At NEOEA’s Spring Retired Conference on Wednesday, former Ohio First Lady Frances Strickland asked retired members about their impressions of education. In the conversation that followed, it was clear that the passion for education still burns in these folks long after their school careers.
Overtesting, merit pay, attacks on unions, prescriptive teacher evaluation, alternative licensure, scripted instruction–they all stem from the mistaken belief that the shortcomings of schools are attributable to poor teachers.
I think that most parents and virtually all teachers will agree that the remedies we’re trying, and the procedures required to implement them, raise more problems than they solve.
The start of Teacher Appreciation Week seems like a good time to acknowledge that teachers aren’t the problem–they’re the solution.
This post originally appeared on the website of my 2016 campaign for State Board of Education, http://bill4board.us.
