Like a Sling-Shooter Lobbing Stones at the Moon � The Quick and the Ed

Like a Sling-Shooter Lobbing Stones at the Moon � The Quick and the Ed

Like a Sling-Shooter Lobbing Stones at the Moon

by Forrest Hinton

When the junior senator from Iowa banged the gavel twenty minutes late to begin yesterday’s Senate HELP Committee hearing, I was anticipating a good, meaty policy conversation on revamping high school accountability. After all, Senator Harkin titled the Tuesday afternoon event “ESEA Reauthorization: Improving America’s Secondary Schools.” Even the witnesses promised to be a bit wonky and full of ideas: a researcher, an education policy director, several school principals and reformers.
As the meeting started, the bottom-right chamber of my heart (the policy chamber) pulsated in hopes that I would soon learn something new.  Definitions of high school success, equations tracking student learning in grades 6-12, incentives changes to NCLB—anything, really, that would herald real, substantive reform for our ailing high schools.

Senator Harkin started out fairly strong.  He began by correctly diagnosing part of the high school problem by telling everyone that an alarming 7,000 students are dropping out of school each day in the U.S.  (The other part of the high school problem, not mentioned by Harkin, is ensuring that a high school education adequately

QUICK Hits

by Forrest Hinton

Quick Hits is a short compilation of question-raising news stories, blog posts, and video clips that Education Sector team members are reading and viewing each day. The content of these Hits is not necessarily endorsed by the organization or any particular team member.

Statistics is the new grammar? (Wired)
Did you catch PBS’s College, Inc. documentary last night?  If not, check it out online. (PBS Frontline)
Students taking courses from their homes or neighborhood coffeehouses?  One MA superintendent envisions what a virtual education system would mean for the state. (The Boston Globe)
Chinglish? (The New York Times)
Did you know that students in Korea attend school for 197 days each year, compared to 180 days for U.S. students?  Get more numbers on extended learning time from CAP. (Center for American Progress)

Vouchers Are a Failure, But That’s Not the Point

by Chad Aldeman

My colleague Kevin Carey earlier commented on how school voucher proponents are attempting to redefine what “success” and “failure” mean in school reform. Apparently it’s now a trend. Writing in today’s NY Times, Charles Murray acknowledges the academic failures of the Milwaukee school voucher program, but says it shouldn’t be about academics anyway. The mere fact of more parents having a choice is good enough for him:

Our children’s education is extremely important to us, and the greater good doesn’t much enter into it — hence all the politicians who oppose vouchers but send their own children to private schools. The supporters of school choice need to make their case on the basis of that shared parental calculation, not on the red herring of test scores.

Right. In exercising individual choice, people don’t factor in the greater good because their own inte