from This Week In Education by john thompson 

In this article by Thompson, the choice of metaphors beating of reformers and the punishment of teachers ignores the question of how to address the student failures. The point of assessment is not only as a selection mechanism for graduation and admission to college, but also as a gauge to determine how instruction relates to student learning. If instruction was or is effective, test scores would reflect it, but test scores indicate poor ineffective teaching and students' failure to study!.

Thompson wants us to believe that the reform is corporate-motivated but it's source is the government. Effective schooling that leads to a competent work force reduces social conflict and criminal behavior. Ineffective schooling produces criminal behavior. The use however of the metaphors of beating and punishment betray the irrationality of the teachers who are dishing out the beatings - they are unable to formulate a coherent argument so they resort to beating up the reformer, the innovator, the people who are trying to improve the lives of students, particularly of those who have typically failed, the majority!

 Teachers however are stuck in a difficult position between administrators who are thumping for more rigorous lessons and students who are resisting doing their share of the work: studying. Politicians often speak without knowing what they are talking about: if a student is tested only once in 8 years of primary school, then seven years of education go by without evaluation and student achievement would reflect their parents property value and income which would reflect their educational achievement. Unless we are merely copying the attitudes and values of family towards education, a further standard must be implemented in the schools beyond the given of family settings.

So, the state education departments are requiring teachers to implement higher standards that measure student development and reflect teacher effectiveness. Teachers are employees and are expected to comply with these higher more rigorous standards. Teacher resistance is irrational and fails to argue about the rationality of their position. The reality is that administrative imperatives are merely focused on the direction that teaching and learning are headed in and not on impossible perfectionist goals. But, neither administrators nor teachers are able to formulate the reasoning behind their interests and so express themselves in beatings and punishments! The Common Core requires a focus on reasoning but the professional educator including administrators are beset by their emotional reactions and unable to provide reasons for their own issues!!!  Perhaps teachers are unable to comply because if they do not implement administrative imperatives, they are treated punitively and have to go to the bathroom multiple times everyday, or if they do implement the imperatives, they are set upon by students who exact sciatica symptoms -- this is what is meant by beatings and punishment!?