Of Charlatans, Sorcerers, Alchemists, Demagogues, Profit-Mongers, Tyrants and Kings: Educational Reform and the Death by a Thousand Cuts

Abstract

No longer can teachers in the US simply close their classroom doors and isolate themselves, their classrooms, their students; that is, if they ever could. More than ever before, larger political, sociocultural and ideological forces find their way into the classroom on the backs of so-called educational reforms. But not every educational reform results in school improvement, and precious few educational reforms benefit teachers and their work life. Educational reforms have wrought tremendous change on the classroom and on the teacher. Public schools and the teachers who inhabit them are bleeding out in a death by a thousand cuts. Support for public education is dwindling. Accountability, high-stakes tests, prescriptive ‘teacher-proof’ curriculum, and more, serve to stifle creativity, quash innovation and otherwise eat away at teachers’ professional discretion, independence and autonomy.