Reforminess IS The Status Quo
I'm going to put the charters and graphs and scatterplots and citations away for a minute so we can cut right to the heart of the matter.
The 25th Anniversary celebration of Teach For America is only a few hours old, and already I see from following social media that it has become yet another event where reformsters, like a Top 40 radio station, will play the same songs over and over again until they are hopefully fixed into the brains of the American public:
- Charter schools are "beating the odds."
- Teacher quality is the number one "in-school" factor affecting student success. But teacher education programs are not working and should be replaced with "real" teacher training, like TFA and Relay
- "Choice" is bringing equity to urban schools. So is testing. If you question the proliferation either -- even for your own children -- you're pretty much a classist and/or racist.
- Poverty is not destiny; "miracle" schools are proving poverty's effects can be overcome.
And so on. I find that bromides like these have the primary intent of shutting down - See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2016/02/reforminess-is-status-quo.html#sthash.fRm6noQW.dpuf
