Dive Brief:

• In a piece published by The Hill, John Pedicone, the former superintendent for Tucson Unified School District, argues that the combination of economic cutbacks and increased accountability have created a system that jeopardizes the future of public education.
• Pedicone traces the historical forces that created the current system, from the common sense motivation to ensure all students were succeeding to the economic curtailments behind linking teacher performance and pay.
• But he argues that the combination of those forces and the underestimation of how difficult it is to accurately measure student performance and attribute responsibility created a "perfect storm."

Dive Insight:

Pedicone's perspective is a particularly nuanced take on the current debate around what school accountability should look like, and ultimately what the future of American education should be. So much of the rhetoric is polarized and harsh. Teachers are either heroes or overpaid hacks. Schools are either centers of the community or rundown, bureaucratic enterprises.

Pedicone dismisses much of that in order to point out the ultimate and concerning result that he sees: "Something is very wrong when — because of the risk of negative professional evaluations based on assessment measures insensitive to the rigors of addressing such populations — the most dedicated professionals question whether it is worth serving the most fragile students … (When) a teacher with a family qualifies for state and federal subsidies, is it surprising that there is an increase in the number of veteran educators choosing to leave the profession and students making career choices away from teaching?"