I have no doubt that the top 10% of teachers are so skilled at their craft that they are producing achievement gains despite dwindling resources, increasing class sizes, and no mentoring support. The others may deserve to be subject to a watchful eye or even dismissed, but this is not reform so much as yelling the old rules more loudly. Reformers need to get their argument straight: Is the system broken and therefore needs a radical change, or does the system work just fine as it is so long as you add more enforcement?

Yes, ultimately, innovation and quality control will both be part of the solution, but blaming teachers for the problem only makes sense if the system has given them every possible opportunity to succeed. A recent New York Times op-ed piece made this point well when they compared teachers to soldiers, explaining that when military endeavors fail "we don't say 'it's these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefit plans!'" but rather we look to bigger-picture infrastructure and higher-up leadership for the reasons for failure. We also don't say that the success of some soldiers proves that that the unsuccessful ones are at fault. We also don't create unnecessary competition among soldiers, leading them to withhold their good ideas from their platoon.

We don't say or do any of these things because, as techniques for creating positive change, they are not only mythical, they are absurd, ineffective, and immoral.