It Started With ‘No Child Left Behind’

It's a long-standing complaint, echoed throughout American history: teachers don't get the respect they deserve. But it's a long way from that age-old complaint to the current campaign of vilification directed at our nation's more than three million teachers.

The roots of this campaign of vilification can be traced to the 2002 federal law called No Child Left Behind. That law mandates that all students must reach "proficient" on state tests by 2014, a goal never reached by any nation or state. Any school that cannot reach that utopian goal will eventually be declared "failing," with dire consequences, including firing the staff and closing the school.

The assumption behind this punitive approach is that poor student performance is caused by incompetent teachers and principals, despite the fact that decades of social science show that family income is the most reliable predictor of test scores.

The Obama administration's Race to the Top program took the attacks on teachers to a new level by encouraging states to evaluate teachers by their students' test scores. This approach holds teachers alone accountable for student effort. Only teachers of reading and mathematics in grades four through eight, a minority of all teachers, may be judged in this way, since other subjects and grades are not regularly tested.

A year ago, President Obama and Secretary Arne Duncan cheered when school officials in tiny Central Falls, R.I., announced their plan to fire the entire staff of its only high school. Eventually, a settlement was reached, but staff morale plummeted: 20 percent of the teachers quit, and another 15 to 20 percent are absent on any given day.

Last summer, the Los Angeles Times used student scores to rank the "effectiveness" of 6,000 teachers and posted the results online. Leading testing experts have warned that such rankings are likely to be inaccurate and unstable, Secretary Duncan applauded, teachers were outraged, and the newspaper stood by its decision. The New York Post wants to do the same in New York City, but must overcome a legal challenge by the United Federation of Teachers.

Now it's open season on teachers and their profession. Many states are trying to end collective bargaining, due process rights, seniority, and other job protections to make it easier to fire teachers and to retain novices. A large contingent of National Board Certified teachers are planning a march on Washington in July to express their opposition to these attacks on their profession.

A historic strain of anti-intellectualism in American thought has merged with fiscal conservatism, producing the present campaign to dismantle the teaching profession. It echoes a deeply-ingrained American belief that anyone can teach, no training or experience necessary.

Although politicians and corporate leaders claim they want to reform education, it is impossible to see how the campaign against teachers will advance that goal. No high-performing nation in the world is reducing the status and rights of the teaching profession.

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