This is a great piece by Paul Thomas from Furman, a 31 year teaching veteran.  He explains exactly why he believes the teacher voice must be included in the education reform debate if we are to have any hope of improving our country’s education system. Here’s a brief excerpt summarizing his view:

Over about 150 years, the more-or-less modern public school teacher has worked in ways I describe above. Mostly, they have done so without having much voice in how their profession is administered and what policies mandate their practices.

Since public schools are government agencies, policies are mostly designed by elected officials who have virtually no classroom teaching experience. (In unionized states, it is influenced by unions, though that influence has dwindled as many teachers work in right-to-work states where they have almost no power or voice.) Historically, even school-based administrators rise to their positions with minimal time teaching day-to-day; administrators (mostly men) teach and coach three or so years, and then become assistant principals, then principals, district office officials and superintendents.

I also love how he acknowledges that those without classroom teaching experience should be involved in the debate, but that the teacher voice must also be present when the polices are being developed:

I am not saying that people without classroom experience should have no voice in the education reform debate. My primary argument about professional autonomy and education policy is that the initial and primary voices that matter should be classroom teachers and people with significant classroom teaching experience (this is also a problem in teacher education where education professors often hold positions with little or no classroom experience).

Historically and currently in the field of education, the public voice and policy paradigms are greatly flipped since those without classroom experience hold most of the public voices and almost all of the power to create and impose policy on schools.

You can find the whole piece at alternet.org.