The Education Reform Conversation We Need is Not the One We Keep Having
Photo Credit: US Department of Education via Wikimedia Commons
November 4, 2013 |
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 filmed 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 confines 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