"As long as my sixth graders showed an average improvement of five years, the principal and district pretty much left me alone to create my own curriculum and teach whatever I wanted"
About this Quote
A pragmatic bargain sits at the heart of the line: deliver spectacular gains and the bureaucracy will stop breathing down your neck. It frames classroom autonomy not as a right of professional practice, but as a privilege purchased with measurable results. The promise is seductive to a creative teacher. Freedom to design curriculum, to explore interdisciplinary ideas, to meet students where they are rather than where pacing guides say they should be, comes only when test scores soar.
That five-year improvement figure hints at the oddities of grade-equivalent metrics. Such numbers typically come from standardized reading or achievement tests that translate raw scores into grade levels. They can spike dramatically when students start far behind or when the tests are calibrated in ways that make growth nonlinear. The number, then, functions less as a literal leap from sixth-grade to junior-year mastery and more as a sign of dramatic acceleration. It also exposes a grim baseline: students were likely under-served before someone reinvented the approach.
Dan Simmons taught for years before becoming a novelist, and he has written about using unorthodox methods with middle-schoolers. The sentence reads as both pride and critique. Pride, because it celebrates a craftspersons belief that ingenuity, rigor, and high expectations can transform kids. Critique, because it reveals a system that values outcomes over pedagogy, oversight that substitutes numeric proof for thoughtful supervision, and a culture in which exceptional teachers win freedom but the norm remains standardization and compliance.
The line touches a larger tension in American education. Autonomy empowers teachers to be artists and scientists of learning, yet accountability regimes often reduce them to implementers. When results buy freedom, innovation is protected but also made contingent and exceptional. Simmons points toward a better ideal: trust anchored in competence and evidence, where professional judgment is the default and metrics support rather than ransom creative teaching.
That five-year improvement figure hints at the oddities of grade-equivalent metrics. Such numbers typically come from standardized reading or achievement tests that translate raw scores into grade levels. They can spike dramatically when students start far behind or when the tests are calibrated in ways that make growth nonlinear. The number, then, functions less as a literal leap from sixth-grade to junior-year mastery and more as a sign of dramatic acceleration. It also exposes a grim baseline: students were likely under-served before someone reinvented the approach.
Dan Simmons taught for years before becoming a novelist, and he has written about using unorthodox methods with middle-schoolers. The sentence reads as both pride and critique. Pride, because it celebrates a craftspersons belief that ingenuity, rigor, and high expectations can transform kids. Critique, because it reveals a system that values outcomes over pedagogy, oversight that substitutes numeric proof for thoughtful supervision, and a culture in which exceptional teachers win freedom but the norm remains standardization and compliance.
The line touches a larger tension in American education. Autonomy empowers teachers to be artists and scientists of learning, yet accountability regimes often reduce them to implementers. When results buy freedom, innovation is protected but also made contingent and exceptional. Simmons points toward a better ideal: trust anchored in competence and evidence, where professional judgment is the default and metrics support rather than ransom creative teaching.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teaching |
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