Third Millennium Teacher by Cheryl Binkley
How Mrs. DeVos Sees Innovation and Transformation And How Parents and Teachers See it
With Mrs. Betsy DeVos’ taking office, Reformers are pleased and excited with the thought that at last they may have the person in place to deliver quickly what they have long wanted. -- A New Market via their version of Innovation and Transformation. Until now no one has been able to deliver that in a way that the public would completely accept.
But, that is what Mrs. DeVos has promised in her first speech, “And I will promise you this: Together, we will find new ways in which we can positively transform education.”
It sounds wonderful, right? It’s going to be important in coming days and months to remember that when Mrs. DeVos uses these terms, she is not using them in the way we might think.
Just listening, we might think she was speaking of transformation as the process of becoming something new and better, like the way children grow and become. And by saying she will deliver innovation, we might think she means she has new knowledge about how children learn and how we might help them. Afterall, that’s what lots of us think of when we speak of transformation.
The unspoken problem though, is that when Reformers talk about Transformation, they are talking about transforming a commercial market, not learning that changes lives; and when they talk about Innovation, they are talking about Innovative Disruption, not a great new idea for lesson activities, or new in school programs for learning kids, or even a great new way to organize our schools or districts for better learning chances for all kids.
Mrs. DeVos is talking about markets, not children.
The concepts she is using are from Business and Public Policy theories. Like Mrs. DeVos, Education Reformers are most often MBA rather than M.Ed. holders, and Badass Teachers Association: Third Millennium Teacher by Cheryl Binkley: