Increasing stress in schools is toxic to the relationship between teachers, children and learning. Many aspects of the current education reform movement are increasing this stress: lack of job security, reliance on test scores to measure things the tests are not designed to measure, eliminating programs due to budget cuts give students fewer reasons to engage in school, increasing the time devoted to test prep and testing undermines every teachers' integrity because every teacher knows testing is not teaching or learning.
Contrast this short list with teachers being respected and valued, test scores used to inform instruction, expanding programs and course offerings giving students more reasons to engage in school. The things that will help schools help students are obvious and ignored by the reformers because they either do not know what they are doing or they are serving other purposes and only saying their reforms will work. More at this link.
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