Monday, October 8, 2012

Radical Scholarship: Writers Reflect on Chicago Strike (EdWeek)

Radical Scholarship: Writers Reflect on Chicago Strike (EdWeek):


Writers Reflect on Chicago Strike (EdWeek)

Writers Reflect on Chicago Strike

Education Week

Missing the Forest for the Trees (Expanded below)

The Chicago teachers’ strike has sparked even more debate over the role of unions and the importance of teacher quality in public education. Yet, arguments and policy associated with teachers’ unions and teacher quality share one serious problem—missing the forest for the trees.

Carefully examining the debates themselves, in other words, pulling back from the trees to consider the forest, offers an opportunity for the public, educators, and policy stakeholders to reframe those debates and thus improve the likelihood education reform can achieve what it has failed to accomplish over the past thirty years.