As coeditor of the April 2006 issue of this journal, Tara Star Johnson wrote an eloquent essay in which she explored "the increasing bureaucratic pressure to mass-produce, homogenize and monitor students" as manifested in the No Child Left Behind Act and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) accreditation process. The story the author wishes to tell in this article parallels Johnson's, and, he hopes, adds to it in useful ways. In the fall of 2007, his professional life was influenced by three experiences. One was a class he taught for teachers in a small New Mexico town. The second was preparing for the visit of an NCATE team to his university. The third was reading James C. Scott's "Seeing Like a State" (1998). The first two showed the author how completely educators now live and work in the policy-saturated world Johnson described; the third helped him understand the underlying purpose of these policies and how educators might begin to regain control over their work.