School reformers increasingly use threats to drive agenda
Education reformers haven’t been able to persuade everybody to their point of view, so increasingly, they use threats. Here’s a piece about why that approach won’t work. It was written by Eric Shieh is a founding teacher of the Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School, “A School for a Sustainable City,” in New York City, where he teaches music and leads curriculum development. This appeared on The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, non-partisan education-news outlet affiliated with the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media.By Eric Shieh
Last month, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushed back, for the third time, his deadline for New York City to devise a new teacher evaluation system. On the surface, it seemed a benevolent move that recognized the enormity of this undertaking—one in which many school districts across the nation are similarly taking part.
The truth of the matter, however, is that Cuomo—along with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg—has misunderstood entirely what it means to build capacity for thoughtful education reform.
Imagine, for a moment, that everything Cuomo, Duncan and Bloomberg have promised will happen if New York City fails to deliver an evaluation system actually happens. In