The Year That Was, The Year That Will Be, In Education Activism
It's the time of year when reporters, pundits, and analysts track down "experts" in their respected fields to explain what to make of the year just past and what to look forward to in the new one.
In education, the question almost always seems to focus on what to do to "fix" the nation's schools. But the "experts" called upon to expound on that weighty question are rarely people who work in those schools, students who attend them, or parents who send their children there or get involved in pushing to support the schools.
Sometimes this elevated expertise can have interesting and enlightening things to say. But the ideas of experts—including Common Core Standards, evaluating teachers with standardized test scores, and teacher merit pay—are often perceived very differently by the folks who have to implement these ideas and deal with their consequences. After all, some of the best ideas for fixing a broken system often come from those who know the system most intimately.
The Progressive created the Education Fellows program to bring into the national debate on education the important voices of people working on the ground to improve our schools. Here’s what some of our Fellows have to say about the struggle:
- See more at: http://www.progressive.org/pss/year-was-year-will-be-education-activism#sthash.Uqi7fqFD.dpuf