Does the education industrial complex want teaching to be a trade or a profession?
My great hope for our city, state and nation is that we can embrace the courageous honesty to radically transform how we tackle real deal ‘systems issues.’ Sometimes bold change comes through elected officials willing to raise tough issues and sometimes through direct civic engagement among people with knowledge of the issues on the ground.
In education, some argue we’ve had too much of the former and not enough of the latter. In education, we all know that the push for bold systems change must ultimately come from within. We want teachers to lead the education reform movement, to challenge the status quo, to question old models and push for academic rigor, high expectations as well as resources.
As a part of that hope, it’s also fair to acknowledge that for many of us much of the perceived and real tension between the education reform community and opponents–unfairly categorized