Andrew Ordover's Blog: Scenes from a Broken Hand, page 21

Bad Faith

Jay Matthews has a good article on the dangers of national mandates in education and how short-sighted and overly prescriptive they can be. But I think it misses an underlying point--a prime cause, if you will. How can we stop penduluming back and forth between "teachers are idiots--tell them what to do" and "teachers are saints--leave them alone"? Both arguments are foolish and uninformed, and

What's a Bad Teacher?

First off, a question: does anyone really think that old, intractable problems can be solved by the stakeholders re-stating the same positions they've been stating for at least a generation? What if they state them more angrilly? I don't think so either. So how about, when we hear old, stale, useless positions being stated for the umpteenth time, we just dismiss them immediately and say "Next!" "