New US education mandates hindered by red tape | Al Jazeera America

New US education mandates hindered by red tape | Al Jazeera America:

New US education mandates hindered by red tape

by Andrea Gabor December 18, 2013 6:15AM ET

Bureaucratic obstacles could be hindering progress in public schools, which are in desperate need of reform

Topics:

 

Education

 

Department of Education

 

U.S.

New policies are motivated by federal incentives, especially the competitive grant program Race to the Top.

Steve Ruark/AP

For more than a decade, Brockton High School ushered in each fall with a renewed focus on literacy. For the largest high school in Massachusetts, with 4,000 mostly poor black and Latino students, a near obsessive commitment to improving literacy in every discipline — from science to social studies — was transformative.

Once a failing school, Brockton now boasts that almost all its graduates attend college. And last spring one-third earned merit scholarships to state schools.

But this year, it wasn't until the Saturday before Thanksgiving that Brockton's long-standing restructuring committee gathered at the school to work on refining its literacy strategy, which in recent years has focused on honing students' ability to read graphs and charts.

The reason for the long delay: Brockton High spent months implementing new teacher evaluations, which are mandated by the state as part of an effort to make teachers more accountable.

“Every faculty meeting, with one exception, we focused on preparing for the teacher evaluations,” said Sharon Wolder, Brockton’s new principal.

Meanwhile, at West Side Collaborative, a highly regarded Manhattan middle school, teachers have been trying to understand New York City’s new recommended English-language-arts curricula, which are pegged to the Common Core State Standards — a national effort to improve college and career readiness.

Some are not happy.

“This is paint by numbers,” said Claire Hollander, a West Side teacher and novelist, referring to what she considers an overly scripted curriculum — one of two that the city has recommended schools adopt — with too little emphasis on writing.

As cities and states across the country scramble to adopt the latest education-reform remedies,