Woods: Environment we were setting up took some of the heart out of education

The 'Whys'
The simple answer to the Why is there a [teaching] shortage? question is the economy – but there’s more to it, including trends, particularly standardized testing, that Woods says have all but taken the heart out of education.

Too Many Tests
“Most teachers went into the profession because they love children,” says Woods. “They want to have that impact. They want to have time to build relationships with each and every child. Unfortunately, since the conception of No Child Left Behind and the standardized testing movement that really took hold across the nation, we began to lose some of that.
​
“You began not to even hear the word ‘child’ at all. It became ‘subgroups,’ it became ‘percentages,’ it became ‘data points.’ We’ve almost dehumanized education,” he adds. “The environment we were setting up in Georgia took some of the heart out of education. It was a pretty sterile environment, not what teachers envisioned.”

Read Teachers: Wanted, Needed, Underappreciated on Georgia Trend at: ​http://www.georgiatrend.com/October-2016/Teachers-Wanted-Needed-Underappreciated/