Great Education War being waged on multiple fronts
I have such conflicted feelings about the war.
No, not Syria. Also not Iraq, Afghanistan or even Grenada (we won that one, remember?)
The Great Education War rages all around us. If anything, it seems to be getting more intense, and cooperation and goodwill seem to be in shorter supply.
The war has many fronts:
■ Standardized testing, how much should there be, what uses should the results be put to.
■ Private school voucher programs (the battle royal, especially in places such as Wisconsin).
■ Charter schools (actually, a hotter fight in many places than around here).
■ Teachers' collective bargaining powers. Also teachers' pay and pensions. Also funding and tax issues overall.
■ The Common Core literacy and math standards.
■ Accountability measures of all kinds — what is effective, what's a waste (or worse).
■ How to improve teaching and teacher evaluation systems.
■ Anything that some people see as "privatization."
War, of course, is too strong a term, if you take it literally. There is no physical fighting (thank goodness). But there are passions and intensity, and the stakes are high and the advocacy is often conducted with bare-knuckled rhetoric and uncompromising strategy. It sort of has the feeling of war.
It's difficult for me to give broad labels to the sides — many labels are inherently partisan. Other labels are bland or meaningless. (For one thing, this sentence will be the only place in this column where you'll find the phrase education reform.) It is far from the case that everyone is on the same side in every battle, nor does every issue break neatly into two sides. But the polar dynamic shows up a lot, often in contentious, even hateful, forms.
Five fronts
Last week, I was paying attention to episodes in the war on five different fronts:
■ Milwaukee: Thursday night, the Milwaukee School Board held its second special meeting in recent
