Taking Charge of Our Profession (Again)

To achieve the goal of quality education for all of America's children will take more than one good idea or initiative. There is important work to be done on many fronts and involving many groups: students, parents, educators, legislators, researchers, businessess, and others.  But I want to focus on just one of those groups and our unique role in American public education.

Taking Charge of Our Profession  is a post I shared back in 2007. I still believe one of the most powerful education reforms we could have in this country is real teacher leadership in education.  So, for the Day of National Blogging for Real Education Reform, I'd like to revisit that idea.

As I stated in the orginal blog, "

Few other professions have their internal workings so externally dictated. Classroom teachers have very little (in some places, no) input into the policy decisions that govern what we do. To sit at the policymaking table, we must show that we are the education experts by making the complex work of quality teaching more understandable and visible to those outside the classroom.

This continues to be true; if anything, it's gotten worse. The stereotype of widespread incompetency among educators has almost reached the level of urban myth. As a result, much wisdom and human potential is being wasted on a variety of quick-fix solutions, while some of our best teachers are being pushed out of the classroom or out of the field entirely by illogical and unethical educational policies.

As of today, for example, over 90,000 teachers have earned National Board Certification by demonstrating that they are capable of highly accomplished teaching with real students in real schools. This is a powerful, and widely untapped source for education reform in the U.S.  Yet, sadly, many of my fellow NBCTs report being thwarted in our attempts to use our highly accomplished teaching methods by policies imposed upon us and our students in the name of raising student performance (aka--raising test scores). Instead, our best teachers should be leading the way within their schools and districts as pacesetters, mentors, and team-builders for school and district wide strengthening of teaching quality.

In many quarters, teacher unions and tenure agreements have been blamed for sheltering incompetent teachers by forcing adherence to due process. In reality, teachers and their organizations have been systemically deprived of one of the most fundamental duties of a profession: the obligation to hold one another accountable.

If we want to be treated as professionals, then we must do what professions do—and that includes holding each other to commonly agreed upon standards of practice and ethics. Teachers are accountable to the various other stakeholders in public education, but most of all, we should be accountable to one another for upholding the highest professional standard.

Ultimately the communities in which our schools are rooted determine and enjoy our success or failures. As one writer said, “we inhabit the consequences of our work.” The degree to which we are held accountable for our professional work is the degree to which we should control the conditions of that work. Such empowerment helps transfer respect for individual teachers to support for the entire educational enterprise.

Real education reform will require many things to be done differently; one of which is for those who have demonstrated the ability to teach well to assert more decision-making power over the policies which directly affect our work.

Comments

[Lessons Learned]

THANK YOU!

At the end of the day, it is ultimately up to us educators to reclaim our profession. Teacher complacency on issues and concerns related to our profession is sickening to me. In addition, as you stated, those teachers who want to share their input cannot due to the "powers that be" behind the current education reform movement.

In my humble opinion, I believe it is slowly but surely getting to the point that today's teachers will be pushed to a corner, forced to fight back via protest. The political climate and influence from corporate America are overtly not on our side anymore. Also, while I am pro-union, I questioned some of the motives of the national leadership in ATF and NEA; are they really looking our for their members' interests or falling for the hype? Change is necessary to fix our schools and better educate our children. But the current direction of the education reform movement scares me, quite frankly...and many teachers are allowing the madness to continue instead of fighting back.

If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything. This has come to pass...

[Renee /TeachMoore]

Thanks for your comment. Sadly, there is widespread complacency among teachers, particularly towards education policy. It is to our detriment that we continue to "just close my classroom door and teach" while ignoring the decision making process that affects everything we do in the classroom. Not every teacher wants to be highly involved in policy or leadership activities. But more of us must be if we want to see and end to the merry-go-round of worthless or harmful edreforms to which we and our students have been subjected.

There are lots of ways to do that, especially in today's social media world. But some level of engagement is both necessary and required of professional educators.

[Eduleadership]

Amen! Educators have been the missing voice in ed policy debates for too long. Very well said.