Positive School Reform: Reimagining ESEA
Teachers and other advocates for public education know what they oppose. Too much student testing. Too much emphasis on charter schools. Too much negative news about the schools. And not enough coverage of what is going right. Those are the common complaints—and they are accurate.
While we know what educators oppose, though, it is much more difficult to know what they are for. What would make the schools better for all children in the opinions of those whose job it is to educate? Further, what does research tell us would be most effective in improving education?
I raise this issue because I have learned from nearly a half-century of involvement in education policy that if your agenda is not being carried out, then you are working to implement someone else's ideas. For decades, this is exactly what has happened. People from outside the field have been setting the agenda.
To be precise, business leaders, think tanks, state governors, and other political leaders have had much more influence in fashioning school reforms than have the people whose careers are in education. The No Child Left Behind Act, teacher evaluations based on inappropriately used state tests, and a tremendous emphasis on charter schools are prime examples of recent policies that were imposed on most educators.
In Presidents, Congress, and the Public Schools (to be published next month by Harvard Education Press), I examine the long history of externally imposed reforms, finding that they have seldom, if ever, had the success promised when first laid on the schools. This is not to say that there were no good results from these efforts, but nothing on the order of what our schools need to prepare students for the challenges of the future.
—Kali Ciesemier for Education Week
I reached my conclusions despite the fact that I had spent an entire career creating many of these reforms, and, once they were enacted, arguing for their continuation. Reflection while writing this book has led me to support a far different approach today.
Fundamental rethinking of school reform is not happening as the new Congress tries to piece together legislation that will extend the No Child Left Behind Act. That 2002 law, the most recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, expired in 2008, and has since been extended by Congress on a yearly basis Positive School Reform: Reimagining ESEA - Education Week:
Big Education Ape: Tell Congress: Vote NO on H.R. 5 – The Student Success Act http://bit.ly/1JwDIz3
