Arrogance and Education Reform
Here is what bugs me about education reform. It is arrogant, ahistorical, and willfully dishonest.
Arrogant:
Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee, and any number of millionaires, billionaires, short-time former-teacher-reformers and really just about anybody at all now feels free to opine about what is wrong with American education and how to fix it. (Surprise! Turns out the problem is teachers in districts where hardly anybody knows who their dad is. Just by chance.)
The arrogance of the movement is they a bunch of people who do not work in classrooms somehow know exactly what teachers need to do in order for students to be successful. (And by “successful” we mean performing well on standardized tests. Make no mistake.)
The arrogance manifests itself in many ways. In my school, teachers are told:
1) What their professional goals are;
2) What must hang in their rooms;
3) How many parent contacts must be made per advisory;
4) How, exactly, an objective must be written;