CURMUDGUCATION: 16 Policies for the Next President

CURMUDGUCATION: 16 Policies for the Next President:

16 Policies for the Next President

Bellwether Education Partners, a reliably reformy right-tilted thinky tank, recently issued a compendium of policy ideas for the next President. "16 for 2016" comes with sixteen writers and sixteen ideas, though it's not entirely clear which candidates it's aimed at-- presumably not Hillary, whose contacts among the right-leaning world of corporate education privatizing are probably better than Bellwether's, and presumably not Trump, who neither takes nor comprehends advice.

Hmm. What do all these policies have in common?

So let's think of this as both a thought experiment and a look at the kind of policy ideas reformsters will be pitching to Congress, as well as a signal of the kinds of things reformy types would like to push these days. I have read this so that you don't have to, but since there are, in fact, sixteen of these things, I am going to summarize pretty brutally here.

1) Seed More Autonomous Public [sic] Schools

Sara Mead argues that we've proven that bad urban schools can't be turned around, but (citing a 2015 CREDO study) some charters do some better with some students similar to the urban poor students. So instead of trying to turn around low-performing schools, let's just open a bunch of charters to replace them. This is not so much about improving education as it is about opening markets to charter profiteers.

2) Transform School Hiring

Chad Aldeman has a point-- many schools have crappy hiring practices. He observes that it is a homegrown business, with the majority of new teachers working within twenty miles of their home town. And if you read here regularly, you already know how much I agree with this:

Despite complaints of a “teacher shortage,” districts act like the laws of supply and demand don’t CURMUDGUCATION: 16 Policies for the Next President: