First blame the teachers, then the parents
This was written by Maja Wilson, who taught high school English, adult basic education, ESL, and alternative middle and high school in Michigan’s public schools for 10 years. She is currently a teacher educator at the University of Maine while finishing her doctorate in composition studies at the University of New Hampshire. She is the author of Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment (Heinemann, 2006). By Maja Wilson The next victim of the Department of Education’s campaign of blame? Parents! We have been told repeatedly that our educational system is broken. Our response to this news says more about us than the news itself. If our children are indeed suffering, it might make sense to offer them what they need. Instead, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) and others in the school reform movement have engaged in a ceaseless campaign to demand “accountability” -- in other words, to figure out whom
Some Education Department spin
It didn’t take long for the U.S. Education Department to try to link its school turnaround policy to the new report that says that the number of high school “dropout factories” has declined in the last decade. On the same day that the report “Building a Grad Nation" was released, the department issued a press release saying:
