What’s really behind this madness is that many school systems are not about teaching any more, and New York City’s is front and center in that area. In Special Interest (Brookings, 2011, free chapter here), Terry Moe outlines the way in which schools have largely been converted to institutions serving the interests of teachers and administrators, not students. One of the most extraordinary examples of schools-are-for-teachers occurred in New York City: the maintenance of “rubber rooms” for incompetent teachers. In Moe’s words, …
More.