Thompson: Why Teachers Need Ravitch & Weingarten
Diane Ravitch's recent blog post (Why I Defend Randi) concisely affirms principle and pragmatism. Ravitch will not attack her personal friend Randi Weingarten. She praises Randi's leadership. She reminds us of the necessity of teachers' unions, while criticizing ideological purity.Few scholars of such national significance have shown Ravitch's capacity to think anew. She knows what it takes to incorporate new evidence, reconsider an assumption, and engage in "reasoning to its logical conclusion." That is what Randi did when concluding that "vam is a sham." She thus demonstrates a "capacity to evolve and change her mind."
Randi's pragmatism, along with Ravitch's long view of history, could be the antidote to "the current demolition derby" known as school reform. Randi seeks to decouple Common Core from testing, says Ravitch, so that it no longer has the "power to ruin lives and careers."
Regardless of whether Common Core is a good idea, the next step is challenging its nature as "an infallible edict encased in concrete." Regardless of the standards adopted, they "must be amended by teachers and scholars" because "No standards are so perfect that they need never be updated."
The accountability hawks may believe they are on the side of the angels, but Ravitch and Randi exemplify the spirit of scholarly dialogue in a constitutional democracy. Teachers have been subject to such extreme abuse by the true believers in bubble-in pedagogy and governance that many
Bruno: Standardized Tests *Do* Measure Some Important Cognitive Abilities
One of the more interesting bits of news that you may have missed over the holidays was the announcement of findings from researchers at MIT indicating that even when schools effectively boost students' scores on standardized tests, they don't seem to do much to improve students' "fluid intelligence" -- those cognitive abilities, like working memory capacity, that can be helpfully applie
Media: The Rise Of [Straight-Arrow] Education News Sites
Elizabeth Green's contribution to a recent Nieman Lab roundup of journalism trends focused on the rise of single-subject sites and -- no surprise -- focused on the ongoing story of what's now called Chalkbeat USA (not really, but that's what I like to call it). In the piece, Green predicts that more nonprofit journalists will focus on narrow ("nerdy") issues in the future -- and that the