Are Critics of Current Urban Reformers Defenders of the Status Quo?
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It won’t be long before shocking reports of incidents erupt from the angry split among contemporary reformers. While this has not yet happened–at least to my knowledge–I can imagine it, given the high temperature of current reform rhetoric. The heated rhetoric on both sides of the reform debate is like one side saying to the other: “I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.”
At a fund-raising soiree for school reform, to make up an example, one attendee accused another of publicly criticizing new state policies that lifted the cap on the number of charter schools and required up to 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation to be based on student test scores as a “defender of the status quo.” She pointed her finger at the blogging reformer and said: “You are killing a generation of children and youth with your continual jabs at our efforts to expect the very best from teachers and students, to accept ‘no excuses’ from staff, and to fundamentally turnaround a failing system. All you do is support incremental changes here and there while propping up a failing system of schooling.”
The “defender of the status quo” replied angrily that those supposed fundamental reforms have little to no evidence supporting them and, worse, the policies she advocates lay the entire responsibility for success upon teachers and administrators to turn failure into success by ignoring the circumstances in which children come to school. “Incremental reforms,” he said, “can make a difference when they are planned, involve teachers from the
