ABSTRACT
David Gerwin makes a strong argument that, too often in public education, solutions to issues become more problematic than the concerns they attempt to resolve. Federal assessment policies and their impacts on access to robust social studies education serve as case in point. In principle, increasing the academic expectations for candidates entering the teaching profession, in an attempt to strengthen teacher efficacy and teaching quality, makes sense. But in practice, as Gerwin cogently suggests, such policy is loaded with debatable assumptions about how teaching can and should be improved. Further, state education agencies are part of the executive branch of government and typically are not allowed to engage state legislative branches to influence policy. Instead, those agencies focus on implementing laws, usually under stringent conditions, without the ability to advocate for policy changes unless those changes are built into rule-making functions afforded to them.
