Start listening to those on the ground

Part of the October 17 R.E.B.E.L. blog postings. Find them all here.

The overwhelming theme of educational policy right now is those far removed from any school telling us how it ought to be done. Whether they're in business, law, "public policy," or some other field far removed from education, these self-proclaimed experts are quite sure that if everyone would simply do whatever it is that they say--push harder on standardized tests, open more charter schools, institute merit pay, or whatever the flavor of the week is--all would be fixed.
Somehow, these appear to be the ideas (whatever their questionable merits) that are being implemented, in contrast, we are told, to the ideas of those who would fight for the "status quo," by which they generally seem to mean those actually teaching.
Now, I have yet to meet any teacher worth her (or his) salt who is actually satisfied with the status quo. I don't care where you teach: suburban, rural, urban, wealthy or poor district: there's something that you're striving for. Something you'd like to do a bit better yourself. Something you wish your school did better. Something you wish administration did better.
A surprising number of teachers (and principals, and special ed teachers, and guidance counselors, and those elsewhere on the ground) work at this year after year. They rewrite that lesson. They collaborate with someone down the hall. They barrage the principal with requests for more and better evaluations, the school committee with requests for more resources and a better teaching environment, the community for more involvement and more importance placed on education.
Equally, there are plenty of parents, of administrators, of school committee members (yes, even them!) who year after year do the same.
Somehow, however, these are not the voices that get listened to in national education policy right now. The parents who have said for years that standardized tests are overemphasized, are weakening their children's education, are destroying their schools, are ignored (and in some cases dismissed as not knowing whereof they speak). The teachers who point out that merit pay has no merit, that they don't get enough or quality evaluations as it is (and that administration doesn't use them to get rid of weak teachers), that setting teacher against teacher is contrary to what works in education are called union shills. And so on through principals, administrators, and the rest.
I'm not precisely sure where our community organizer president lost the central notion of community organizing, which is that you have to listen to the community you want to organize in order to organize it. I will say quite plainly, though (and I'm more confident in this than ever coming off of yesterday's Citizens for Public Schools event), that this is a community that is organizing.
It just isn't being organized by the president and his so-called education reformers.

(I just started reading some of the other entries. This one made me laugh.)