Public Good — Or Commodity?
A quote from Claude Steele -- the new Dean of Education at Stanford -- combine with other discussions John Merrow had in the past week to form an integral question about American education.
If you are reading this during daylight hours in March, chances are that millions of our children are now engaged in what’s called ‘test prep.’ Just yesterday someone showed me the March calendar for a high-achieving public elementary school: two solid weeks of the month were blocked off for “TEST PREP,” probably in caps lest any classroom teacher forget and do some real teaching.
The banality of “TEST PREP” clashes violently with the ideas I was exposed to last week. Last Thursday and Friday, I spent quality time with syndicated columnist Mark Shields, GE Chairman and CEO Jeffery Immelt, Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO), libertarian activist Giséle Huff, Stanford’s Claude Steele,Assistant Secretary of Education Carmel Martin, and Roberto Rodriguez (President Obama’s education advisor.)
These seven separate meetings (in Washington, DC and northern California) had only one thing in