Teachers aren't the point

[Spike89]

It's a classic trap. Teachers are the point people in education. Most parents could walk right by the district superintendant or their state secretary for education (or whatever the positions are called in your area) without recognizing them. However, the fundamental problems in American public education really don't center on the teachers.
Our national, regional, and local policies and even the goals of public education are poorly defined, making it incredibly easy to attack. For instance, if you posit that the goal is to find, nourish, and produce genius scientists, you can attack schools for wasting money on 99% of the students and stiffling the 1%. If you instead believe schools should produce model citizen-workers, you can attack all the money spent on anything that isn't strictly vocational.
The reality is that we can't even agree on what success would look like and we sure can't measure most educations with any concrete and infallible quality-assurance device.
Jumping on teachers is easy, of course there are bad teachers. Teachers will fight back too, which is understandable, but only helps establish that the debate belongs there. There will always be good, great, fair, poor, and horrible teachers--there are millions of them and that is how humans are--scattered on the scale. Arguing about the quality of teachers is pointless in this debate--they aren't significantly worse or better than ever before. What we are asking them to do and how we are judging the results is different, and it is the critical debate we need to be having. Instead, we're mired in viscious debate on topics we can't really change much if we tried.
It's crazy, we're in a vehicle without a destination, with gauges we can't read, and we're all arguing over what kind of mileage we should demand.

[Angry Dragon]

1. All very good points

[Starry Messenger]

2. That word "successful" gets tossed around a lot in ed reform

Since no one wants to define "successful" or consider the context in which they are demanding this nebulous "success" they claim is not occurring under the present system, they can demand any hairbrained scheme they want. It's a racket. Good points.

[sandnsea]

3. "goals of public education are poorly defined"

And that is a big part of what RTTT is about. Defining goals and the best models to achieve those goals. I believe that teachers are helping to do that in most districts, despite what I read here.

[grantcart]

4. Its not the teachers and its not national policies

Its the intellectually lazy population that is more interested in WWE and their Gameboy than in reading a book.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. And it is also about union bustin'

[Barack2theFuture]

6. Our national education problems start at the top, that is, with Obama.

Then Arne Duncan. Then through the Department of Education. Then Congress. And so on.

Start at the top. Start fixing things. Our problems will be solved LONG before you ever get down to the teacher level.

[Spike89]

7. Exactly!

Attacking the teachers at this point is kinda like pointing out a scratch in the paint job of car with 4 bald tires, a knocking motor and balky tranny. Everything does need to be fixed, but it's just too easy to derail the whole process by jumping on the wrong priority.