Ed Reform as the Compliance Police
by Robert PondiscioNovember 8th, 2010
Has the battle cry of ed reform evolved from “Just win, baby!” to “Just comply, baby?”
Time was when ed reform had a single focus: accountability for results, observes Fordham’s Mike Petrilli. But now, frustrated with the glacial pace of improvement and results, the impulse is to push for “change anywhere, anytime, anyhow—even if that means engaging in the same sort of regulating and rule-making and program-creating and money-spending that we once abhorred.”
The most obvious example Petrilli cites is Race to the Top which, rather than reward results, “lavished money on those jurisdictions willing to pledge themselves to a set of prescriptive reforms.” Then too, there are reformers pushing teacher quality who ”rightly point out that today’s evaluation systems are a total joke,” Petrilli writes.
“But here’s their mistake: they are doing this pushing primarily at the state