The Education Reform Conversation We Need Vs. The One We Have
This past week, two videos captured just about everything you need to know about the status of the movement known as “education reform.
The first filmic event was a staged encounter between two prominent advocates for what is conventionally thought of to be “opposing points of view” in the current debate over how best to implement top-down government mandates for public schools.
On “the right” of this crossfire was the American Enterprise Institute’s chief “scholar” on education policy Frederick Hess, who speaks voluminously of the need for “busting” through and “breaking the status quo” that apparently confine the nation’s schools.
Stage left, we had President Obama’s chief PR spokesperson on education, Secretary Arne Duncan, who incessantly calls for “raising the bar” and racing “to the top.”
Ostensibly, amidst all this busting and breaking and raising and racing, there was to emerge some kernels of wisdom to clarify the best pathways forward for America’s public schools, which are uniformly deemed to be in “crisis.”
But the most clarifying moment by far actually came after the cross-pontification when an audience member dared to bring up “the
Chicago Youth Organizer Featured in PBS Documentary
Posted on: Tuesday October 29th, 2013
Stephanie Alvarado, a youth leader with Voices of Youth in Chicago Education and the Southwest Organizing Project, is one of six Latino/a students featured in a new PBS documentary about the dropout crisis and its effect on low-income students of color. Learn more about the documentary, "The Graduates/Los Graduados," here on PBS!
Watch an introductory clip about Stephanie below:
And here is the full trailer: