The Blogs: Discrimination and Power Struggles in Israeli Education

By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS

The Real Israel Exposed, Part V

Author’s note: This essay is part of The Real Israel Exposed, a series looking at where power, policy, and lived experience collide in Israeli public institutions.

Public education only works when authority operates within accountability. Principals lead, but they do not own the system. Teachers are evaluated through process rather than personal discretion. Students are assessed through standards that are meant to be transparent, evidence based, and fair. Without these foundations, education loses its public purpose and becomes something arbitrary.

In practice, however, credibility does not always follow evidence. In hierarchical systems, particularly those under strain, it often follows power. Voices with the least institutional standing are the easiest to dismiss, not because they are wrong, but because they carry less weight. When that happens, evaluation can quietly turn into erasure.

I felt compelled to write because what I experienced in my recent evaluation was not merely disappointing. It raised deeper questions about how authority is exercised and how judgment is formed when oversight weakens.

While teaching English in a government elementary school this past year, I encountered an evaluation process that did not feel like assessment at all. It felt like a narrative shaped in advance, one that overlooked context, discounted evidence, and substituted personal authority for professional standards.

This is not an essay against evaluation. I believe in feedback, in learning, and in professional growth. Teaching improves through clarity and specificity, not through fear or silence. Growth requires a willingness to engage with complexity rather than flatten it.

In a public school system, especially one shaped by the realities of Israeli life, including war, trauma, and early mandatory service, the way we evaluate educators reveals what we truly value. Not only achievement, but dignity, inclusion, and accountability.

Teaching English Means Meeting Difference

English classrooms are among the hardest to teach in Israel. Students’ proficiency can vary dramatically. In the same class, fluent readers sit beside children still learning basic decoding. Some students communicate confidently; others are silent.

This is not a weakness in the system. It is the system’s reality.

During my staj, the national special education specialist reminded us that diverse classrooms cannot be judged by one benchmark or a few brief classroom visits. Learning is nonlinear. Some students learn skills. Others learn confidence. Some learn that someone hears them at all.

This matches what educational theorists have long said about the Zone of Proximal Development — that true learning often happens in the space where a learner is supported just beyond their independent ability. What cannot be seen in one moment may emerge over weeks and months.

Work That Doesn’t Fit a Checklist

A big part of my job was building trust. Many students came with layers of challenge — emotional, academic, behavioral. Real learning with these students begins with safety, not metrics.

I read with them one-on-one, adapted materials they could access, and helped regulate behavior so that they could even engage. When needed, I used movies based on books not to avoid teaching, but to support comprehension and reduce anxiety. These choices weren’t random; they were intentional, informed by practice, and rooted in inclusion principles like Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which encourages meeting students where they are.

I often gave up lunch breaks to work with students and to make up time I lost earlier. This relational groundwork rarely shows up in neat notebooks. But it matters. It is the soil in which real learning grows.

Claims Without Evidence

And yet I was told that the students “did not learn at all.”

Not occasionally. Not unevenly. Not in fits or starts.

At all.

This claim was made based on four short, unscheduled visits that together lasted fewer than five minutes. No scheduled observation, no longitudinal review of work, no differentiation between students or learning contexts. No mention of inconsistent parental follow-through on homework, which is well known to affect outcomes in early elementary settings.

Education is not a light switch. It does not flip on and off based on one person’s quick glance. Learning unfolds over time through interaction and support. To declare wholesale failure without evidence is not assessment. It is erasure.

Teaching and learning are not the same thing. Teaching is the work we do; learning is what may emerge later. A lack of immediate uniform outcomes does not undo months of support, scaffolding, and engagement.

Presence Rewritten as Absence

Another aspect of the evaluation that troubled me was the repeated claim that I was “not there.” This was not framed as occasional absence but as near total nonpresence, as though teaching itself had not been occurring. That portrayal bore little resemblance to the reality of daily classroom work.

I was present with students, teaching, reading, and working with them consistently. Yet when presence is defined narrowly and selectively, based on brief sightings rather than sustained engagement, it becomes easy to rewrite reality to fit a predetermined conclusion. In such cases, absence turns from a verifiable fact into an accusation, and instructional work that happens outside an evaluator’s line of sight is treated as if it does not exist.

This matters because evaluation depends on accuracy. When presence is reduced to visibility at particular moments rather than the substance of teaching itself, assessment no longer reflects what actually happens in classrooms.

Why Disability Matters Here

I do not think about teaching abstractly. I live with a chronic illness and disability. This lived experience informs how I approach students. It has deepened my empathy and strengthened my belief that dignity comes first—that students and teachers alike deserve environments that respect who they are.

In Israel, this is not a fringe issue. Our classrooms include children who carry trauma, anxiety, learning differences, and unfinished grief. Inclusive practice is not a luxury. It is essential. Students learn best when they feel seen, safe, and supported.

It was therefore deeply jarring to hear the following statement during what was presented as an evaluation meeting: “Had I known you had a chronic illness, I would never have hired you.”

Framed this way, disability becomes a liability. That is not only personally painful. It contradicts what we publicly claim to value: inclusion, accessibility, equal opportunity, and the belief that people with disabilities can and should thrive.

Authority without Oversight

As the discussion unfolded, things became worse. When I raised concerns about the absence of scheduled observations and the lack of evidence, the response was simple: “I am the principal, and I can do what I want.”

That sentence stuck with me not because it was loud, but because it rejected the premise of accountability. Public schools operate within systems of oversight. Principals do not act as sovereign rulers. Their authority is delegated and bound by standards, supervisors, inspectors, and policy.

When leadership treats discretion as unbounded and oversight as optional, evaluation becomes indistinguishable from control. In that mindset, difference becomes a defect, and complexity is simplified into absolutes.

Constructive Criticism Requires Standards

I believe in constructive criticism. Teachers improve through honest feedback, time to reflect, and practical suggestions. But what I encountered was not what educators would describe as feedback. It was generalization, hindsight judgments, and financial framing that treated pay as punishment.

When evaluation stops being about improvement and starts being about domination, it loses its educational value.

Public Matters and Public Values

We live in an age where personal narratives are everywhere. But not all stories reveal structures. Some reveal patterns. Some expose inconsistencies between what institutions claim and what they enact.

This essay is intended to expose such an inconsistency. If Israeli education truly values inclusion, resilience, and fairness, then the way we evaluate teachers must reflect those values. Authority must be held accountable, and diversity must be seen as part of humanity, not a reason to erase labor.

Silence protects no one. Clear standards and oversight do.