DCPS's policies have long been significantly driven by pedagogy fads straight out of the latest inane D.Ed. theses. There's the direct influence of Congress, se

DCPS's policies have long been significantly driven by pedagogy fads straight out of the latest inane D.Ed. theses. There's the direct influence of Congress, several prominent Ed departments sending in troops, and an expensive top-heavy bureaucracy full of idiots. Teacher Education has always been pretty bad, but adding massive financial incentives for teachers to obtain graduate degrees has led to an explosion of idiocy, even at otherwise top-tier schools. In the DCPS every teacher I saw go back to school (and not just the diploma-mill ones) came back dramatically worse as a teacher -- any cleverness hammered down, any laziness replaced with thoughtless zeal.