Don't save bad schools--terminate them - Class Struggle - Jay Mathews on Education:
"This year's hot education topic is fixing what is broken. The first sentence of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan's July 22 speech was: 'Today, I want to focus on the challenge of turning around our chronically low-achieving schools.' It is a noble quest I have long supported. But I have come to wonder if it might be a big waste of time and money. Most efforts to save such places have been failures.
Why not just close them down and start fresh? Why kill ourselves trying to root out the bad habits of failing schools?"
"This year's hot education topic is fixing what is broken. The first sentence of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan's July 22 speech was: 'Today, I want to focus on the challenge of turning around our chronically low-achieving schools.' It is a noble quest I have long supported. But I have come to wonder if it might be a big waste of time and money. Most efforts to save such places have been failures.
Why not just close them down and start fresh? Why kill ourselves trying to root out the bad habits of failing schools?"