Is Public Education in Peril? Teaching a Lost Art?

A New York history teacher's retirement letter, posted two weeks ago on his Facebook, reads like a tribute to a dying friend. The profession of teaching, said retiring teacher Gerald Conti, "no longer exists."

In his letter, shared nearly 2,000 times on Facebook so far (a pdf of the letter is uploaded here), Conti describes the passion that kept him in teaching for 40 years, 27 of them at Westhill High School in Syracuse, N.Y. He describes his approach of "teaching heavy" based on immersion, intensive research and obsessive attention to detail. He mentions the two signs that hang in his classroom, reading "Words Matter" and "Ideas Matter." "I have truly attempted to live John Dewey's famous quotation," Conti writes, "... that 'Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.'"

Excerpt from the letter:

"A long train of failures has brought us to this unfortunate pass. In their pursuit of Federal tax dollars, our legislators have failed us by selling children out to private industries such as Pearson Education. The New York State United Teachers union has let down its membership by failing to mount a much more effective and vigorous campaign against this same costly and dangerous debacle. Finally, it is with sad reluctance that I say our
own administration has been both uncommunicative and unresponsive to the concerns and needs of our staff and students by establishing testing and evaluation systems that are Byzantine at best and at worst, draconian."

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What's your take on this letter, and the reasons Conti cites for his resignation?