Schools ought to be places where kids are never hungry, where they are safe, and where adults have time to look after them individually, according to each kid's need, to demonstrate the joys of learning.
Schools ought to be places where kids graduate literate because they've discovered things they love to read, and numerate because they've discovered things they love to measure. They ought to graduate well aware of the world beyond their sometimes oppressive, dangerous, and impoverished communities.
Schools should not be factories turning out kids who can properly fill in the bubbles on standardized tests.
I was a public school science teacher in urban Los Angeles. It was the most difficult job I've ever had. Substitute teachers would sometimes sign out of our school in tears and never come back. I felt like that some days. Classes were large, the kids stressed and uncomfortable, and I had to be an authoritarian to keep order. I hated that.
There are a few teachers who can carve out a refuge for children in a place like that. Our school had some like that. My wife was such a teacher and her sister still is. These teachers ought to be treasured and paid very well no matter how their students score on standardized tests because they are the teachers who end up with the kids the other teachers "can't control."
I had kids who never did any homework, kids who would stare blankly at quizzes and tests, who couldn't even be bothered to write their name on a paper. Sometimes I could get their parents or guardians in to school for "mandatory" conferences with the school counselor and myself, but usually not. Some of the stories I heard then were horrible and fully explained why the kid was like that.
People who haven't been there really have no idea...
The middle and high school I attended were overcrowded and underfunded. I never felt safe there. I quit high school for college. I thought I could change things, at least a little by becoming a teacher. I couldn't.
These "accountability initiatives" have failed, just as "trickle down" economics has failed, just as national "austerity" measures have failed. Unless, of course, the purpose all along was to make the very wealthy even wealthier, and the politically powerful more powerful. I'm cynical now. I believe that's the case.
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