This Week In Education: Thompson: How Today's "Reformers" Will Fail (Again)

This Week In Education: Thompson: How Today's "Reformers" Will Fail (Again)

Thompson: How Today's "Reformers" Will Fail (Again)

by Alexander Russo

Back when I was an excitable young Teamster, I had the same anger toward my corrupt union leaders as today's "reformers" have towards the educational "status quo." But a union reformer shared the old Okie wisdom of "don't go off rootin' and tootin'..." and, eventually, democracy prevailed in our labor movement. Today, data-driven school "reform" is a two-barreled shotgun blast from the hip. The first target, is bad teachers. Given the harm that the bottom 5 to 10% of teachers cause, the quick-draw approach of the accountability hawks is understandable, even though their scatter-shot aim is bound to destroy the careers of many good educators. But the second shot is directed towards our best educators. Anyone old enough to have an institutional memory, and recall the lessons of earlier unsuccessful reforms, is fair game. Since most of today's "reforms" are recycled quick fixes that have already failed, top-down policy wonks want to make sure that young educators are not exposed to the lessons that veterans learned during previous experiments.

History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes, and David Labaree explains why today's accountability hawks are