The Tide is Turning Against Test Driven School Reform

Test Driven School Reform, and the protocols for teacher evaluation it has brought in its wake, are finally coming under critical scrutiny from the general public, portions of the media, and some elected officials. When the full story comes out, the nation will discover that the policies that have been in place since No Child Left Behind, and ratcheted up even further by Race to the Top, have been damaging and demoralizing in the extreme. Eventually, the policies will be repudiated and the pendulum will swing back to policies that make students enjoy school and teachers want to stay in their jobs for long periods of time, but before that happens a generation of students will have been beaten down and a huge cohort of great teachers driven out of the profession. The faster we Stop the Madness, the less damage will be done. But no matter what, this is a national catastrophe of monumental proportions.