This Week In Education: Thompson: Mike Petrilli's Strangely Combative Truce Proposal

This Week In Education: Thompson: Mike Petrilli's Strangely Combative Truce Proposal:

Thompson: Mike Petrilli's Strangely Combative Truce Proposal

by john thompson

@drjohnthompson It is no surprise that Mike Petrilli's otherwise excellent post,How to Push for Reform without Alienating Teachers,included a paragraph with a boilerplate attack on teachers.  His short, combative paragraph ends with the misstatement that teachers and our champions want to, "stop measuring teachers’ contributions to student achievement gains."   That is the way that political battles are fought.
But Petrilli knows that union leaders, Diane Ravitch, and others who have made a career in pressing for reform do not want to "stop" reforms.  We just disagree with him on the merits of many policies.  Petrilli knows that one problem with the data-driven accountability movement is that it equates "student achievement gains" with real learning increases.
So I am  more worried that Petrilli does not consider the threat of Gov. Scott Walker's "reforms" to the