What does national education reform do to the local schools? According to one teacher, the "reform era" has hurt his teaching more than helped it.

"Being a teacher has always been a challenge," wrote Greg Jouriles, social science teacher at Hillsdale High School in California, in an article featured on Time.com. "It is a much greater challenge in the era of 'reform.' It has been infuriating to read all the silliness, even worse to have to comply with the misguided mandates. But we teachers are ourselves partly at fault — for reacting rather than acting."

According to Jouriles, by “reform,” he means "the primacy of standardized testing; the concomitant elements of merit pay; a focus on individual teachers and classrooms, on heroes and entrepreneurs; and attacks on teacher seniority and due process rights and the unions that support them. Teachers react against 'reform.'”

"By reform, I mean a staff working together at a site over years to create a collaborative working environment for teachers and establish better structures and instruction for students," he wrote. "The goal is to build a culture in which we know students well, hold them and teachers to high standards, and take collective responsibility for student achievement and well being. Reform means recognizing that there are no silver bullets, no quick fixes, no heroes, except everyday ones. Teachers act on reform."

Jouriles wrote that his school, "tenure, seniority and the union have been key to effective reform."

"We are a school where culture — informed by a combination of talented newcomers and stable, secure, senior teachers who can speak their mind, lead by example, drive initiatives, and provide mentorship — is more important than the quality of any individual teacher," he wrote. "We are a school where it is nearly impossible for one teacher’s efforts to be measured without taking into account the work of others."

We need to craft a message about real reform and act on it. Learning is a complex human endeavor and hard to measure. Teaching is difficult. Our education system faces some overwhelming challenges, for which there are no simple solutions, partly because of resources, partly because of training, partly because of differing values. But there is also no excuse for not trying to confront the challenges. If teachers act as professionals, collaborate, and make decisions in the best interests of students, they can gradually enact real reform. They will have a better shot at success if they don’t have to comply with misguided “reform” and be better prepared to stand up to them if they act rather than react.

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Article by Kassondra Granata, Education World Contributor