The National Governors Association Takes Action to Reform Teaching - With No Teacher Input

Would you re-write a fire-fighting handbook with no input from fire-fighters? Hire a committee of 60 academics and only one doctor to re-draft medical protocols? Madness!

Yet the National Governors Association (NGA) and its educational arm, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), are following just that disingenuous path by writing national educational standards for mathematics and English language arts to be implemented by America's K-12 teachers -- with virtually no input from them. Of the over 60 members named from the NGA and CCSSO's standards-making groups, only one, Vern Williams of Virginia, on the mathematics feedback group, is a working classroom teacher. And forget about including any parents or students in the process.

National standards have the backing of President Obama and Secretary Duncan. What this group writes matters; it will become the playbook for teachers across the country. The folly of excluding expert teachers' voices from the shaping process of these standards is profound. Teachers know how to blend academic rigor and supporting learning environments; it's what they do.

I'm not saying that all of the university professors and test-making consultants who actually were included are out of touch with the day-to-day working of K-12 classrooms. At best, our leaders are kidding themselves if they think they can get the best product by shutting the door in the faces of the teachers who are going to live and breathe the results of this process. Or, at worst, it shows in elected leaders a patent mistrust of educators, a hopeless sentiment.

President Obama said -- quite encouragingly -- "America's future depends on its teachers." Let's see them get a seat at the table.

Dan Brown is a teacher and the author of The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle. His new blog for the Teacher Leaders Network will launch this month.