Puh-leez.

Michael Petrilli (Fordham, Hoover, former Bush official) looked Obama in the eye recently, and took issue with the candidate’s promise to work with teachers on improving No Child Left Behind.

“I would not reauthorize No Child Left Behind until I got the teachers’ buy-in,” Obama told Petrilli.

This spurred Petrilli to think a bit, to mull, to consider. And here’s what he came up with:

“I’ve pondered, and I’ve concluded: Requiring teacher buy-in is not an appropriate standard for education policymaking, especially at the presidential level.”

Not appropriate??!!?? Honestly, in no other white-collar, college-degree-required profession is it so acceptable to ignore the expertise and experience of the people who do the actual work.

To be fair, Petrilli doesn’t totally dismiss a little proletariat input, but he adds a qualifier that could single-handedly decimate America’s teaching force in a massive choking incident [emphasis added].

“Sure, having workers’ buy-in (getting input, making appropriate adjustments, and listening seriously to concerns) is ideal in any human endeavor. But when it comes to education, great principals already do this…. ‘Buy-in,’ then, can be seen as the end result of strong leadership, not a pre-condition for negotiations.”

Excuse me, but how did education get excluded from every other “human endeavor”? And, by all means, let’s leave the greatest education enterprise in the history of the world to the chance that some day, somehow, there will be a great principal in every school.

Puh-leez.

Teachers have had five years of direct, day-to-day experience implementing NCLB, and they have a lot to say about what’s working and what’s not. So, why not get their buy-in this time around, instead of foisting another set of unworkable mandates on them?

After all, having workers’ buy-in is “ideal in any human endeavor,” especially one that is so vital to the future of the world’s greatest democracy.

Explore posts in the same categories: accountability, reauthorization