IEA on R2T is like talking to someone with multiple personalities.

Jim Grimes is an IEA leader. He sits on the NEA’s Board of Directors. He has a post on the IEA website. The first paragraph is spot on.

Our nation’s public education system should not be run like the NCAA Basketball tourney. Unfortunately our friend Education Secretary Arne Duncan seems to have reverted to his basketball days and created a competitive game to dole out a small prize to states and so-called low performing schools.

Yes! Way to go Jim.

But wait. That was the Good Jim. Then we have Bad Jim just a few paragraphs later.

Barely mentioned in the news stories about RTTT is the hard work and collaboration between many groups that resulted in the application and the real reforms that have been proposed. Those groups included the State Board, administrators, business and industry, and our education unions. The changes outlined in Illinois’ application and the legislation passed to move it along are revolutionary. Unlike with No Child Left Behind (and untested) this time those who actually work in classrooms were consulted.

Okay. He’s not really “Bad Jim.” Let’s say it’s Jim talking nonsense. Revolutionary indeed.

Jim talks about collaboration as if it were an end in itself. In this case, collaboration meant having to meet the requirements that school’s boss Arne Duncan established for Race. That included a requirement to have lots of tracking data (read: standardized testing) and linking that data to individual teacher evaluations. It led to our legislature passing (with IEA’s enthusiastic but quiet approval) a bill that made making that link a mandatory part of local bargaining.

Jim doesn’t point to any specific results, revolutionary or otherwise, that came from this collaboration in Illinois. Why the silence on this point?

When I was finally called on at the RA, (I apparently was not visible at the mic wearing the ugliest bright orange sweater ever made.) I asked IEA Director Audrey Soglin about the impact on our locals of making the link a mandatory issue for bargaining. All she would say is that is presented a challenge. Revolutionary. Like teachers don’t face enough challenges already.

I am reminded again of the profound comments of Mike Rose in the recent issue of Educational Leadership.

The history of school reform has taught us, however, that good ideas can become one-dimensionalized as they move from conception through policy formation to implementation. Also, in the heat of reform, politics and polemics can become an end in themselves, a runaway train of reform for reform’s sake. In addition, reforms can have unintended consequences. As a reform plays out in the complex, on-the-ground world of districts, school boards, and classrooms, it can lead to counter productive practices.

So, let’s hear more from Good Jim. Let’s hear less about reform and collaboration that are for their own sake. If those of us in the classroom were truly represented in the discussions of R2T, we surely would have heard more about the unintended (let alone the intended) consequences of R2T collaboration. Those of us who are actually in the classroom can testify.