John Thompson: Time for a Truce in the Battle Over Education?
Guest post by John Thompson.
In my gut, I believe that school improvement is a process of two steps forward and one step back. My brain keeps reminding me that the contemporary school reform movement has made it one step forward, two steps back.
Last week, the Gates Foundation took a half step forward. It reversed course and endorsed a two-year moratorium on stakes attached to tests during the transition to Common Core. This modestly good news was overshadowed by the latest assault on teachers, the Vergara ruling which struck down many of our basic rights.
At a time when corporate reformers have ratcheted up their blood-in-the-eye assault on the teaching profession and unions, many educators will dismiss the Gates concession. Some will argue Common Core is so intertwined with the corporate reform assault on public schooling that we cannot ease up in our counter-attack.
I believe we must fight competition-driven, test-driven reform with all our power, but we must also be willing to offer and/or accept an olive branch. So, we educators must discuss among ourselves whether to respond differently to Common Core standards, as opposed to Common Core and "Common Core-type tests." While I'm open to a moratorium, we must not lessen our longterm opposition to stakes being attached to Common Core, college readiness tests, or whatever bubble-in accountability scheme that catches the reformers' fancy. (I will address national standards at the end of this post.)
If, in the next two years, we can explain to Bill Gates, as well as parents and other stakeholders, why we despise high stakes testing, we could take a few steps forward. I'm not optimistic that he will John Thompson: Time for a Truce in the Battle Over Education? - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher: