My review of ‘letters to a young education reformer’
I was eager to receive Rick Hess’s latest book ‘letters to a young education reformer.’ Hess is the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank. Hess is one of the few defenders of the reform movement whom I respect. His writings, like his column in Education Week, always have the nuance that most reform writers at places like The 74 and Education Post lack.
With states opting out of the Common Core, parents opting out of state tests, and prominent reformers even opting out of ed reform, the reform movement is currently experiencing a slump. This book explains what is behind some of the failures of the reform movement.
Though the book is written in an informal tone with plenty of very interesting anecdotes, it is a very scathing critique of the reform movement, the style of reform that really became big with people like Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, and, of course, President Obama.
Hess knows what missteps reformers committed along the way to lead to this. By writing about these mistakes in a series of letters to an unnamed ‘young education reformer,’ Hess hopes that the next generation of ed reformers will avoid those mistakes.
Many of these mistakes are things that Hess warned reformers about as they were making them. They didn’t heed many of his warnings back then, but maybe now that they seem to be losing momentum, this book could be used not just by young education reformers, but My review of ‘letters to a young education reformer’ | Gary Rubinstein's Blog:
