John Thompson: Corporate Reformers' "Race to the Moon" Low on Fuel
Guest post by John Thompson.
Most states accepted the offer they couldn't refuse and adopted laws based of the Gates Foundation's untested "teacher quality" theory. Two recent responses to that top-down mandate are illuminating. The more literary statement was issued by economist Tom Kane, the head of the Gates Measures for Effective Teaching (MET) project. A scholarly analysis, "Instructional Alignment as a Measure of Teaching Quality," was published by Morgan Polikoff and Andrew Porter.
In contrast to Kane's eccentric diagnosis of education's shortcomings, Polikoff's and Porter's peer reviewed study is one of many social science studies that are giving a fuller picture of the many problems with the Gates' and Kane's policy gamble.
As he often does, Kane begins will a clueless metaphor. He said that previous, incremental school reforms were like "shooting a bottle rocket to the moon." Because educators have never been empowered in ways that would produce transformational change, Kane believes that he and other corporate reformers should take over and design an educational Race to the Moon.
A better metaphor for the Kane blueprint could be borrowed from the 1950s television show, "The Honeymooners," as when Ralph Kramden proclaims, "Alice, Straight to the Moon!" Like Jackie Gleason, the corporate response to dissent is "BANG, ZOOM!," and a punch to the kisser. Because teachers, armed with bottle rockets, did not produce the education equivalent of a Moon landing in a decade, Kane demands that high-stakes testing be used as a club to get our attention and to propel our schools into outer space.
Kane ignores the obvious flaw in his logic. When NASA planned a flight to the moon, he argues, they realized that "incremental improvements in rocket design would not provide enough lift" to get John Thompson: Corporate Reformers' "Race to the Moon" Low on Fuel - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher: