‘Teachers’ pay should be doubled to stop the brain drain to other industries’
Following the election, the next education secretary needs to significantly increase teachers' social status, says Charles Fadel
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As the United States prepares to elect a new President, leading figures in education have given their views on Barack Obama's legacy and what the next education secretary should focus do.
Previously, Diane Ravitch, Andy Hargreaves, Howard Gardner, Randi Weingarten, Julia Freeland Fisher, have all given their opinions. Now, Charles Fadel, visiting practitioner at Harvard’s graduate school of education, and founder and chairman of the Center for Curriculum Redesign, shares his views.
What will be the legacy of Race to the Top and Barack Obama’s other education initiatives?
The new landscape allows states to move ahead at their own rate. The advantage of Common Core was that it can help the weakest performers find a more unified and ambitious floor, but it came at the cost of holding back the better performers from innovating. Although this new landscape may contribute to achievement gaps between best and worst performers, it will also allow experimentation about how to best move forward, which results can then be propagated.
Regarding testing, there has been a significant movement back from the punishing aspects of No Child Left Behind which made so many teachers and jurisdictions teach to the test and game the system. There needs to be a balance between accountability and true assessments.
But there is also a need to address social issues in a comprehensive way: we should educate parents about parenting itself, and about the need to change both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of education in order to improve their children’s chances. We must offer free day care/Pre-K care of high quality to ‘Teachers’ pay should be doubled to stop the brain drain to other industries’ | News:
