The reigning rhetoric of school reform has me worried. This is the thrust of what I'm reading in so many blogs and op-eds these days:
- The bolder, the better.
- There's no time to wait for more evidence before we act.
- There's little time for planning.
- Those who question our reforms defend the status quo.
- Collaboration with those who must carry out reforms will just slow things down and jeopardize the "boldness" of reform. (See no. 1).
- Anything new would be better than what we have now.
I don't mean to say that
every one of those points is terrible. But in combination, they could be lethal. Bolder can truly be better, but not when the evidence base is so thin. We can't wait for evidence before trying new reforms, but shouldn't a shortage of evidence prevent us from gambling so much on so few strategies? Shouldn't that put us in a more deliberative mood?
