Angels and Superheroes: Compassionate Educators in an Era of School Accountability

The school accountability movement’s focus solely on improving standardized test scores is dehumanizing. There is no standardized child. In the rush to quantify, evaluate, and ostensibly improve the American educational system, we have forgotten that education is complicated. Any attempt to distill it into a simplistic measure will fall short – and will compromise the nobility of the work.

How can teachers continue to do the incredibly challenging work of effective education in an environmen...