[Ohiogift] school reform and Cleveland

[Margaret DeLacy]

At 03:17 PM 11/12/2012 -0500, Louis apparently wrote:

>"The assumption that large numbers of student failures must be the fault of an incompetent, lazy, burned-out, greedy teacher is a ludicrous proposition.

Margaret thinks:

That is indeed a ludicrous proposition.  

The assumption that some student failures are due to a small number of incompetent teachers, however, is a different proposition.

Is it possible to believe the second proposition without adopting the first?  The only two possible alternatives to the second proposition are (1) every teacher is perfect (also a ludicrous proposition) or (2) teachers are irrelevant or unimportant.  I don't believe that.  My daughter is a teacher.

If the second proposition is indeed correct, there's still plenty of room for disagreement about how best to solve the problem of incompetent teachers, but extreme rhetoric is probably not a helpful solution.

I can't help wondering whether it is wise for a teacher to argue that teachers are unimportant. 

Margaret