School Choice vs. High-Stakes-Testing
After exchanging emails with Matt, I’m convinced that I was focusing on an issue that he was not promoting in his initial post: testing. When it comes to the modern education reform movement, I am much more concerned with the testing regime and the top-down approach of many school reformers than I am with the idea of school choice.
I do think proponents of school choice tend to overstate the effectiveness of charter schools, but I am not opposed to giving school choice a chance (though I am veryskeptical of for-profit schools). And frankly skeptics of school choice fall into similar traps as proponents, over-estimating the downsides, etc. School choice is a work in progress, and who knows how it will turn out in the end.
So a few points and clarifications.
1) While teachers unions have plenty of flaws and while teacher compensation schemes could definitely be
