Schools for Tomorrow Blog

It is simply impossible, Pastorek has come to believe, for a traditional school system, run from the top down by a central administrator, to educate large numbers of poor children to high levels of achievement. “The command-and-control structure can produce marginal improvements,” he told me when we met last month at a coffeehouse on Magazine Street. “But what’s clear to me is that it can only get you so far. If you create a system where initiative and creativity is valued and rewarded, then you’ll get change from the bottom up. If you create a system where people are told what to do and how to do it, then you will get change from the top down. We’ve been doing top-down for many years in Louisiana. And all we have is islands of excellence amidst a sea of mediocrity and failure.”

This piece in The New York Times is from probably…

In my introductory blog, I wrote that I wanted to investigate/examine/interrogate the notion of teacher as professional. I wrote that teachers need to view themselves as professionals and that society needs to treat teachers as professionals, as opposed to treating teachers as well-intentioned “Mother Teresas,” fighting the good fight.

One way to judge whether or not teachers are treated and act like professionals is to compare teachers to other “professionals.” In 2005, the Finance Project, an organization that looks to “support decision-making that produces good results for children, families, and communities,” published a report that compared education to six other fields. The report, titled Preparing and Training Professionals: Comparing Education to Six Other Fields compares professional development in education to six other professions: law, accounting, architecture, nursing, firefighting and law enforcement.

Since we know that teacher quality is the most critical factor in improving student achievement, professional development of teachers is…

This one speaks for itself.