ABSTRACT
Gabriel Reich notes that research studies point out that successful schools with high achievement demonstrate high relational trust among the many stakeholders that comprise the actors. Deep suspicion, unvarnished deficit thinking, and the power asymmetries that shape the policy landscape and reinforce distrust are not good ingredients in a recipe for relational trust. Nor are they useful to a process for developing sound assessment policies that teachers and students might deserve. Most teachers talk about their work in academic, supportive, and palliative terms. They liken what they do to caregiving, much the way doctors, social workers, and pastors describe their efforts. They think in terms of best outcomes for children and adolescents. How it turns out is shaped by a range of academic, socio-emotional, and spiritual possibilities. Teachers operate as embedded socio-cultural agents. As caregivers they sit between students and parents and must see to the needs of both, while simultaneously serving the larger communities in which they live.
