I recently wrote about Jal Mehta’s excellent book: .

The book’s title refers to elite attempts to improve public education via repeated cycles of standards and accountability based reforms.

I coined the phrase the Allure of Safety to describe another issue that Jal raises: teaching has not matured into a modern profession (one that is spurred forward by useful research, best practice standardization, and practitioner driven innovation and self-regulation).

I believe teachers have (intentionally or not) taken a bargain whereby they have traded increased professionalization for the safety of onerous union contracts and mutually beneficial relationships with bureaucracies.

If it is true that both the Allure of Order and Allure of Safety are preventing us all (citizens, educators, children) from having the schools we want – how could we walk back from these Allures?

I’m not sure.

Here’s the main issue I’m grappling with: I don’t know how we should sequence the unwindings.

Begin with Educators?

On one hand, you could argue that we need to begin with teacher recruitment and development, and that once these efforts are in place, we can begin to unwind top down mandates and put more trust in well developed talent.

But as David Steiner noted in his critique of Jal’s book, Jal doesn’t present a politically feasible and concrete path forward on this route. Even worse (for those who find this path appealing), Jal narrates in great detail a recent failed national effort to do just this.

Ben Riley and Deans for Impact are trying to make change here but have yet to prove that they can do so. Ditto for Hank Levin and his new effort.

Begin with Elites?

On the other hand, you could argue that we need to begin with the relaxing of top down accountability so as to create on-the-ground conditions that might foster increased partnership with educators.

But, as the current attempts to reauthorize NCLB are demonstrating, the elite consensus around annual testing (and other forms of top-down accountability) remains very much intact.

Moreover, removing top down accountability without any real reforms in educator recruitment and development might wash away the modest gains that accountability has appeared to deliver.

So What to Do?

I’ll try to tackle this in my next post on Jal’s book.