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It contrasts political narratives portraying teachers unions and tenure as the main causes of weak schools with evidence that policy responses often rely on test-based measures and punitive reforms. The excerpt also describes the emotional, civic, and educational weight placed on teachers and highlights public controversies and teacher resignations amid testing regimes.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/quieting-the-teacher-wars-what-history-reveals-about-an-embattled-profession/590452/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/quieting-the-teacher-wars-what-history-reveals-about-an-embattled-profession/590452.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Pentious","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-30","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":39},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What core issue is discussed in the excerpt about American public school teaching?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"Public school teaching is portrayed as the most controversial profession in America, with ongoing political efforts to limit teachers’ rights to bargain collectively and to weaken tenure protections.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does the excerpt describe mainstream narratives about why schools underperform?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"It contrasts political and media portrayals that blame teacher tenure and teachers unions as near-sole causes with the broader social and institutional context behind school performance.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What policy approach does the excerpt critique in the Obama era?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It critiques weakening tenure protections and then using “measures of student learning,” mainly test scores, to identify and fire teachers.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},590452,1793013357,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":39,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":24,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":144,"preview_page_count":4},1374404730887,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_6f874abed73319feea01a86fa6f0fab8","Quieting the Teacher Wars  \nWhat History Reveals about an Embattled Profession  \nPHOTOGRAPHS, CLOCKWISE FROM FAR LEFT: © BETTMANN/CORBIS; COURTESY OF LBJ LIBRARY; ENGRAVED BY G . E . PERINE & CO ., NY; BY ADD ISON N . SCURLOCK  \nBy Dana Goldstein  \nI  \nbegan writing my book e Teacher Wars in early 2011 with a simple observation: Public school teaching had become the most controversial profession in America. Republican governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana, and even the Demo-  \ncratic governor of deep-blue Massachusetts, sought to diminish or eliminate teachers’ rights to collectively bargain. Teacher tenure was the subject of heated debate in statehouses from Denver to Tallahassee, and President Obama swore in his State of the Union address to “stop making excuses” forbad teachers.1  \nOne rising-star Republican, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, even became a conservative folk hero after appearing in a series of YouTube videos in which he excoriated individual public schoolteachers—all of them middle-aged women—who rose at public events to challenge him on his $1 billion in education budget cuts, even as he cut $1.6 billion in corporate taxes.  \nDana Goldstein is a sta􀀜 writer at the Marshall Project and a contributor to Slate, The Atlantic, and other magazines. She writes about education, social science, inequality, criminal justice, women’s issues, cities, and public health. is article is excerpted with permission from her book e Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession. Copyright © 2014 by Dana Goldstein. Published by arrangement with Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC.  \nClockwise from left: A teacher and her integrated kindergarten class in Washington, D.C., in 1954; long before his presidency, Lyndon B. Johnson with his rst pupils in Cotulla, Texas, in 1928; Susan B. Anthony and W. E. B. Du Bois, both of whom also taught.  \nFew other professions operate under this level of political scrutiny. In 2010, Newsweek published a cover story called “ e Key to Saving American Education.” e image was of a blackboard, with a single phrase chalked over and over again in a child’sloopy handwriting: We must 􀀝re bad teachers. We must 􀀝re bad teachers. We must􀀝re bad teachers. Wide-release movies like Waiting for “Superman” and Won’t Back Down, funded by philanthropists who made their fortunesin the private sector, portray teacher tenure and its defender, teachers unions, as practically the sole causes of underperforming schools.  \nEverywhere I traveled as an education reporter, from the 2008 Democratic National Convention to the 2010 meeting of former president Bill Clinton’s Clinton Global Initiative, powerful people seemed to feel indignant about the incompetence and job security of public schoolteachers, despite polls showing that the American public considers teachers highly respected professionals, nearly on par with medical doctors.2  \nTo an extent, anxiety about bad teaching is understandable. Teachers do work that is both personal and political. ey care for and educate our children, for whom we feel a 􀀜erce and loyal love. And they prepare our nation’s citizens and workers, whose wisdom and level of skill will shape our collective future. Given that teachers shoulder such an awesome responsibility, it makes sense that American politics is acutely attuned to their shortcomings.  \n14 AMERICAN EDUCATOR | SPRING 2015  \nSo I want to begin by acknowledging: It is true that the majority of American teachers have academically mediocre backgrounds. Most have below-average SAT scores and graduate from nonselective colleges and universities.3 It is also true that one large review of practices within typical American elementary school classrooms found many children—and the majority of poor children—“sitting around, watching the teacher deal with behavioral problems, and engaging in boring and rote instructional activities such as completing work sheets a","cbCaiubZkEnahzz2","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiubZkEnahzz2","pdf",207393,"English","# Introduction: a controversial profession\n# Political battles over tenure and bargaining\n# Public narratives and media portrayals\n# Why concerns about teaching persist\n# Obama-era policy response and test-based measures\n# Teacher reactions: resignations and online videos","[{\"question\":\"What core issue is discussed in the excerpt about American public school teaching?\",\"answer\":\"Public school teaching is portrayed as the most controversial profession in America, with ongoing political efforts to limit teachers’ rights to bargain collectively and to weaken tenure protections.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the excerpt describe mainstream narratives about why schools underperform?\",\"answer\":\"It contrasts political and media portrayals that blame teacher tenure and teachers unions as near-sole causes with the broader social and institutional context behind school performance.\"},{\"question\":\"What policy approach does the excerpt critique in the Obama era?\",\"answer\":\"It critiques weakening tenure protections and then using “measures of student learning,” mainly test scores, to identify and fire teachers.\"}]","Quieting the Teacher Wars - What History Reveals about an Embattled Profession | PDF",1792069658,13]