NY Times and a Lively Discussion on Ed Reform
Last month, noted educator, Diane Ravitch, had an op-ed in the NY Times called Waiting for a School Miracle. In it she reviews how NCLB, adopted 10 years ago by Congress, mandated that all students must be passing math or reading by 2014 or their schools would be deemed failing. It is now mid-year 2011 and the stats don't look good.
She pointed out several issues:
She pointed out several issues:
- there is no 100% proficiency so how can that be done. Nevertheless, some politicians believe that the right combination of incentives and punishments will produce dramatic improvement. Anyone who objects to this utopian mandate, they maintain, is just making an excuse for low expectations and bad teachers.
- that the "miracle" schools are few and far between. She also says this kind of "hyping" of test score improvements has been going on for years (and cites NYC itself). Even at Geoffrey Canada's famed