This paper talks about three of the worst ideas:
When the positive and negative effects of these three reforms are weighed together, the
scale indicates they are far more de-professionalizing than professionalizing. As the quality of education provided to the nation’s children is dependent upon the professional competencies of teachers, policymakers are provided with the following recommendations:
As test-based policies such as value-added teacher assessment are prone to excessive error and misclassification and do not validly measure the range of skills necessary for effective teaching, a moratorium should be placed on their use until a satisfactory level of accuracy can be achieved in teacher evaluation systems.
Traditional teacher training programs should consider the extent to which they prepare teachers to make professional judgments, meet the full range of student needs, build positive working conditions, and negotiate and balance multiple layers of bureaucratic pressures. The same questions apply to alternative or fast-track teacher preparation programs. Policymakers should carefully consider the broader and long-range effectiveness of existing fast-track programs before expanding or creating new programs of this sort.
Scripted, narrow curricula can serve a valuable role for novice and underqualified teachers and in locations where an articulated curriculum is not available. They do not represent the full range of necessary learning opportunities for all students in all locations, however. Thus, a broadening, not narrowing, of the curriculum is needed. This can only be accomplished by a partial or complete decoupling from test scores the sort of high-stakes consequences that compel the narrowed curriculum.
Our politicians, of course, won't pay heed because this isn't about the kids or the teachers. This is all about dismantling the public good for private greed.
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