I taught middle school for six years before I had my first child.  And every year that I taught there were more and more tests that we were required to give.  In the end we lost over five weeks of class time to testing.

This was also the time when the idea of “No Child left behind” began to hit schools hard.  And teachers were required to be “highly qualified.”  I watched as some of the best teachers I knew were made to jump through hoops of material that they never even taught in order to prove that they were qualified to do the job they had successfully been doing for many years.  While teachers who had been screwing up for the past ten plus years were allowed to continue peacefully because they had tenure and an old teaching credential from back in the dark ages. Continue Reading