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Tuesday, September 11, 2012

The real problem with Rahm’s school reforms in Chicago - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

The real problem with Rahm’s school reforms in Chicago - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post:


The real problem with Rahm’s school reforms in Chicago

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been pushing a school reform agenda backed by the Obama administration that is at the center of the strike that the Chicago Teachers Union is now waging in the third largest school district in the country.
This is not about whether or not you think the union should have called a strike as it did on Monday, but rather about the central problem
(M. Spencer Green/AP)
with the reforms that Emanuel has been advocating: There’s no real proof that they systemically work, and in some cases, there is strong evidence that they may be harmful.
The reforms championed by 


On school reform: Broad’s misleading response to critics

The Chicago teachers strike has made school reform national news, and here’s a piece that helps explain some of the controvery. This is a follow-up to a post I published last month about plans by the California-based foundation of billionaire Eli Broad to expand its influence in school reform initiatives that include charter schools, merit pay and other market-based reforms. The original piece and the following one were written by Ken Libby, a doctoral student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Stan Karp, director of the Secondary Reform Project for New Jersey’s Education Law Center and an editor of Rethinking Schools magazine.
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