[yummyfajitas]

Something happened in the past 10-20 years where teachers became the scape goats of the failing American education system.

The reason for this is simple deduction. If you believe teacher quality is the primary drivers of educational outcomes and outcomes are not as you desire, it must be caused by low teacher quality.

(Personally I don't accept the premise that teacher quality affects educational outcomes much, but my views are way outside the mainstream...)

[flyinRyan]

Your views are likely outside the mainstream in the same way Alex Jones' views are outside the mainstream. Your "simple deduction" would better be labeled "uneducated guessing based on nothing".

The reasons behind the dramatic decline in the American education system are obvious and known very well to any public school teacher: "No child left behind".

[betterunix]

Education was on the decline as far back as I can remember. In the 90s, New York City's public school system was embroiled in scandals -- overcrowding, converting bathrooms into classrooms, illiterate teaching assistants, illiterate high school graduates, etc. This was long before No Child Left Behind (and in fact, NCLB was meant to address the concerns people had about American education), and it was not unique to New York.

NCLB is a bad law, but it is not the cause of our education problems. Teachers like to point to it because it is an easy scapegoat and it allows them to evade all responsibility.

[flyinRyan]

Teachers like to point to it because it's destroyed any chance we had of fixing the issue.

And the issues previous to the law were appallingly bad salaries. There are some people who love teaching so much they would do it even though they earn probably 40% of what they could be doing with their credentials. But not as many as we need.

Sprinkle in the problem of parents blaming teachers for bad grades instead of kids and it all gets worse.

[yummyfajitas]

I'm confused - which part of my deduction is a guess?

I'll ignore your ad hominem attacks.

[flyinRyan]

> If you believe teacher quality is the primary drivers of educational outcomes and outcomes are not as you desire, it must be caused by low teacher quality.

Wrong. If you believe teacher quality is the primary driver of educational outcome then anything effecting teacher performance could effect those outcomes. It does not follow that only teacher quality plays the only role unless the teachers are completely empowered.