Be wary of education reform promoters

We must be careful of the wealthy foundations that support the prevailing tsunami of educational reform. These corporate millionaires behind groups like Advance Illinois and Stand for Children will not and cannot be held accountable; they are not elected by anyone.

This is an irony since these groups believe that teachers should be held accountable for all the failures of their students. Implementing performance agreements, diminishing the power of unions, establishing merit pay, hiring and firing personnel according to private sectors’ procedures do not address problems in education.

Consider, for instance, how a public school district would establish an assurance of administrative impartiality and competency before providing the requisite training for fair and equitable evaluative methods and due process. Changes for educational reform must come from teachers, administrators and its local school board, and from students and their involved parents as they work together to solve the many challenges that we face.

Modifications of current teachers’ evaluations, benefits and rights should not come from outside, corporate-funded groups that emphasize an accountability program based on questionable sanctions and unformulated “multiple measures” linked to teachers’ performance.

No Child Left Behind and its spawn, “Performance Counts,” cannot resolve the difficulties that teachers will invariably inherit. Why? Teachers do not work with quantifiable outcomes. How does one measure the effects that a teacher has on his or her students’ character, aspirations, responsibility and moral and ethical values? How does one measure a teacher’s inspiration, dedication and passion that these influences have on a student? Are there reliable, valid tests and data for such indelible impressions on a student? A teacher does not make a sale or earn a profit. A teacher works with children and young adults.

Glen Brown

Naperville