 615 pages) and MACE’s rock solid commitment to its MACE Members have been established from the very beginning, as noted by a school board attorney who told a school board very early on in MACE’s existence, “MACE terrorizes the principals.”

     MACE is the real thing.  MACE is the Hope Diamond of “aggressive representation when you need it” (another original MACE phrase which was brazenly stolen by one of these dubious groups).  MACE is not an aluminum ring with mounted glass that you get out of a bubblegum machine when you leave the Piccadilly Restaurant.  MACE is the true diamond, and we know that diamonds can cut steel.  MACE has brought low many administrators who thought that they had reputations of steel, but the MACE Diamond cuts through that false façade like a hot knife cutting through soft butter.  This kind of effectiveness and reputation cannot be copied, mimicked, or imitated.  You cannot ape MACE…no more than a person can drop a teaspoon of brown sugar into faucet water and then call it bourbon or brandy…or drop a slab of baloney in a skillet and call it a Porterhouse Steak. 

     MACE has a sterling reputation for fighting for its members, making things happen, and securing positive results.  MACE.  Don’t teach without it!  MACE is truly the teachers’ union for teachers teaching in tough situations, and MACE is undoubtedly the most aggressive and effective teachers’ union in the entire South!

What has MACE Done for Me Lately?

Note:  Recently one of MACE’s longtime Members posed this question to me, and I took the time to provide her, I think, a thoughtful answer.  We essentially learn by space repetition and sudden impact.  So, I certainly do not mind repeating what MACE stands for and how MACE provides an invaluable service for each MACE Member.  I would certainly not want to see a longtime MACE Member give up his or her membership, and then suddenly need MACE’s services because of a frightful and unexpected and undeserved accusation from a petty and abusive administrator, an irate and irresponsible parent, or a lying, defiant, and disruptive student.  Here is what I wrote back to the teacher, with names (including schools) redacted and changed).  MACE certainly hopes that this Member and all of its Members steadfastly remain MACE Members.  MACE values all of its Members.

Ms. Smith,

I am sorry to hear that you apparently feel so disgruntled about MACE.  I am sure that no one made you join MACE, but perhaps you were feeling a bit more vulnerable in your first three years of teaching at Jameson High School.  I am sure that the student discipline is a bit more challenging at Jameson than Willow Junction High School, but each school has its own personality, quirks, idiosyncrasies, etc.  Although the student discipline may be more challenging at one school (especially with little or no support from the school’s administration) whereas at a school with higher socio-economic status, the parents can be more demanding, capricious, and unreasonable.  

   

                                                                                             

 

MACE speaks before the Atlanta School Board on issues that affect teachers.

MACE is a no frills union.  MACE makes no bones about this.  None whatsoever.  MACE does not put on spelling bee contests each year for students…like the other unions do.  MACE never has.  MACE has its occasional Holiday BASH and Spring Fling to help teachers release the tensions of teaching in terrible situations.  MACE has its Teacher Rights Seminars.  But, putting on the conventions, giving out tote bags and coffee cups, doing the spelling bees, etc., is not the MACE shtick.  You can get this at the other unions/associations…but you won’t get the same kind of protection that MACE provides.  The administrators join and are members of GAE and PAGE.  So, who is going to be defended when there is a conflict?  There is a built-in conflict of interest.  MACE aggressively defends the teachers…from verbal (and physical) and evaluative assaults from petty, small-minded, insecure, vindictive, abusive, and anal-retentive administrators; from irate and irresponsible parents; and from defiant and disruptive students.  And when an administrator starts giving you skewed and biased evaluations because you simply will not give a grade (whether on an assignment or a test) to a student or because the administrator believes that “you give too many bad grades,” you will be wanting MACE to represent you, not GAE or PAGE.  Schools are fraught with this kind of systematic cheating.  Systematic cheating is not just the purview of standardized tests.  And it is this type of cheating that puts much undue pressure on teachers.   It was MACE which first exposed the cheating scandal in both the Atlanta City and DeKalb County school systems.  The media and the Governor’s Office came in a slow second and third.  MACE had been on the streets for years and writing for years about the “miracle growth” on standardized test scores.  In fact, I think that MACE coined the phrase “systematic cheating” on picket signs in Atlanta and DeKalb.

The media contacts MACE on a regular basis.

Now if you want protection and empowerment to do your job, you stay with MACE.  If you want to go to a convention in Savannah or Macon and try to be a big shot in that organization, you got to GAE or PAGE.  But, if you have an issue with a student, a parent, or an administrator, you stick with MACE.  When you let the administration know that you are represented by MACE, you will get a different kind of respect.  I have witnessed administrators “get religion” very quickly when they find out that the teacher on whom they were picking was a MACE Member.  A complete turn-about takes place.  The MACE Membership is strictly confidential.  But, there might very well come a time when you want your administration to know that you are a MACE Member and not the one to be messed with.

The MACE Four Horsemen Picket the Clayton County New Principal at Sequoyah Middle School, Melanie Conner!

2016-2017 is MACE’s 22^nd Year…Protecting & Empowering 

Classroom Educators…One Member at a Time! 

 The South’s Toughest Teachers Union!

By, John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD, Chairman

     MACE was founded in 1995 with a prophetic voice about how teachers were being mistreated, with the declaration in the very first magazine (The Teacher’s Advocate!) that you cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions.  Yes, the MACE mantra was in the first very magazine.  MACE has not changed its message one scintilla.  MACE also decried the State’s already-held obsession for standardized tests, and MACE loudly condemned the feckless and cowardly administrator’s refusal to support teachers, especially in the area of defiant and disruptive students and their irate and irresponsible parents.  MACE has been right on target from the very beginning with the issues plaguing public education.

     Almost from the very beginning (especially after the internet became quite ubiquitous), teachers from all over the country have called, emailed, or written letters to MACE, asking (even begging!) for MACE to come to their states (California, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, New York, Ohio, just to name a few).  One husband, whose wife taught in Columbia, South Carolina, owned a restaurant and promised that the MACE Associates would never have to pay for a meal!  We have heard some sad stories…where teachers just poured their hearts out to MACE, saying, “If we only had MACE here…”  

     There is no doubt that MACE is the toughest union for teachers in Georgia and in the South.  The absolute toughest.  That’s why teachers from throughout the nation keep calling MACE.  Yes, they might be from collective bargaining states, but once the collective bargaining contract is signed with the school board, their picket signs go back into the closet!  But, MACE keeps its picket signs ready to roll…and MACE targets administrators who MACE feels are abusing – one way or another – the teachers.  MACE’s express purpose is to expose the administrators and to get them to back off the MACE Member.  In well over 90% of the time, this is what happens – and when the administrators learn dumber, MACE pours it on them.  MACE also writes scorching and well-written letters which go to the superintendents and also to the school board members at their home addresses.  MACE files grievances on the teacher’s behalf and represents the teacher in the grievance hearings.  MACE addresses teacher issues at the school board meetings, as well as intervenes for the teachers at the central office, and when MACE speaks, they listen.  MACE, as you well know, has its own Administrative Needs Improvement (NI) List on TheTeachersAdvocate.Com.  MACE warns its members, and the administrators hate having their names on MACE’s Needs Improvement List on the internet!

     From MACE’s very beginning, MACE has been accused of “terrorizing” principals.  I remember a school board member telling me back in MACE’s first or second year that the school board attorney told the school board members that MACE “terrorized the principals.”  Well, maybe that is good if these principals have been terrorizing the teachers.  Another teacher told me a few years back that he had a good friend who was a principal in North DeKalb and the superintendent asked his friend if he would mind being transferred to Southwest DeKalb High School.  The principal quipped, “I don’t want to go down to Southwest DeKalb because MACE is down there, and once MACE gets after you, they don’t ever let up.”  That’s funny but it has an element of truth in it.  In 2014, MACE picketed a middle school principal in Clayton County.  In the 2015-2016 school year, this principal transferred to an elementary school in Atlanta.  The teachers in Atlanta began complaining about him almost immediately.  MACE picketed this principal in Atlanta.  Before the school year was over, we heard that the Atlanta school officials walked this principal out of the school building!

     MACE has saved scores and scores of jobs for teachers, and MACE has protected and empowered thousands of classroom educators through the years.  Clayton County tried this past year to terminate the job of a classroom educator in the middle of the school year.  MACE.  Don’t Teach Without It!  © MACE, 2016.

Hey Superintendent Richard Autry,

What in the Hell is Going on Out in Rockdale County?

By John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD

     Most public schools are going to hell in a hand basket.  The students are not made to behave.  In fact, they think that they run the show...and they do!  MACE has been railing against this from MACE's inception 21 years ago.  We have written extensively about such non-sense (hundreds and hundreds of articles...and one 600 plus page book about it, The MACE Manifesto: The Politically Incorrect, Irreverent, and Scatological Examination of What is Wrong with American Public Education).  But I never cease to be amazed at the weakness and stupidity of many school administrators.  

 Richard Autry, Supterintendent

     We have a situation in Rockdale County where a student engages in assault and battery against the teacher, and the superintendent apparently wants the teacher to agree to a five day suspension on the matter.  Yes.  You heard it right.  The student assaults and batters the teacher, and Superintendent Richard Autry apparently wants the teacher to take a five-day suspension on the matter.  (The school system apparently did suspend the student for five days.)  Incredible and unconscionable.  I say "apparently" because we plan on getting it straight from the horse's mouth in short.  Rockdale County.  I remember the days when Dr. Sam King was the superintendent out there, and none of this kind of non-sense would have taken place.  (Dr. King is now the superintendent, I think, in Norfolk, Virginia, but I have known him since his first day as Assistant Principal of Oliver Elementary School in Clayton County nearly 25 years ago.)

     For the record:  The school system has sent the teacher on an undetermined "administrative leave," wanting him to accept this "deal," under threat of termination.   Of course, OCGA 20-2-940(g) allows for the superintendent of schools to suspend a teacher, if the teacher's actions are so egregious that they threaten the mission of the schools, but only for 10 days.  Meantime, by the seventh day, the teacher has to be provided his or her complete due processes rights.  He or she has to be presented a charge letter, outlining the school system's charges against the teacher and also the time and place of the evidentiary hearing as well as giving the teacher notice of his or her right to counsel and right to subpoena powers (relative to documents and witnesses).  None of this has been done in Rockdale County.  The 10 day limit has long since expired.  The teacher still languishes at home.  Things are about to change.  I feel sure.  MACE is now involved.  LOL!  Hey, Mr. Richard Autry, wake up and smell the stink in Rockdale County.  And while you are at it, try abiding by the Georgia Statutory Code. © GTSO, 2016.

Governor Nathan Deal’s Opportunity School Districts Plan is just a Small Part of a Large Overall Conspiracy to Privatize America’s Public Schools.  An Unholy Alliance of Big Business, Big Government, and Big Education is Destroying Local Schools and Local Control of Public Education.  

     What are the Opportunity School Districts all about?  Money.  Pure and simple.  This raw effort to privatize the public schools of Georgia is a small part of a behemoth hostile takeover of the public schools of America by private multinational companies, mainly Microsoft and the Gates Foundation, Pearson Education and the Pearson Foundation, and the Broad Foundation.  Bill Gates and Eli Broad are American billionaires, and Pearson Education is the largest producer of educational materials (textbooks, teacher and student preparation materials, standardized tests, software, etc.) in the world and has been around for nearly 250 years.  The latter is a British company which dominates the educational supplies to American schools and universities, from kindergartens to universities.   

     American Public Education is a nearly one trillion dollar industry, and Pearson a few years back realized quickly how profitable this market was.  In 2008, Bill Gates decided to jump in on the push for Common Core, a nationwide and standardized curriculum of our public schools.  He jumped into this cause full force and became the leader for pushing for the adoption of Common Core by state legislatures and state school boards throughout the country.  He too saw how enormously profitable this could be for Microsoft.  So, he first set out to “buy off” the National Governors’ Conference, pumping millions upon millions of dollars into the Conference’s trough.  He even used Jeb Bush to lobby them hard when the governors initially resisted the notion of a national curriculum because they felt that it infringed upon the local control of education.  Gates spread his billions around profusely among the public education community, “buying off” any potential voices of opposition, whether it was in the colleges of education in universities or from the teacher unions.  He gave millions to NEA and AFT.    

      Bill Gates and Eli Broad had strong connections (because of their donations) with Arne Duncan when he was a political appointee to the superintendency in Chicago, and their connections followed him to Washington, D. C. when President Obama named him the U. S. Secretary of Education.  So, when the U. S. Congress appropriated several billion dollars for public education, leaving the details up to Secretary Duncan about the spreading of the monies to the states in the Race to the Top program, naturally Duncan including in the measures the mandated adoption of Common Core, with the additional mandates for merit pay for teachers (with a strong element of the students evaluating the teachers) and unlimited charter schools in the states.    

     The Opportunity School Districts that the Nathan Deal Administration came up with for so-called “failing schools” is all part of the overall effort to privatize the schools which billionaires Gates and Broad want as well as does Pearson Education.  Governor Deal didn’t just come up with this idea on his own.  He is a bit player in this raw and shameless hostile takeover of our public schools.  If Gates, Pearson, and Broad are the priests in this takeover conspiracy (and it is indeed a conspiracy), Deal is just one of their small acolytes, much smaller than other acolytes like Arne Duncan and Michelle Rhee.    

     There are gross and unconscionable profits in this takeover game.  In 2013, the Los Angeles School System paid more than one billion (yes, billion!) dollars to purchase iPads from Pearson for its students.  The State of Illinois recently paid Pearson $138 million to develop their standardized tests.  In 2014, Pearson commenced to take over the certification and evaluation of the teachers in the State of New York, at a handsome sum of money.  Now Bill Gates has his eyes focused on taking over teacher education.  Again, there are billions of dollars to be made in the preparation of teachers and their subsequent certification and even more money in the standardized evaluation of these teachers.  All of these monies made by these voracious and greedy philanthropic vultures is being made at the expense of turning our children into unimaginative machines and turning our teachers into mindless and robotic serfs.      

     Before the hostile takeover could began, there first had to be a way of narrowly defining successful or failing schools.  This has been done via the standardized tests.  These tests are very, very narrow in focus, only testing the students in the areas of verbal-linguistics and math-analytical.  They test only these two areas of intelligence.  But, we know from the research of Dr. Howard Gardner at the Harvard Graduate School of Education that there are eight or nine or more areas of intelligence, including musical, artistic, vocational-technical, athletic-kinesthetic, dance, drama, social-political, speech, science, humanities, history-civics, etc.  Why not test the children in these areas of intelligence?       

     It is so much easier to just administer to students a quick and dirty, narrowly-focused verbal-linguistics and math-analytical exam, get the result in, and then label the school as a “failing” school no matter how well the community and students love the teachers and principal and no matter how much progress is being made.  Boom!  It’s a “failing” school because it is located in a very impoverished environment and the kids come to school with virtually no readiness skills, but the teachers are performing miracles.  But, if their almighty test scores on these very narrowly-focused exams are not as high as those children in affluent neighborhoods, then Governor Deal wants to turn over these schools to businessmen who do not have a stake in the communities of these schools except to make a quick buck.  They will be complete and utter failures, despite the extra resources that the State will allot to these schools because they are now Governor Deal’s grand project.    

     We were reading a blog the other day that came out in 2014.  Look at this quote:  “Counting on widespread failure of the Common Core State Standards, school districts and parents will be pushed to purchase even more training technology, teachers in low-ranked schools will be fired, and school[s] will be turned over to private management.”  Does this sound familiar?  This is exactly what is happening now.  Collectively, we have allowed these billionaires to define what a “successful” public school is.  Bill and Melinda Gates, the billionaire couple who has been unconscionably and shamelessly allowed to set the entire agenda for public education in the United States probably never even darkened a public school door until way into their adult years.  They precious children also attend[ed[ the wealthy and tony private school, the Lakeside School in Seattle.  Yet, Bill Gates has anointed himself as the Messiah of American Public Education (MAPE).  At least the Pope is appointed by the College of Cardinals, but the MAPE anoints himself.  The MAPE orchestrates this hostile takeover of local public schools by the unholy alliance of Big Business, Big Government, and Big Education.      

For more details about these issues, consult with The MACE Manifesto:  The Politically Incorrect, Irreverent, and Scatological Examination of What is Wrong with American Public Education, a more than 600 page tome that we published in the fall of 2014. © MACE, 2016.

The MACE Mantra is Rock-solid Law, and All So-called “Educational Reformers” (whether they are Billionaires Bill Gates and Eli Broad or their Acololytes like Arne Duncan and Michelle Rhee or Governors like Nathan Deal or Superintendents like Atlanta’s Meria Carstarphen or Politicians like Jeb Bush) are Total Frauds and Charlatans about Public Education or Simply Don’t Know Shit from Shinola when it Comes to Public Education.

    

     You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions.  The MACE Mantra.  This is the law (principle of action) of teaching and learning.  The reason that all (yes, ALL) so-called "school reform" efforts fail (and they ALL fail miserably) is because politicians and educrats are pitifully ignorant of this law...or for political expediency choose to ignore this law.  But, it is a law like the law of gravity or the second law of thermodynamics.  Laws are inexorable, and if you ignore laws, you do so at your own peril.

    

     This has been the MACE Mantra since MACE was founded in 1995.  In fact, this statement, with a little more embellishment, was bluntly stated in the first issue of The Teacher's Advocate! magazine in 1995. We also railed against the worshipping of the false gods of public education, the standardized tests.  All so-called "school reform" efforts have failed…for over 100 years.  ALL.  Over 100 years of abject failure. And they are ALL doomed to fail until the politicians and educrats understand and respect this law (principle of action) of teaching and learning.    

     Teachers are not the blame for the woes in public education.  The rank lack of support and respect for the teachers is the problem.  The fact that teachers are no longer allowed to control their own classroom is the problem.  Teachers are told what to teach, when to teach, and how to teach.  We have a culture of snoopervision.  Angry, abusive, petty, myopic, and petulant administrators engage in a sickening minutia of snoopervision of the teachers when the truth of the matter is that the administrator needs to get the hell of the teacher’s classroom and simply get out of the way.  Day after day, we have calls and visits from teachers whose students, by all measurements, are doing very well and much higher than the state average on the statewide exams.  But, the insecure and, quite frankly, the crazy-ass administrators continue to breathe down the teachers’ necks, driving the creative and self-motivated teachers to simply leave this noble profession.     

     I received a call just the other day from a first-rate, top-tier teacher (in fact, Teacher of the Year last year) in a small school system in middle Georgia.  This school system should be grateful for this teacher teaching in this rural county, but the first year principal seems determined to find anything wrong with the teacher – maybe his daily goals written on the board were not in sufficient detail or he didn’t outline in enough detail in his daily lesson plans which activities the students would be working on.  This is an experienced teacher with years of successful performance.  The students love him and so do the parents.  Ahhhh.  This must be the problem.  This young, first-year whippersnapper principal has to bring this popular teacher down a notch or two.  This popular teacher just by his presence apparently makes this insecure principal nervous.  He wants to shine more but this popular teacher is apparently taking some of his shine, so thinks the principal.  So, he evidently thinks, “Let me get his ass on the evaluation process.”  So, the principal proceeds to attempt to torment the teacher.  We see it all the time.  The Teacher Keys Effectiveness System (TKES) is the evaluation tool that so many small-minded and ignorant administrators use in a manipulative, retributive, and punitive manner to wreak havoc and stress on any teacher whom they do not like or whom they are nervous around.  This is what I see going on in this instant case of which I speak.  Right in the heart of Georgia.  More bullshit from ignorant-ass administrators who need to simply shut up and get the hell out the teachers’ way.  Let the teachers teach!    

     So, what really are the true problems in public education?  First, the angry and abusive administrators are huge problems.  They simply need to support the teachers when it comes to classroom discipline.  They need to follow through on sure and significant disciplinary measures against the students whose unruly behavior in the classrooms causes material and substantive disruption of the learning processes for those children who want to learn.  Second, these defiant and disruptive students are ruining our public schools.  They have to be dealt with by the administrators post haste.  If they refuse to straighten up, then they have to be shipped out.  They cannot remain in the regular school environment.  The thugs have to be removed from the regular school environment.  And, if they refuse to behave in an alternative school setting, the school boards simply have to expel these so-called students.  Let the courts deal with them.  Thirdly, the irate and irresponsible parents have to be dealt with firmly.  Administrators cannot cower to crazy parents.  They come to the schools raising hell and trying to blame anybody and everybody for their children’s academic failures and lack of proper decorum.  But, when we see their railings and rankle, we see where their children get their behavior.  Lastly, the systematic cheating on grades has to stop.  We obviously know about systematic cheating on standardized tests (thanks to the Atlanta, DeKalb, and Dougherty school systems), but we are talking about forcing teachers to give students grades which they did not earn.  We are talking about telling teachers that no students can receive less than a 60 or 70 on a semester grade.  We are talking about forcing teachers to allow students to re-take exams or to turn in papers late.  We are talking about using the dreaded TKES evaluation process to mark down a teacher because “the teacher fails too many students.”  No, the students fail themselves.  The teacher just records the grades.  Systematic cheating on grades has become epidemic in Georgia and in America in the public schools.    

     So, in summary, if we really want to improve public education, we need to forget all of the shit that Bill Gates and his take-over (and this is what it is…a hostile take-over of the public schools) comrades and comlites (like Nathan Deal) are trying to force on the public.  Their goal?  It’s pretty obvious.  Make as many schools to be labeled as “failures” so that this schools can be privatized.  Bill Gates and Eli Broad are philanthropic vultures.  Gates has shown that he will spend millions buying off opposition to his Common Core.  These guys have played complete hardball to take over the public schools.  It is their agenda that is driving everything in public schools now…whether it is making the students’ test scores account for 50% of teachers’ evaluation scores in Georgia or whether it is the U. S. State Department’s mandate that a state not only has to have this “merit pay” element in place but also has to have a provision of unlimited charter schools in the state, if that state wants to receive their share of the “bribe” of millions of dollars from the U. S. State Department.    

    

     Don’t let all of this “school reform” shit fool you.  It’s not about “reform”; it’s about the money.  If we really want to improve public schools in Georgia and in other states, then we need to deal with deal with (1) Angry & Abusive Administrators; (2) Defiant & Disruptive Students; (3) Irate & Irresponsible Parents; and (4) Systematic Cheating on Standardized Tests and Daily Grades. © MACE, 2016.

When MACE Discontinues a Teacher’s Membership…

Atlanta Superintendent, Meria Carstarphen, in Apparent Panic Mode, Does What all Educational Sluts do…She Blames the Teachers for the Students’ Refusal to Learn!

About the Georgia Teacher Keys Effectiveness System (TKES): It is a Matter of Control. Now the Students are in Complete Control, and Now the Teachers Have to Adjust to Their Wishes and Accommodate Their Styles. Metaphorically Speaking, Yes, the Prisoners are Really Running the Prison!

By John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD

     I imagine back to the late 1960s and the early 1970s when I was in high school and taking classes from the likes of Ms. Gibson, Mrs. Hayes, Mrs. Crie, Col. Jenkins, and others. I did not have Mrs. Bland for Senior English, but she was legendary. It was almost impossible to make an A in her class. She was very tough. You had to work very hard to get out of that class with a decent grade, but her former students rave about how good of an English teacher she was. I don’t know if a single one of these great teachers would last in today’s teacher environment. I don’t think that they would want to survive. They, I think, would lay aside public school teaching before suffering the indignities that teachers have to endure today. Teachers today are snoopervised by insultants (not consultants), told what they can teach, when they can teach, and how many mediocre or poor grades they they can issue, and then they are told that the State will hold them responsible if a student (and I use this word loosely) simply refuses to do any school work which today is very prevalent among these so-called students.

     In the old days, the student had to accommodate himself to the teacher. He had to adjust his way of learning to the teacher’s style of teaching. All of today’s mandates placed upon the teacher to differentiate his or her instruction is bullsh-t and counterproductive. The ludicrous mandates for teachers to be more student-centered are also bullsh-t. These crazy-a$$ mandates undermine the authority of the teacher and makes the teacher a solicitous fool at the mercy of mendacious children and miscreant teenage thugs who have no intention of learning.

     Let’s face the hard facts: All of the disingenuous angst and wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth have nothing to do with motivated students. The motivated students will learn in any type of teaching environment, whether is is 100% teacher lectures, teacher-directed research, games, role-playing, etc., or any combination of teaching methods. But, the lazy and completely unmotivated and determined-not-to-learn-but-simply-disrupt-the-classrom-environment-students and their parents will look for any excuse to blame the teachers for the abysmal lack of effort of these students so-called students. The stupid and scared and spineless politicians and will hasten to blame the teachers for the failure of the parents and their children. The onus and responsibility of the so-called students’ abject failure to learn should be placed squarely in the laps of their indulgent and irresponsible parents. The teachers can only teach the children; they can’t learn the students, despite any perverse and foolish TKES evaluation system in place. An attorney can only defend a client; he cannot acquit the client. A medical doctor can only treat a patient; she cannot heal the patient.

     Giving the students who are determined not to learn the power to evaluate the teacher and counting this evaluation-retaliation score and the students’ scores on a standardized test as 50% of the teacher’s total evaluation score is a perverted and evil notion that is the result of the muddled and mindless thinking (or, rather, the lack thereof) of moronic educational dumba$$e$ (EDAs). This empty-headed thinking will decapitate the teaching profession in Georgia…just like Governor Nathan Deal’s Opportunity School Districts (OSDs) will decapitate public schools in Georgia and only grease the palms of this political supporters. This is why MACE was on the streets in March of this past year in front of the Georgia Capitol, calling Deal “Governor ISIS.” He is by far the worst public education governor in the history of Georgia. The worst. He is a step-and-fetch-it child for Bill Gates’s and Eli Broad’s not-too-subtle attempt to to dismantle and destroy public education. He is the billionaires’ willing an excited acolyte. Maybe he too will be rewarded with a “consultancy” within the billionaires’ entangling largess and labyrinth when he exits the Governor’s Mansion.. Always follow the money. The teachers are pitiable pawns in this power game and this money grab. © JRAT, January 18, 2016.

MACE picketed Mr. Rasheen Booker last year when he was at Morrow Middle School in Clayton County. When he moved to Fain Elementary in Atlanta, teachers there were clamoring for a picket. MACE obliged.

Again, Booker Must Go!

MACE recently picketed the embattled principal of the DeKalb School of the Arts, Susan McCauley. This picket drew great interests from the students, teachers, and parents.

 McCauley Must Go!

On Saturday, November 8, 2015, MACE had another terrific Teachers' Right Seminar! These seminars are very informative and popular. The food and fellowship are aleays great! Don't miss the next seminar this coming spring.

MACE Strikes at Clayton County's Kendrick Middle School! Principal Kimberly Dugger Draws MACE's First Picket for 2015-2016. Bad Teaching Conditions = Bad Learning Conditions!

If You Go Straight To YouTube, Or Use Google, You Need To Type In MACELIVETV Without Any Spaces.

The MACE Thesis

By Dr. John R. Alston Trotter 

     You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions. Assuming that you can is rank stupidity and results in environmental chaos in the schools. The reason that so many of our public schools are chaotic and full of shit today is because legislators, policymakers, school board members, superintendents, educrats, and administrators actually and absurdly think that they can usher in “achievement” (if we deign to call increases on standardized test scores “achievement”) without respecting teachers and empowering them to do their jobs. They threaten, intimidate, and generally treat teachers like dog shit in their quests to increase “achievement.” This results in nothing more than a massive and wholesale systematic cheating on all grades – not just on the standardized tests – and the lowering of academic standards and rigor throughout the corpus of American Public Education. Demigods are put in positions of power, and they terrorize teachers on a daily basis, resulting in a large segment of the best and brightest leaving the teaching field. When the teaching field once again becomes a profession, then these creative and energetic souls who refuse to be treated like dog shit may return.

     When you treat teachers like dog shit, public education will carry the stench of dog shit. Right now, sadly, public education is full of dog shit. Everywhere you step, you step in this mess. Those educational demigods who arrogantly traipse around public education seem to be immune from the smell. They are oblivious to this cankering shit that is all over their metaphorical shoes – the same shoes that trample upon the dignity and humanity of the classroom educators, creating this massive mess. By catering to the irate and irresponsible parents and by coddling their rude, defiant, and disruptive children, they have created horrid and unimaginative teaching conditions. They have ignored MACE’s Law of Learning: “You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions.” This is how they have wittingly or unwittingly created chaos in our public schools and most especially in our urban public schools. © Big Daddy Publishers, May 23, 2014.

Teacher Keys Effectiveness System (TKES), Georgia Teacher Evaluation System (GTEP), etc., are Useless if the Student Discipline is Totally out of Control!

MACE Pickets Atlanta’s Superintendent, Meria Carstarphen, Stating, “Send Carstarphen Back to Texas!”

Pickle Deal’s “Education Plan”

By John Rhodes Alston Trotter, EdD, JD 

    It is painfully obvious that Governor Nathan Deal doesn’t know his ass from deep centerfield when it comes to public education. His so-called “education plan” should be pickled but never used. It is also painfully obvious that a junior staffer must have banged together his so-called “education plan” that is outlined on the Governor’s website. Three of the first five points are the same worn-out global dribble that was spouted by Presidents George H. W. Bush and William Clinton in Goals 2000 before the hellish and ineffective No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top programs were mistakenly ushered in under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. None of the former global goals were realized, and the latter two programs just wreaked havoc among a profession that formerly was collegial and nurturing within its nature and in its scope.

    These punitive so-called “education reform” programs which punish the so-call “failing schools” rather than analyzing what is causing this systematic failure of low performance have been dismal flops, and yet Governor Deal is jumping on the band wagon of threatening to engage in educational deconstructionism, not because there is any clear evidence that charter schools drawing from the same student population significantly increases achievement (they don’t) nor because there is any history of such (there is not, not even in Milwaukee or Baltimore which were the early adopters of such). Quite frankly, the so-called “plan” that Governor Deal has on his official website was obviously handed over to a junior staffer to put together, and this junior staffer apparently doesn’t know the difference between pronouns “that” and “who” (“Increase the percentage of teachers and administrators that are considered effective[.]” Emphasis added). The half-baked call for more students to take a “STEM” curriculum is simply another educational fad which will short-change our students in the humanities, history, civics, arts, music, and physical education.

We know that we coined the term “snoopervision” and we are 99% sure that we coined “educrats.” (We never saw it used before we started using it over 20 years ago.) Now we offer you a new one…Governor Nathan ISIS. Governor ISIS is determined to decapitate Georgia’s public schools.

    There is not a scintilla of seminal thought in the Governor’s so-called “education plan.” Just a quick perusal of The MACE Manifesto: The Politically Incorrect, Irreverent, and Scatological Examination of What is Wrong with American Public Education (Trotter & Haynes, Big Daddy Publishers, 2014, 615 pages) will show just how silly and shallow and wrong the Governor’s so-called “education plan” is. The above book points out that “you cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions,” and yet Governor Deal is using his so-called education plan to issue a not-so-veiled threat to Georgia’s teachers. He starts out with the wrong premise, viz., that students are not learning because teachers are not teaching. As The MACE Manifesto points out, teachers can teach students but teachers cannot “learn” the students just like physician can treat their patients but they cannot “heal” their patients, and the attorneys can defend their clients but their cannot “acquit” them.

    The Governor falls into the same trap of trying to treat today’s educational problems as technical breakdowns (the teacher is not effectively teaching mentality) rather than motivational breakdowns. The MACE Manifesto explodes this notion in a rather long and informative chapter, “On Learning and MACE’s DAM Theory of Learning.” This chapter goes into great detail about how three essential elements are required to be in place before effective learning can take place and virtually every so-called “reform” effort ignores these essential elements, including Governor Deal’s: (1) Discipline, (2) Aptitude, and (3) Motivation. Not all students will learn the same amount of information at the same pace because there are varying degrees of discipline, aptitude, and motivation within each student at each school. It is obvious that these concepts are foreign to the junior staffer(s) who apparently pulled together the Governor’s so-called “education plan.” To actually implement any form of pay plan that is tied to the performance of a teacher’s students to a standardized test is educationally stupid and unconscionable. A system of “merit pay” or ‘value-added evaluations” do not work simply because students are not inanimate chunks of cookie dough floating innocently and harmlessly down a conveyor belt. The MACE Manifesto has another an explosive and lengthy chapter on “merit pay” (“Merit Pay for Teachers: More Bullshit from Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and Arne Duncan,” Chapter 35).

We were way ahead of the curve in The MACE Manifesto in understanding the motivation of mandating the implementation of norm-referenced tests all over the country. By definition, on normed tests, one-half the students score “below the national average.” The motivation of the proponents of Common Core is the privatization of public schools. These folks don’t give a rat’s ass about the kids. It’s all about the money, and we have been boldly saying this for years at MACE. Governor Nathan ISIS is determined to decapitate public education in Georgia…starting with private businesses taking over the so-called “failing schools.”

The Governor’s stated plan to turn over “failing schools” to outside groups which will come in with their hyped-up charter school “opportunities” looks more like a plan to give financial “opportunities” to his supporters to feed on the public trough. This stated desire to turn over our schools to these businesses reminds me much of another chapter in The MACE Manifesto: “The Gates of Hell have Prevailed against the Local Control of Public Education! Rants and Fulminations against Bill Gates, an Anti-christ of American Public Education!” This unfettered rush to undermine and destroy the local control of public education is unconscionable and reprehensible. Doesn’t it seem likely that if nearly all so-called “failing schools” come from schools with students from the same socio-economic-cultural milieu that the problem does not reside with ineffective teaching but with endemic problems beyond a sophomoric attempt to blame the problem on teachers? Why not, as The MACE Manifesto calls for, free up the teachers from ridiculous and rigid mandates so that they can be creative with these unmotivated students, hopefully inspiring these unmotivated students to become learners? After all, if the Governor turns over these schools to private businesses, he is not going to strap these new “educators” in straightjackets of the likes of the draconian and counter-productive TKES. If these new schools of “choice” or “charter” or whatever you want to call them are so wonderful without the rigid, inflexible, and suffocating mandates and rules, then why not free up all of the public schools in Georgia with a fresh wind of freedom and creativity? What is good for the goose is certainly good for the gander.

Governor Nathan Deal is not a friend of public education in Georgia. He wants to privatize education in Georgia. Nathan Deal is dangerous. Governor ISIS wants to decapitate public education in Georgia. © JRAT, 2015.

Praise for

The MACE Manifesto…

“Dr. Trotter and Mr. Haynes are true friends of public school teachers, and I know that when they write or speak on public education, everyone needs to take note. Every educator, young and old, and all politicians – legislators, school board members, and even superintendents – need to read The MACE Manifesto!” – The Honorable Darryl W. Jordan, Georgia State Representative

“A gripping, riveting read.” – Attorney Preston Haliburton

“John and Norreese are politically incorrect but are absolutely correct on public education!” – The Honorable Sandra G. Scott, Georgia State Representative

“As a former PTA President at a public elementary school, a public middle school, and a public high school, I appreciate the fact that The MACE Manifesto addresses the need for discipline in our public schools.” – Michael Robinson

“Dr. Trotter and Mr. Haynes are dealing with the unpleasant realities of today’s public schools – and, as a teacher, I can vouch for this!” – Dr. Jose Helena

“As a classroom educator, my life was changed by Dr. Trotter and MACE – and now we have The MACE Manifesto, the tour-de-force on public education!” – James (Gunny) Yawn

“Dr. Trotter and Mr. Haynes have been fighting for teachers for years, and as a son of two Georgia school teachers and as a Vice Chairman of a Georgia public school board, I know the importance of the message of The MACE Manifesto!” – Attorney J. Anderson Ramay

“The MACE Manifesto is the inconvenient truth about what goes on in our public schools – and especially in our urban schools. I know. I spent my whole career as a teacher in the Birmingham and Atlanta schools.” – Charles Melton

“From my educator’s perspective, The MACE Manifesto is the Bible on public education!” – Bo T. Oates

“As a former teacher and a former school board member, I am excited that a book finally tells it like it is on public education.” – Linda Crummy

“This ain’t chicken soup!” – J. B. Stanley

“Each page is RADIOACTIVE!” – Benjamin Barnes

“The unvarnished and sad truth about public education today.” – R. L. Moore

“I spent my career as a teacher and an administrator in two urban schools systems, and Dr. Trotter and Mr. Haynes are right on target in The MACE Manifesto.” – Mark Harris

“As a former teacher and a current administrator, I know the importance of good teaching conditions, and this is what The MACE Manifesto is all about.” – Lee Carter

“Yes, we are going to endorse our own book. It is an impressive manifesto. We’re not falsely modest. In this educational treatise, you will gain many insights about how American Public Education operates. You will learn about how newly appointed superintendents come to town with ropes around their necks, barely escaping the last school system alive but the search firm pimps put cheap perfume on them, recycle them, and sell these educational sluts to other unsuspecting school boards.

“You will learn how the publishing and software industries (most notably Pearson out of London, England and Bill Gates of Microsoft) are driving the American Public Education agenda with an indoctrinating, watered-down, dim-witted, drivel-type, homogenized, and nationalized curriculum called Common Core which is aligned with the values of UNESCO and not necessarily with the values of the local community.

“We show you how the standardized tests have become the false gods of American Public Education and how three essential elements for learning are completely ignored by the ‘school deformers’ – discipline, aptitude, and motivation.

“We deal with subjects that others either don’t know shit about or have parakeet balls and are afraid to broach.

“You will understand that trying to find a school administrator who supports teachers to the hilt and demands that students behave in the classroom is like trying to capture dinosaur farts and bottling them for the Smithsonian. They are just that rare!

“You get it all here…with panache and street cred. Forget hollow platitudes. We give it to you straight…right in the gut!” – Dr. John Trotter and Norreese Haynes

What in the Hell is The MACE Manifesto?

     The MACE Manifesto is a gonzoistic explanation of what is really wrong with the institution known as American Public Education (APE) – with no holds barred. In the parlance of professional wrestling, it may resemble a Texas Cage Match. A gonzo style of writing is written in the first person, uses the vernacular, is loaded with details, and makes no high-minded and hypocritical claims of objectivity – and, quite frankly, doesn’t give a rat’s ass whom it might offend. In fact, Trotter and Haynes state clearly that they intend to offend.

Trotter and Haynes bewail the teaching conditions in America’s public schools, especially in the urban schools. Unlike the common and trite analyses of the so-called school reformers, Trotter and Haynes do not lay the blame of the ills of public education at the feet of the classroom educators but at the feet of the “numbskull” and “dumbass” politicians, policymakers, superintendents, and administrators. They go a bit light on the elected school board members, describing them as too naïve to the games of the school system’s “sluts,” “pimps,” and “bitches” who, according to Trotter and Haynes, have razed any common sense in the school systems, causing the systems to become mental and moral wastelands.

Trotter and Haynes are not calling for more school “reformation” but for a complete return to the ways of the days which produced literate citizens who, upon graduating from high school, could write cogent paragraphs, deftly multiply and divide numbers in their heads at cash registers when buying something, know the difference between George Washington and the Revolutionary War and Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, and generally were culturally literate. The Cromwellian Revolution of School Reform of the last 30 years has resulted in the teachers being denuded and dethroned in their own classrooms. The teachers need to be returned to power. They need to be the kings and queens of their classrooms once again. Order needs to be restored, and when order is returned to the classrooms, learning will take place.

Readily acknowledging that public education is on life-support, Trotter and Haynes assert that it is tragically sick largely because of the asinine rules and regulations that the State and Federal governments have intravenously administered to the collective school corpus. The most recent invasive viruses injected into the collective school corpus in America have come about by the ideas pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and vulture philanthropists and denizens like Bill Gates and Eli Broad and their devoted acolytes, U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his sidekick and educational charlatan, Michelle Rhee.

Trotter and Haynes make a strong case for detoxifying public education in the United States with a series of metaphorical enemas. “The real problem with public education is that the teachers have been stripped of their power and authority in the classroom – over both curriculum and classroom discipline,” they contend. They often quote the MACE Mantra: “You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions.”

Purchase Now The MACE Manifesto!

     If you want to purchase The MACE Manifesto, you can write to Big Daddy Publishers, Post Office Box 71911, Newnan, GA 30271. This manifesto is over 600 pages and has nearly 200 photos. It should cost $60.00 but Big Daddy Publishers has agreed to sell this manifesto for only $30.00 plus $3.00 for shipping and handling. If you are a MACE Member, the book is just $15.00!  (All checks need to be made out to Big Daddy Publishers, LLC.)

Big Daddy Publishers did what other publishers were probably too nervous to do…publish this manifesto with all of its edginess. This manifesto will prove to be a “timeless classic” on public education and is indeed “a gripping, riveting read,” as Attorney Preston Haliburton describes it. Trotter and Haynes take on the richest person in the world, Bill Gates, who, along with his wife Melinda, is more responsible for pushing the Common Core Standards (as well as unlimited Charter Schools and Merit Pay Evaluations for teachers with their students’ test scores largely factoring into the teachers’ final evaluation) on the public schools nationwide, thus nationalizing and homogenizing this mushy and feckless curriculum and enabling his company, Microsoft, and other companies to reap financial dividends thereof. Trotter and Haynes tear into Bill Gates and his Common Crap Curriculum perhaps like no one else in the country. Literally, Gates has given millions upon millions to other unions and colleges of education throughout the country, effectively shutting down criticism from these organizations.

Trotter and Haynes took on other public figures and public officials, squarely calling a spade a spade. They did not boringly and placidly measure their words. “We told the truth about certain public officials and public figures and let the chips fall where they fell,” quipped Dr. Trotter. “I had so many lies told on me when I was an elected official,” laughed Mr. Haynes, “that we thought that it was time that the truth be told, and truth is the absolute defense against libel.”

Trotter and Haynes outline eight plagues of American Public Education which pretty much sum up all the problems. These plagues are: (1) Irate & Irresponsible Parents; (2) Defiant & Disruptive Students; (3) Angry & Abusive Administrators; (4) Deification of Standardized Tests; (5) School-Directed Systematic Cheating; (6) Common Crap Curriculum & Mushy Thinking; (7) Centralization & Homogenization of the Schools; and (8) Inordinate, Onerous, & Inane Paperwork.

About MACE…  

      MACE was founded in 1995. The MACE Mantra has been from the beginning: You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions. And, yes, MACE does devour administrators who abuse teachers. MACE does not allow administrators or supervisors to join, and if a teacher becomes an administrator or supervisor, this person can no longer remain a MACE Member. MACE is not mad at them. MACE just has to make sure that there is no conflict-of-interests. This is a major reason that the other unions are so ineffective. They have built-in-conflicts and don’t really know who they are representing. MACE protects and empowers Classroom Educators…one member at a time.

Big Daddy Publishers, Post Office Box 71911, Newnan, GA 30271 ∙ 770/895-6627 ∙ BigDaddyPublishers.Com ∙ Printed in the U. S. A.

Another Satisfied DeKalb Teacher Praises Norreese Haynes and MACE Staff!

Greetings,

Dr. Trotter, I wanted to take this time out to express my heart-felt gratitude for the sincere and focused dedication exemplified by the Teacher's Advocate Union (MACE).  Your team is truly an inspiration and fight wholeheartedly for all teachers who are a part of the organization.  With all that teachers encounter during this 21st century, your team is not only highly recommended, but also commended.

I have had a recent issue where a large metro district repeatedly reported me as being "non-renewed" when this was far from the truth.  When administrators usurp their authority superstitious things like this happen.  I have undergone unemployment for nearly three years as a result of this district making such a vicious report.  Thanks to the aid of Mr. Norreese Haynes and the entire MACE team, this issue was resolved, thus allowing stability in my career once again.  Mr. Haynes has proven himself to be competent in his approach and uses good strategies in that he has cleared my name, and he now moves for me to attain my Clear Renewable Certificate.  Representatives from GAE (ODE) simply explained to me that the school district refused to move on my behalf because I was "non-renewed."  The representative, whose name I will not disclose, advised me to simply return to my current district and resign.  I was appalled.  To think that I was paying an organization $48.00 on a monthly basis only to find that they are not willing to fight for my cause.  Thank for MACE’s Mr. Haynes who displayed a great deal of empathy and immediately began to get things in motion.

My name is cleared and I am confident that Mr. Haynes will continue until our final desired result is attained. 

Thank you so much for all that you have done.  If there is any educator who needs help in putting up a fight, MACE is your team.  Don't leave home without them.  There is no need to be swindled by other organizations that do not have your best interest at heart.  The truth of the matter is…MACE, "they got your back.” 

D. Towns

DeKalb Educator

Good afternoon Dr. [John]Trotter, Mr. [Jeff] Cox, Mr. [Darryl] Plenty, and Mr. [Norreese] Haynes:

    Dr. Collette Keeton, a member of MACE since 2006, praises MACE for standing in the gap for her. She thanked Dr. Trotter and Jeff Cox, writing: "Thank you, MACE, for filing my first grievance in April of 2008 and anohter one in October of 2010. Without your assistance and blessings from the Most High, I do not know where I would be right now. You are truly a Teacher's Best Advocate!"

Men in Black Have Nothing on MACE, Says Grateful Member!

Retiring Douglas County Teacher Praises the MACE Teachers’ Union

    “To my dearest MACE:  After 30 years in the classroom, I am retiring from teaching and beginning a new life.  I have taught over 6000 children in the Douglas County School System, many of whom have been the children of the children I taught. Knowing three generations within some families has created very powerful relationships and feelings of trust that few other jobs allow.  Several former students are now close friends who will last a lifetime. Parting will truly be difficult.... briefly.

     “I have been a MACE member since very near the beginning.  If Dr. Trotter was going to leave GAE to develop a better organization, I was going to follow. Over the many years since, I have been involved in only one grievance (as a witness) and was astounded at the brilliance of Dr. Trotter and his team to reduce opponents to whimpering, stuttering, dumbfounded fools.  ZAP! ZING! WHAMMO!  It would come hard, fast, and with unquestionable clarity.  I have never had to bring one of the MACE team into a meeting with an administrator or parent because the mere mention of that as my next step has solved problems.  I have played that card only three times over the years (seeking advice from MACE beforehand) because someone in authority wanted a grade changed to make an outrageously annoying parent go away.  Each time the 'veiled threat' from a weak principal instantly vaporized.

 Note from Dr. Trotter:  “Thanks you, Kathryn!  It is the unsolicited thank you notes and letters from members like you which make us feel so good about what we are doing for the dedicated teachers of Georgia.  Please enjoy your well-earned retirement!  You have the highest respect from your children and colleagues – and from the MACE Staff as well!  I remember when several of us guys on the MACE Staff first met with you and several other teachers in your classroom many years ago!  Please stay in touch with us!

Why You Came To MACE!

By Dr. John R. Alston Trotter 

You didn’t come to MACE because we give you a tote bag or do spelling bees for the children or sell you auto insurance at an alleged discount. We don’t give out tote bags. We have never put on a spelling bee contest for kids. We don’t sell auto insurance. Heck, we don’t even endorse any political candidates. You vote like you want to vote. We don’t care. We don’t even agree in the MACE Office about political candidates or parties! But, we do agree about this: Teachers should be respected, esteemed, and supported by the administrators to do their jobs in the classroom. We know that you cannot have good learning conditions until your first have good teaching conditions. This is an inexorable law. It can no more be set aside or ignored than the Law of Gravity.

You came to MACE because you are frustrated with how public school teachers are now blamed for all the ills in public education. Students aren’t motivated to learn. You are blamed. Students are defiant and disruptive in the classroom. You are blamed. Parents are irate and irresponsible and frustrated with their own children’s lack of effort. You are blamed. In fact, you came to MACE because you are tired of being blamed by the angry and abusive administrators for the failure of the students who refuse to learn and who refuse to behave. You are tired of being badgered and harassed by these angry, insecure, petty, ignorant, and abusive administrators. We don’t blame you. You came to the right organization. You came to MACE.

MACE simply exists to protect and empower classroom educators…one member at a time. You came to MACE because you have heard of the reputation of MACE. You have heard that MACE doesn’t play, that MACE kicks metaphorical ass, and that MACE tightens up the mean-ass and petty administrators. You have heard correctly. You came to MACE because you know that better than any other organization in the State of Georgia, MACE is able to tighten up your angry and abusive administrator. You know that there is not another union, organization, or association (or whatever you want to call it) for teachers in Georgia which is as effective as MACE in legally scaring the heck out of administrators who are already terrorizing you. This is why you came to MACE. You came to MACE because you are tired of being tired and tired of being afraid and tired of being frustrated. You came to MACE because you want MACE to protect you, to empower you, and to scare the dog shit out of your abusive administrators. Welcome to MACE! © Big Daddy Publishers, 2014.

MACE is Different than Other Teacher Unions!

Atlanta’s Beverly Hall, Among Others, Indicted on Good Friday! What is Atlanta’s Current Superintendent, Erroll Davis, Doing to Change the Operational Conditions for the APS Teachers? Not Much! He and His Minions Still Refuse to Comply with the State’s Complaints Law!

Another happy MACE member after a grievance hearing... this one in Bibb County (Macon, Georgia).

 MACE Benefactor and Teacher Advocate, Daniel D. Trotter, Sr. Passes!

       Mr. Trotter joined the U. S. Navy during the height of World War II and saw horrific action as a teenager.  He married the love of his life, Jo Ann Frazier, toward the end of World War II when he returned Stateside on a mandatory leave because his ship was blown up by a Japanese Kamikaze plane.  After the war, Mr. Trotter matriculated at Auburn University, graduating in 1948.  Daughter Patti had been born in 1947.   In 1948, the young Trotter family moved to Nashville where Dink entered Peabody College/Vanderbilt University.  Upon earning his Master’s degree at Peabody, the young Trotter family moved to Dasher, Georgia, a little community outside of Valdosta where Mr. Trotter taught and coached at Dasher Bible School (now Georgia Christian School), making many long-life friends at Dasher.  In 1950, the young Trotter family returned to Dink’s hometown of Columbus, Georgia where Dr. William Henry Shaw, Superintendent of Muscogee County School District, immediately offered Mr. Trotter a principal job.  Mr. Trotter (or Coach Trotter) wisely turned it down to accept a teaching/coaching job at Columbus Jr. High School/Jordan Vocational High School.  Son Dan was born in 1950 and youngest child Johnny was born on New Year’s Eve, 1953.  (Mr. Trotter named “Johnny” after his best friend, Johnny Rhodes, who was killed in January of 1945 while fighting in the Battle of the Bulge.)  Mr. Trotter later became Assistant Principal at Jordan and Principal at Daniel Jr. High School.   He retired from the school system in 1981, after having been blessed with thousands of cherished friendships and associations of colleagues and former students throughout his career as an educator.  After retiring from the school system, Mr. Trotter accepted a job as the Executive Director of the Columbus Area YMCAs.  (He had earlier turned down a highly publicized offer from Columbus Mayor Jack Mickle to be the Director of Public Safety for Columbus, Georgia.)     

       Not only was Mr. Trotter a great “School Man,” he most essentially was a Christian, a Man of Faith.  Many a person, especially in a time of need, turned to “Dink” for help, and their needs were met and without fanfare.  He was the essence of the benevolent man.  He served his church for about 50 years as both a Deacon and an Elder.  If Dennie Trotter was your friend, you had a friend indeed!      

       In 2011, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp awarded Mr. Trotter “Georgia Citizen of the Year” and Mr. Trotter was similarly honored by Resolution in the Georgia Houses of Representatives the same year.  Mr. Trotter was respected by all and adored by many.     

        Since the inception of MACE in 1995, Daniel D. Trotter, Sr., (aka “D. D. T.”) was one of MACE’s most reliable supporters.  Through the years, he financially supported the young teacher’s union (now a veritable force to be reckoned with) in a quiet and steady manner, knowing that he too had always been a “teacher advocate.”  For over a dozen years, Mr. Trotter served on the MACE Board of Directors, and the existence of MACE today is attributed greatly to the support and wisdom provided by Mr. Trotter and by the example that he set in empowering teachers through the years to do their jobs.  This MACE Conference Room was named the Daniel D. Trotter Conference Room in a ceremony in 2011. Mr. Trotter is survived by his wife, Jo Trotter, his three children, Patti Trotter, Daniel D. Trotter, Jr., and Dr. John R. Alston Trotter, and by many grandchildren, great grandchildren, and a large extended family. 

 

Glenn Brock…the Money Man of Georgia School Systems, Heh?

 At MACE, We Don't Play!

Dr. John Trotter of MACE Blasts Superintendent Edmond Heatley For Employing All Of His Family Members In The Clayton County Public Schools!

Are There Teacher Unions in Georgia?

     Teacher unions do exist in Georgia...and Alabama...and South Carolina...and Mississippi...and North Carolina.  What does not exist is collective bargaining.  This is what is against the law in Georgia.  Read the grievance law (OCGA 20-2-989.5 et seq.), and in the preamble, you will see that the legislators hastened to state that this new law (1992) did not in any way constitute "collective bargaining."  Collective bargaining contracts and teacher strikes may not be permissible by law, but this does not in fact mean that there are no teacher unions in Georgia.  I am not talking about mere semantics either.

     If one’s view that the only thing that a teacher’s union can do for teachers is to negotiate a collective bargaining contract (which in many, many cases the administration violates; what then happens?) or call for a teacher strike (for better conditions in this collective bargaining contract which will again be violated by the administration on many occasions), then I suppose in your mind that there is no teacher’s union in Georgia.  But, unions do much more than call for teacher strikes and negotiate collective bargaining contracts. 

     I know that at MACE we (1) file grievances for teachers and represent them in the grievance hearings; (2) defend teachers in termination, non-renewal, demotion, and reprimand hearings; (3) write letters on behalf of teachers (I just sent a 14 page letter to Atlanta Superintendent Erroll Davis this week); (4) write rebuttals for teachers when they receive skewed and biased evaluations; (5) assist teachers in getting rid of incorrigible and defiant students from their classrooms, according to the Georgia Code Section, as well as guide them through the Student Tribunal process; (6) counsel teachers each night for hours on end; (6) keep teachers informed about the going-on in public education in Georgia with informative newsletters and our website (www.theteachersadvocate.com) and through our evaluation of school  administrators in the various school systems in Georgia; (7) intervene on behalf of teachers, especially at the Central Office level; (8) speak at school board meetings; and (9) visit our teachers at their schools, and when we feel necessary, (10) we picket for these teachers (a) to relieve the pressure on the teachers by tightening up the administrators, (b) to inform the superintendent and the public of the issues at the school, and (c) to make the teachers’ day.  Yes, the picket is still the thing that the teachers love!  Ha!

     I don’t know what you’re calling “a teacher’s union.”  All I know is that MACE is united in advocating for the protection and empowerment of classroom educators, and MACE has been doing this night and day for the last 17 years.  We have been proven to be right on the issues and superintendents over and over.  I am amazed at how prescient MACE is as a teacher’s union.  Ha!  Oh yes, you might note that in the ten things that I mentioned above, I never mentioned “spelling bees” and “tote bags.”  When angry and abusive administrators become afraid of “spelling bees” and “tote bags,” then maybe MACE will engage in these silly things.  Until then, we just keep kicking proverbial ass on behalf of classroom educators.

 Others Are Now Parroting What MACE Has Been Advocating Since 1995!

 [Editor’s Note:  Dr. Trotter writes many posts on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Get School blog, one of which is located below.  In this particular post, Dr. Trotter is humored that now some professors in the State’s colleges of education are drawing the same conclusions about the need for teachers to be supported in the area of discipline and about the need to scale back the ridiculous standardized testing.  These are positions advocated by MACE since MACE was founded in 1995.  It appears that these educational pundits are now thinking MACE’s original thoughts. ]      

     Maureen, it certainly is cause for a good chuckle when I see more and more of your blogs discussing on point the very things for which MACE has been advocating for these past 17 years.  Ha!  I do indeed get a kick out of the latter day revelations that certain professors and others are receiving from the educational heavens about the inordinate time, money, and energy spent on standardized testing and the paucity of attention given to classroom discipline.  To hear these educational pundits now speaking out for less standardized testing and more classroom discipline certainly heartens me and reassures me that I am not crazy after all!  Ha!     

     Actually, I have never doubted my sanity on these matters, and I have always stuck “to my guns,” so to speak – even when all of the false prophets at the Georgia General Assembly, the Georgia Department of Education, and the colleges of education in the State may have thought that I was a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.     

     In the first issue of MACE’s publication, The Teacher’s Advocate!, published in 1995, we called for “quelling the mania over standardized testing.”  We called for teachers being supported in the classroom when it came to issues like discipline and creativity.  In fact, the very mantra that we still use at MACE today (“You can have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions.”) was spelled out in the first article of this first publication.  For years, we felt like the lone wolf in the wilderness.  I am glad indeed to see you publishing articles about others interested in education enough to speak out on these very pertinent concerns.     

     This reminds me of children growing up and realizing that their parents all of a sudden got smarter!  Actually, it was the kids who got smarter.  The parents’ positions had not changed.  MACE has not changed one iota since our beginning in 1995.  I don’t think that anyone can point out a scintilla of evidence that demonstrates that the Metro Association of Classroom Educators had “evolved” over the years.  No, we are just as “crazy” as ever, but some educational pundits may have evolved closer to the positions that MACE has been espousing for these 17 years.  Hence, these pundits may think that we are not as “crazy” as we used to be.  I assure you that we are just as crazy now as before for teachers being supported in the classroom as they seek to establish and maintain discipline or when it comes to respecting the teachers’ creativity, knowledge, wisdom, and judgment in the areas of methodology, pedagogy, and curricula selection (with curriculum guidelines being followed, of course).  It’s not that MACE has suddenly gotten smart.  No, MACE’s position has never changed; it is the pundits who have suddenly wised up to the positions that we have espoused from the very beginning.     

     We have several articles written these past few years on the false gods of standardized tests. © MACE, March 13, 2012. 

 Again…MACE Found To Be Right & Prophetic! 

By John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD

    Teachers know what works.  What works is this:  A secure, confident, and open leader at each school who respects, esteems, and encourages the uniqueness, originality, and creativity of each teacher in his or her classroom.  This leader facilitates the needs of the teachers and does not operate in a threatening mode – does not hover over the teachers, does not engage in stupid and silly snoopervision.  A good leader praises the teachers and motivates the entire teaching staff with collegial and friendly collaboration.  An esprit de corps develops among the faculty and staff.  The esprit de corps spreads among the students.  The students become fired up.  This contagion and pride of learning becomes infectious, and all of this takes place without the Nazi-type threats from insecure and small-minded principals. © MACE, February 11, 2012.

About The Cheating...

By John R. Alston Trotter, Chairman & CEO

     My kudos to the reporters who have uncovered so much of this cheating mess.  With continued reporting like this, the AJC's subscription base will surely increase.  I actually opened up the newspaper at lunch today and saw the headlines and was pleasantly surprised at how the AJC is actually beginning to uncover what so many of us have known about for years.  We at MACE have been howling about the systematic cheating going on in the schools, especially the urban school systems where they feel so much pressure about the standardized test scores.  Every time that I would hear some "success" story (like the "success" story about Parks Middle School in Atlanta), I just roll my eyes, knowing that SYSTEMATIC interventions (i.e., cheating) was taking place.  The Law of the Large Numbers does not change.  This is a fact, Jack.  Standardized test scores have a one-to-one correlation with free and reduced lunch counts (or any other measurement of socio-economic status).  You can take a high school athlete who runs a 6.25 forty yard dash and give this athlete the best coaching possible for three months, but when you time his forty speed again, he will not be running a 4.35 forty. 

        There are, of course, exceptions to  any rule, but the exceptions themselves are what establish the rule.  About Atlanta:  Beverly Hall and her minions are educational thugs.  I have no doubt that the AJC has just unearthed the very tip (just the tip) of the Cheating Iceberg.  I have dealt anecdotally with many teachers of Atlanta who have told me war stories about how they raise questions about dubious practices and had their contracts non-renewed but those teachers who went along to get along were rewarded for their submission.  I have always told people that Atlanta is the worst of all the school systems in Georgia.  It is the hub of corruption.  It is an academic cesspool.  But, quite frankly, the powers that be through the years have been reluctant to deal with Atlanta because they are squeamish about the race issue.  They are afraid of being called racists.  So, I supposed it is O. K. to mess over thousands of children of color because you are afraid of being called a racist, eh?  Balderdash! 

      Atlanta's schools are rife with miscreant "students" who refuse to obey their teachers; in fact, they actually intimidate their teachers, and the Beverly Hall Administration allows this to occur.  We always say at MACE:  You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions.  When children are not expected and are not required to behave in school, this is what is racism.  You don't have to systematically cheat on tests if good learning conditions were first established in the schools.  Even though the composite test scores may never be as high as the scores in Alpharetta and Crabapple, at least the group test scores will be accurate, and some of the students will score very high (and their scores will be real scores and won't be cheapened by the fact that they are students in Atlanta City or DeKalb County).

We Suppose That MACE Was Right All These Years About The Total Corruption In The Atlanta Public Schools!  Hmm...

MACE's Spring Picket Parade...Shiloh Middle & More.

by Daniel D. Trotter, Sr.

      Editor’s Note:  This article originally appeared in The Teacher’s Advocate! magazine.  The author is the father of Dr. John Trotter, and he serves on the MACE Board of Directors.  Mr. Trotter is a retired Georgia school principal. 

The following is a list of characteristics that I would suggest to any principal who cares to be respected and admired by both students and teachers:  

1. Always be completely open to teachers.  Be willing to discuss any policy that you have and give the background as to why you instilled the policy.              
2.  It is important that you always speak pleasantly to your teachers and never put them down in the presence of others.  All constructive criticism should be done in private.  Never raise your voice when you have a need to correct a teacher.  Never strip your teachers of their dignity.           
3. Be generous with praise and cautious with criticism.  Be quick to give credit to others when it is due to them.  Make it a policy to commend your teachers often.  Look for reasons to commend them and you will see that they will work harder for you.           
4.  Always tell the truth – even when it hurts.  No one respects a person whom they can’t depend on to tell the truth.  As the saying goes, “Tell it like it is.”      
5. Be easily approachable.  Encourage teachers to ask you for help, if needed.
   
6. Be seen!  A principal should be in the school halls when students are in the halls.  You should be in and out of the cafeteria during lunch.  You should go into the classrooms often, if only for a few minutes.  You should be visible in order to be a leader. 
7. Make discipline your number one concern.  Without discipline, little teaching or learning can take place.  You are the key to any school’s discipline.  You must have a firm policy and be sure that both teachers and students fully understand it.  Be willing to take a stand and then stand.            
8. Never accept an accusation against a teacher until you first speak with that teacher.  Be a friend to your teachers and support them as much as possible.  When they make mistakes, let them down easily.    
9. Be open to teachers’ suggestions and, if you disagree, be pleasant in your discussion.  You have no need to be threatened, if you are open and honest.          
10. The last characteristic is a summary of the other nine.  When you deal with teachers, remember two things:  Tell the truth and treat others like you would want to be treated.

By Dr. John Trotter and Norreese Haynes

     We often see such ludicrous actions or lack of actions taken by public school systems that we are dumbfounded at the school systems lack of ability to subscribe to simple precepts.  When a school system simply refuses to acknowledge simple realities relative to the public schooling processes, the results are disastrous.  From our combined experiences as a teacher, administrator, and/or representative of teachers over the years, we have compiled some simple realities that most superintendents, school boards, policy-makers, and politicians ignore when dealing with the public schooling processes.  Below are eleven simple statements which, in our opinion, are irrefutable and intractable.  To ignore these simple statements will imperil any school system.

1. All children can learn but not all children want to learn but rather some children even refuse to learn.
2. Unmotivated and disengaged students often disrupt the learning environments of those students who want to learn.
3. You cannot have orderly learning taking place in the classroom without order first being established in the classroom, and the chronically-misbehaving and disorderly students must be removed from the regular classroom.
4. You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions.
5. Creative teaching is effective teaching, and states and school systems need to free up teachers to be more creative and therefore more effective.
6. A smothered, suffocating, beat-down, and beleaguered teacher is an ineffective teacher.
7. A top-down, heavy-handed approach to teacher supervision kills a teacher’s spirit and creativity and works counter to effective teaching and student learning.
8. A teacher can only teach the student, not learn the student, just like a physician can only treat the patient, not heal the patient, and a lawyer can only defend the accused, not acquit the accused.
9. Ultimately, the student is responsible for appropriately engaging or not engaging in the learning processes, and the onus for learning must be put on the student, not the teacher.
10. If the student refuses to appropriately engage in the learning processes and therefore refuses to learn, there is nothing that the teacher can do to make the student learn, and the teacher should not be held responsible for the student’s refusal to learn.
11. The artificial and manipulative inflating of standardized test scores is no true indication that students are learning but that a superintendent is trying to financially bolster his or her professional resume at the students’expense.

MACE, Young & Old!

Other Merit Pay Articles:

        MACE started in the Fall of 1995, and within its first week of soliciting members, it had already enrolled two former presidents of GAE locals (Fulton and Cobb), a former president of the Atlanta Federation of Teachers (AFT), and other leaders of other educational organizations. These teachers joined MACE because they knew that MACE was totally committed to the protection and empowerment of classroom educators. The message of MACE resonates with Georgia’s teachers. The good news of MACE continues to spread throughout Georgia, and MACE now represents teachers in over forty school systems in Georgia.