There Are No Quick Fixes
Dear Diane,
If we could clone you and send you everywhere at once, with a few follow-ups from others, would it matter? Yes. Because we definitely don't reach as many people with our message as "they" (the Reformers) do with theirs.
Still, as Democrats Abroad France wrote recently in a proposal submitted to the Democratic Party Platform Committee: "We cannot improve education by quick fixes, by handing over our public schools to entrepreneurs, by driving out experienced professionals replacing them with enthusiastic amateurs, or by closing them and firing ... entire staffs. No country in the world follows such strategies."
We hold the world record in the amount of time devoted to testing—even as we also hold the record for spending less on children's health and welfare.
The causes of our exceptionalism are myriad. A piece in The New York Times Sunday Review by Alexander Stille suggests that one explanation
