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Sunday, August 4, 2013

Cheats For Change #Cheats4Change

Cheats For Change:

Question:
If changing an entire grading system to make one school look good— a school which had been held up as a policy-guiding example, and just happens to be owned by a wealthy and influential political patron, for fear of losing support in the legislature and the statehouse— doesn’t reveal a sense of “political expedience (sic)," then what does?
Direct quotes unless otherwise noted. (As in, yes, he *actually* said that.)
If this is what passes for leadership in Jeb’s book, his definition is way different from ours. True leaders might have taken this situation as a moment to reflect, or even to consider the possibility that the system they created might be mis-characterizing a lot of schools, not just this one.
In other words, it would require the humility to consider the possibility that they could be wrong.
But that would require conceding that all of the ordinary stakeholders who have said (long beforeMike Petrilli) that “the problem wasn’t the schools, it was the metric" might actually have valid reasons for defending their schools, too.
And that might mean it was also wrong to ignore and criticize them this whole time.
And that could lead to wondering whether those ordinary people were right about other things, and that their insider crew of “reformers" might be wrong about other things, too.
#fail: Michelle Rhee and others commended Tony Bennett for his legacy of "fewer failing schools"…after he resigned because he was caught changing Indiana’s school grades system to benefit one of his biggest donors. Why are they still quoting information that comes from a system we now know was rigged?
Read the rest at Salon.com.