The Future of Ed Reform
I actually had not meant to sit down and write this one but I had so many articles piling up on this subject, it seemed the right time.
To be clear (as I am certain that 99% of adults in the U.S. would agree), all is not well with public education. There are many reasons for that. Now, if you just looked at white and many Asian students, the U.S. is doing as well as most top-level countries.
But the U.S. is a very heterogeneous country that tests all public school students. We are also a country that seemingly is accepting that nearly 25% of our children live in poverty. Anyone who thinks that a good teacher is going to overcome institutional racism, poverty and inconsistent/low funding is wrong.
Also, when I speak of education reform in the U.S., I mean corporate ed reform. I'm not saying change isn't needed; I'm saying what is being pushed is not really working and, at the end of the day, seems to be serving to allow some people to make high salaries and some companies to make a lot of money.
I keep up with Education Next which is leans right but usually has some pretty solid thinking. One of their contributors is Michael Petrilli who I generally don't agree with but again, offers more than happy talk.
In April, he wrote this piece, Policy change is not the only path to school reform.
It strikes me, and several others with whom I’ve spoken in recent months, that education reform is at a turning point. It’s not just the new federal law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, which sends key decisions back to the states. It’s bigger than that—a sense of exhaustion with policy as the primary driver of educational change.He goes on to say the ed reformers still need to fight for "teacher accountability" and expanding "high-quality charter schools" and other "parental choice" (see vouchers) et al.
He quotes Rick Hess, another conservative public education write, who also is