This paper addresses education reform efforts, specifically the need to improve schooling by improving the status, power, and working conditions of teachers through professional development programs. Two issues which continue to undermine the authenticity and social value of efforts to promote teacher development are addressed: (1) underneath the rhetoric of many current efforts to empower teachers to take control of their own professional development is a reality in which teachers remain extremely limited in the scope of their power to influence the conditions of their work; and (2) even when efforts to promote teacher development and reflective teaching are not illusory, teacher development often becomes an end in itself unconnected to broader questions about education in a democratic society. Teacher development needs to be genuine, connected to the promotion of equity and social justice, a means toward the education of everyone's children, and supportive of teachers' efforts to reflect on and change the practices and social conditions which undermine and distort the educational potential and moral basis of schooling in democratic societies. Forty-two references are included. (LL)