Latest News and Comment from Education

Monday, January 28, 2013

UPDATE: Words of Wisdom From Carbondale + School Tech Connect: My Reaction To Tonight's Forum At Truman

School Tech Connect: My Reaction To Tonight's Forum At Truman:



Words of Wisdom From Carbondale

Superintendent Steve Murphy:

"Standards are a good thing when you use them to enlighten people," Murphy said. "But when you use those standards to control people, they're not. I think these standards are a way to wrest local control of schools."

Read the whole thing.

Let's review. They're raising the cut scores on a test that's going away in order to prep people for the future horrors of a test not yet written, based on standards that will not fully filter through any given child's education 



My Reaction To Tonight's Forum At Truman

Activist, not a blogger
Yes, it's true. I was an activist tonight at Truman, not a blogger. I felt I had to be because I work with a community that is in jeopardy of being railroaded. And I do feel bad that the people running the event didn't get to have things go their way. They're in an impossible spot--- they've chosen to take jobs for a board that should be elected but isn't elected.

In the public sector, if your board doesn't have any democratic legitimacy, you're going to be asked to do a lot of things that people aren't happy with because they're not really at the table. It's one of those little things you just have to decide in education. You ask yourself, "Does this employer have any democratic legitimacy?" If the answer is no, then don't take the job.

If you're asked to serve on a commission by a person with no democratic legitimacy, you have to weigh that