The changing blame game in U.S. education
Teachers have felt under such heavy assault for the past several years by school reformers intent on using assessment methods that experts say are invalid, reducing their collective bargaining rights and other actions that it may be hard to remember that it wasn’t always this way. In the following post, Larry Cuban, a former superintendent of Arlington Public Schools, writes about the changing “blame game” in American education. Cuban was superintendent for seven years, a former high school social studies teacher for 14 years and professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, where he has taught for more than 20 years. This first appeared on his blog.By Larry Cuban
The shame that many teachers and principals feel at being made responsible for a school’s low academic performance is a recent phenomenon. Historically, policy elites and educators explained poor academic performance of groups and individual students by pointing to ethnic and racial discrimination, poverty, immigrants’ cultures, family deficits, and