Blaming Teachers: Professionalization Policies and the Failure of Education Reform in American History

As public support of basic schooling spread from its New England strongholds, teachers came to stand at the nucleus of education policy both as targets of reproof and objects of reform.  Linking the deficient quality of teachers to poor school outcomes, policymakers identified the professionalization of this female-dominated occupation as a panacea. Such critiques gave way to policies ranging from tenure to evaluation.  In spite of this legacy of reform, negative appraisals of teachers persist and professionalization measures cloaked as novel undertakings abound. This presentation will discuss the professionalization policies applied to teachers and the debates that surrounded these female workers over a landmark period from the rise of public schooling in the mid-19^th century to the development of the modern teachers union in the mid-1960s. Much changed over this long time-period; the image of the professional teacher was a cultural construct, rather than a taxonomic category, informed by gendered perceptions as well as shifting economic, political, and social circumstances. Of course, historical change is counterbalanced by continuity. Over this long history, teachers shouldered the blame for an array of shifting educational and national deficiencies. The concept of teacher professionalization, deeply and inextricably gendered, emerged as a rare point of consensus and functioned as the engine driving more than a century’s worth of reform initiatives. Embedded in this history is a Sisyphean irony and with profound historiographical and contemporary significance: the historic language of professionalism applied to public school teachers generated reforms that subverted professional legitimacy.