The First Year of InterACT
Exactly a year ago today, I clicked “Publish” on the first post here at InterACT. That post was titled, “Beginning in Sadness” – and I’ve re-posted it below in its entirety. I wish I could say that, one year later, the news is any better, but in fact, I think it’s worse. Education reform is still largely in the hands of non-educators who don’t understand classrooms, students, or teachers. Pontificating about students’ needs though they never work with students, they imagine they can reform teaching without teachers. They misunderstand our needs, our practices, our motivations. They collect six and seven-figure salaries from supposed philanthropies that are agenda-driven and whose money isn’t going anywhere near students. Instead they pay for favorable media coverage and public relations, keeping former politicians, administrators and executives gainfully employed and handsomely rewarded. They keep pushing tests they’ve never seen to be used for purposes the tests were never designed to accommodate. They’ve supposedly raced some of us to the top, chartered and standardized and triggered, and even stripped some of us of bargaining
