Following several converging research studies, this article—co-produced by four authors—analyzes how the New Public Management in the school system has aggravated the difficulties of schoolteachers and influenced how they sort students. These teachers face a double bind result that stems from an accumulation of time-consuming, check-box exercises combined with increased accountability for the ambitious goals of including students with disabilities and “success for all.” Increasingly at risk of failure that would be attributed to them, many are forced to systematize the work of pointing to parental incompetence or medical etiology, in response to the difficulties observed and the failures anticipated.
- Double bind
- professional burnout
- essentializing difficulties
- New Public Management
- school system
- accountability
- psychosocial risks
- user sorting