I received a comment from a teacher of children with high needs. The teacher writes about the challenges she or he faces every single day and the small victories achieved when a child is able to understand expectations or accomplish a limited task. Yet no matter how demanding the job, the teacher will be judged by the students’ test scores. The teacher will be held accountable to meet goals set by politicians who have no concept of the situation and who would not survive a day in this teacher’s classroom.
The teacher wonders: How do we get these politicians to stop acting as our superiors? This question suggests other questions: How dare the politicians pretend that they know more than teachers who do the work? How do teachers regain their professional autonomy? Who will want to teach in the future under these conditions? Will we ever be free of their harmful intrusions? What makes them think they are improving education when they impose so many harmful policies?
I love how you think! I just started reading your blogs and have learned a lot from them. I teach the severely handicapped and our day’s progress (miracles) might be getting a kid to look at me, to get to the potty before an accident occurs, or having a student respond appropriately to greetings. Now I’m told that their test scores will be used to grade me! Nothing on the Florida Alternative Assessment tests these skills. These wacko politicians have no clue what is involved in teaching at these center schools. It cannot be tested on the FAA. Further, i-observations that are being required by many districts in Fl have many good teachers becoming “needs improving” teachers. I fear our future. How can teachers control their own profession like doctors and lawyers and get these politicians out of the schools? Just wondering!
For this teacher, every piece of evidence that a child makes a connection is a miracle. Progress is slow, sometimes glacial. What standardized test will reflect these miracles? What measure will validate the teacher’s daily work? Which of the politicians who now determine the teacher’s value could do what he or she does every day?
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Insightful and direct. They cannot ever be our superiors, having no clue to our struggle and the personal rewards in making small gains against long odds with students “reformers” could never relate to.
I keep thinking what would happen if I went into an operating room and started telling a surgeon that she was doing the operation incorrectly. No other profession has people who have no training in the field allowed to dictate policy. It just makes no sense and it’s often difficult for me to understand how this was allowed to happen.
I am currently being singled out for “being fresh” as a colleague told me when she heard about my current situation. Several months ago a “suit” from corporate (I say this despite that fact that I work in a public school) came in my room because her meeting had been cancelled because the teachers she was supposed to “train” were on a trip and no one told the “suit” She was simply wandering through the building looking for a room with a teacher and students. She found mine. She wanted to know why a group of my students were using playdough and why I didn’t have the standards and the objectives of the task posted so they would know what they had to be doing. I tried to explain why they were working in that center and then I made the mistake of not knowing my place and actually speaking to a better. I asked her if she had an early childhood background. The visit got very chilly after that.
Fast forward to two weeks ago. With less than 3 weeks to the end of the school year she came in my room with my principal and gave me a list of directives to change my room within the week. My principal allowed this to happen. Some of the requests were not unreasonable but not practical given that I would be packing up my room shortly. Some of the requests were against early childhood in general and pre-k in particular. I was told they would be back in one week.
I complied and sure enough she was back in a week to make sure. She had a second list of directives but my principal said they could wait until September.
We were leaving for a trip in 15 minutes and the “suit” wanted to know why I wasn’t doing my regular instruction.
This was my payback for “being fresh”
Do not speak to your betters. Make sure to know your place.
This experience has not weakened me but only made me stronger. I may live in Vichy France but I am part of the Resistance.
Let me get this straight: you got in trouble because your kids (who are probably no older than six) were playing with playdough in centers.
I teach high school, so I’m no expert in early childhood education, but I suspect that centers, manipulatives, and playdough are part of the kindergarten experience
What would be part of the “regular instruction” for such young children? Please don’t tell me they are expected to read already? Or they have homework? What kind of inappropriate learning activities are expected of them?