This teacher and others wrote about their love for teaching and their dismay about it. Reforms that hinder good teachers who don't need them, but that don't help lousy teachers, who don't bother with them unless they are being observed. Reforms that require tutors they don't have, materials they never see, cooperation and support they never get, and time that doesn't exist. Remote administrators who requisition whatever they need, from computers to cell phones, while teachers spend their own money for paper and other classroom needs. Tests that measure what society has given them to work with rather than what they are able to do about it.
Teaching is so much more than the distribution of knowledge.
The test will show only that he still cannot read on grade level. It will not show that he learned his alphabet and even began reading by the end of the year. Standardized tests don't measure such ordinary classroom miracles. They also don't measure the love, commitment and sheer courage it takes to be a public school teacher, the most important and maligned profession in America. But sometimes I want to escape to somewhere else, somewhere far away from the constant barrage of criticisms, new fads, and excessive paperwork.