The Case Against “reformers”
THE ‘rEFORM’ LIE
Three recent articles did a nice job of summarizing the problems facing public education in the U.S. They add to the already strong case against the so-called “reform” movement.
- The Vergara decision: The big picture by Stephen Krashen
- Five Facts for the Dangerously Deluded Education Reformers by Paul Buchheit
- To Close the Achievement Gap, We Need to Close the Teaching Gap by Linda Darling-Hammond
The ultimate goal of most “reformers” is, apparently, the privatization of America’s public schools rather than improved student achievement. “reformers” use a variety of tools to achieve that goal…tools like union busting, overusing and misusing tests, transferring funds from public to private hands through vouchers, charters and virtual charter schools, political manipulations — such as the recent takeover of the responsibilities of the Indiana school chief, Glenda Ritz (and her DOE) by the Indiana State Board of Education and Governor Pence (see HERE and HERE), funding cuts, school closings, deprofessionalizing the teaching profession by inserting untrained amateurs like Teach For America temps into public schools, general political propaganda, and buying state and federal politicians.
- They starve schools of needed resources, raise class sizes, eliminate libraries and the arts, deny that the poverty which runs rampant throughout our cities has any effect, and then blame students, parents and teachers when achievement is low.
- They close schools or turn them over to private corporations with no public oversight.
- The low achievement of our most economically deprived students is blamed on teachers…yet there’s rarely a comment about teachers when it comes to the high achievement of our nation’s wealthy students.
- They demand accountability of teachers and use student test scores to The Case Against “reformers” | Live Long and Prosper: