Ed Secretary Arne Duncan’s Teach to Lead initiative is really a call for teacher followership, writes Rick Hess.
. . . it’s good to see Duncan talking explicitly about the need for teachers to play a leading role in making change happen. Too often, Obama administration officials have seemed to offer teachers banal pats on the head while cheering broad new federal directives.
On the other hand, Duncan went on to blithely tout the administration’s wondrous “series of changes” that’s “raising standards,” changing assessment, and creating new systems for the “support and evaluation of educators.” . . .
Indeed, his call for teacher leadership looked like a call for teachers to help promote the Obama agenda — to shill for the Common Core, celebrate new teacher evaluation systems, and be excited that the feds are here to help.
Pushing for someone else’s agenda is called “following,” not “leading,” Hess concludes.