When I was ploughing through the Pew Center survey of teachers, I thought of Robert Pondiscio. Specifically, it was the part about the work itself. 84% of teachers report that there's not enough time in the day to get their work done, and among those, 81% said that a major reason was they just have too much work (another 17% said this was a minor reason, meaning that virtually no overstretched teachers thought it wasn't part of the problem at all). The other reasons, like non-teaching duties, didn't even come close.
Something I've noticed in a lot of fields is that this technocratic standardization of things seems to be a way to replace trust (and of course workers). It is hard work to build relationships and know your teachers (workers) and support them when they make mistakes or are having a hard time, but there is literally nothing that can replace trust in them. If you can't trust an employee, they shouldn't be your employee, but putting them under constant surveillance and measurement is not a replacement for trust, it just had the outcomes you describe regularly with the harms of standardized testing.
Here in Fl, many schools have teacher “coaches” that are similar to those curriculum/instruction honchos - at least in theory. Unfortunately success is often very limited. As you described, their support structure is limited or nonexistent. Coaches get pulled to plug staffing holes or do administrative duties. When they do have time to coach, they are often expected to push the party line down to the teaching staff - meeting the needs of those above rather than the development needs of the teachers below. Even that assumes the teachers have time or bandwidth to be coached. (Practice time isn’t built into any teacher’s schedule). Finally, subject knowledge & expertise doesn’t automatically translate into good coaching & not all teachers are coachable.
Something I've noticed in a lot of fields is that this technocratic standardization of things seems to be a way to replace trust (and of course workers). It is hard work to build relationships and know your teachers (workers) and support them when they make mistakes or are having a hard time, but there is literally nothing that can replace trust in them. If you can't trust an employee, they shouldn't be your employee, but putting them under constant surveillance and measurement is not a replacement for trust, it just had the outcomes you describe regularly with the harms of standardized testing.
Here in Fl, many schools have teacher “coaches” that are similar to those curriculum/instruction honchos - at least in theory. Unfortunately success is often very limited. As you described, their support structure is limited or nonexistent. Coaches get pulled to plug staffing holes or do administrative duties. When they do have time to coach, they are often expected to push the party line down to the teaching staff - meeting the needs of those above rather than the development needs of the teachers below. Even that assumes the teachers have time or bandwidth to be coached. (Practice time isn’t built into any teacher’s schedule). Finally, subject knowledge & expertise doesn’t automatically translate into good coaching & not all teachers are coachable.