Catch Today's Live Stream Show of The Same Thing Dust-Up
by Frederick M. Hess • Nov 30, 2010 at 8:20 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
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Albert Einstein reportedly once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." As I note in my new book, The Same Thing Over and Over: How School Reformers Get Stuck in Yesterday's Ideas, apocryphal or not, this line is a devastating assessment of a half century's worth of school reform. To avoid educational insanity, we need to recognize how circumstances have changed and embrace a diverse array of reform efforts suited to the twenty-first century.
A year ago, my friend Diane Ravitch raised a furor when she charged in The Death and Life of the Great American School System that advocates of test-based accountability, mayoral control, and charter schooling had overpromised and naively imagined that these structural measures could "fix" schooling. This ferocious blast was well-timed and well-aimed, and resonated mightily. Ravitch went much further, however, labeling such measures a sinister assault on public education. Her useful blast at faddism got ensnared in a familiar trap: her stance allows the compromises and accidents from a century ago that shaped today's public schools and
