trying to repair the Obama administration’s frayed relationship with teachers

Emma Brown:

In one of his first major speeches as acting U.S. secretary of education, John King apologized to teachers for the role that the federal government has played in creating a climate in which teachers feel “attacked and unfairly blamed.”

To many teachers, King’s remarks at a Philadelphia high school late last month was an astonishing and welcome acknowledgment that the Obama administration, in pushing states to link teacher evaluations to student test scores, had helped create systems that seemed as if they were designed to punish teachers instead of help them get better.