Teachers’ Exclusion from Policy-Making
Whether it’s making a critical decision in everyday life or to employ a new policy, one needs to have truthful information provided by reliable sources. Why is that not the case when it comes to policy making in education? Teachers’ exclusion from policy making only works against the education system. Teachers are the professionals of education, the ones who have had the most experience dealing with the policies on a day to day basis.
I understand that because we live in a democratic society, the need for everyone to voice their opinion is valued and accepted. Educator’s should not believe that they should have the first and only say when creating policies. I do believe though that it would be more beneficial to the education system if there were experienced experts, or experienced teachers, included in the policy making process along with the legislators, interest groups, and public officials. These experts would add significant input and advice to the discussion, possibly changing the outlook the legislators originally had. For example, policymakers had a sincere vision when creating and implementing No Child Left Behind. They created it hoping that it would help all students succeed to reach their states’ set proficiency level when being tested. Unfortunately, policy makers did not have enough experienced teacher input. Today there is a zero percent chance that every child in the United States will be testing at a proficient level by 2014. Policy makers were unable to understand the complexity in getting every school to reach their set proficiency level. The failure of NCLB in telling schools to reach a proficient “high” level by 2014 could have been easily avoided if there were more opinions asked of teachers. NCLB has great goals and very optimistic “ends” they would like to meet but the policy needs more structure and focus in means, as to how the schools are going to get there. I think experienced educators would have helped create those guidelines.
Teachers live out the policies and therefore know which ones would work the best, and which ones would work the least. The frontlines of policymaking in education should consist of experienced teachers.
This post was submitted by Tara Gallagher.
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Comments
Right on Tara! Unfortunately, Obama appointed an Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, with no experience in the classroom. This is not the change that Obama promised! It is more politics as usual. It looks like Obama will not seek out the opinions of experienced educators in order to make his education policies. Without experienced educators’ input, the teaching profession will be in the same boat as it has been for the last eight years. As a teacher, I voted for Obama in the last election. Since his policies look so much like the Bush Administration’s policies, I will not vote for him again.
It seems as if the education policies forced on us via the federal government have been made by politicians who knew not the first thing about teaching in a public school — particularly if you work with children who have any number of disabilities. To me, laws are based on what sounds good at the moment and are largely lacking in common sense. Most politicians send their children to elite private schools, which leaves them even more clueless about the realities of public education. Big Government needs to step down!