School improvement is such a courageous endeavor. We insist on using student test scores as our measuring stick for student success/achievement when, for some of our students, actually getting to school each day is a big achievement. How do we measure that? We don’t. We measure our teachers instead.

Current educational reforms, looking towards school improvement, focus on ensuring that students are exposed to quality teaching by qualified teachers. Because it follows, doesn’t it, that public school students would maximize their academic achievement every year that they’re in school and that by 2014 they’ll all have become proficient in every subject they undertake at their grade-level?

Primarily, quality teaching is measured by student test scores… I see a problem here.

What makes a teacher qualified to teach?

School improvement, which is about higher test scores, focuses on teachers…. Ensuring that quality teachers (defined by the amount of training they’ve had and then their student’s test scores) are in every classroom.

There hasn’t been one word uttered about quality work environments, quality school and district administration, or quality state policy makers.

It’s logical to think about teachers if you want to improve student test scores… after all they are teaching our students. We should make them accountable for student achievement and if students aren’t achieving then (obviously) teachers need to improve their teaching skills and expand their knowledge of pedagogy, right?

Yes and No.

Yes, teachers should be accountable for their teaching and no, we can’t assume that student achievement and school improvement will be accomplished by arbitrarily deciding that all teachers in contact with students with low tests scores require additional training.

As a teacher, it’s difficult to understand how my attendance at another literacy professional development training (which I felt very strong in) would enhance my student’s ability to read when, in my classroom of twenty students I had: