If someone tells you it's simple, they're wrong

It's never simple.

Everyone who presents a plan to fix education seems to think it is.

They pick one aspect of a multi-faceted problem and say that if only we address that, all will be well.

When I began my teaching career (early 1990s), we were busy blaming teachers for being unqualified.

Pundits of the day ignored all the intersections of poverty, racism, inequality, and hatred in favor of blaming teachers again. (Don't get me started on the underlying misogyny of refusing to believe that women are qualified to do the work they have trained for, in one of only a few female dominated fields in our country).

Obviously (please read with dripping sarcasm) if teachers were only "highly qualified" then all would be well. Teachers are all required to go through a teacher education program at a university in order to achieve licensure, but apparently we were not coming out of these programs "qualified."

So the nation instituted a new round of tests (PRAXIS) that we were assured would show that we knew our subject area content. Of course, anyone who knows teaching knows that subject matter knowledge is only one of part of being "qualified." I've sat and listened to many a "subject matter expert" who couldn't convey information in an engaging and memorable way for an introductory audience.

We ignored every expert who might have designed something tenable or productive in favor of pre-packaged tests for teachers and then more and more and more and more of them for students. We turned a blind eye to the millions of public dollars that went into private pockets to fund the making and distribution of those tests and pre-packaged programs to help people succeed on the tests.

We also know that many people "test well" or "don't test well" and these so-called objective tests don't reveal their actual qualifications or knowledge. So, it's like taking off your shoes at the airport and letting someone scan you. It doesn't prove a darned thing, but it makes people feel like they're doing something. It gives the appearance of progress, even though no one is smarter, safer, or better qualified.

We also know that most of the skills that make a person effective as an educator are categorized as "soft skills" and are impossible to measure on any kind of objective test. Teacher evaluation tools are nearly useless at actually assessing the effectiveness of teachers.

There is also significant evidence that people teaching things they are arguably unqualified to teach have been surprisingly effective.  For example, I once taught a remedial math intervention, even though I don't have any significant degree work in math, and my "outside the box" way of thinking about it proved to be exactly what several of those kids needed to finally understand concepts they'd struggled with for years. They needed to hear it explained from a different point of view, which I--a language person trying to speak math--definitely had.

So, thousands of dollars and person-hours later, are teachers better qualified on the whole than they were before the early 1990s? Are students more capable? My view from the inside says, "No." They are still people doing the best they can with what they've been handed.

The best of teachers are lifelong learners who don't give up on learning new approaches, techniques, theories, and technologies that might bring those struggling kids forward.

The worst of teachers become downtrodden and disheartened, but even those folks are showing up and giving kids a chance to learn something if only they will take advantage of it. They're better than nothing. They still make a difference for some.

Many teachers are somewhere in between or seesaw depending on the time of the year, life's demands, and what kind of teaching load we're carrying at the moment.

It's not simple.

There's no one thing we can do that will make our educational system perfect for every child. But after twenty-odd years of watching testing become something I spend nearly 1/4 of the school year on? If there ever was a magic solution, testing ain't it.