Rick Hess Cage-Busting Teacher and Escaping from the School Reform Cage
I've long admired Rick Hess's iconoclasm and his realism. The conservative Hess also writes things that drive me up the wall. His recent defense of District of Columbia Chancellor Kaya Henderson and her kinder, gentler implementation of Michelle Rhee's teacher-caging policies is an example. But I usually enjoy the witty way that he presents his positions. And, I basically like his The Cage-Busting Teacher.
Hess's advice would really be on target if he had written the book in the 1980s. He offers good and great advice for teachers, then and now. Much of Hess's shared wisdom is the type of affirmation of democratic principles that our teachers and mentors taught to us Baby Boomers. His reminders that pragmatism is required to participate constructively in our constitutional democracy bear repeating.
Over the last two generations, however, conservative and, especially, liberal and neoliberal technocratic reformers have engaged in a crusade to place teachers in cages that they designed to be inescapable. Seeking rushed "disruptive" and "transformative" change, accountability-driven reformers have sought to lock us down so we can't argue against their risky and untested theories. We educators are long past the point where a how-to guide for slipping out of the bonds that have been gratuitously placed on teachers is enough to rescue our profession and our students.
Hess is articulate in indicting "stupid policies that have destructive effects that no one intended." He criticizes value-added evaluations, which are a perfect example of the "overflowing bucket of well-intentioned directives." For instance, he cites a Florida Teacher of the Year who taught students with autism and who was thus unfairly evaluated on his school's low value-added score.
Hess correctly says that teachers are "blindsided" by "simple-minded accountability Rick Hess Cage-Busting Teacher and Escaping from the School Reform Cage | John Thompson: