Zombie Ideas Are Killing Public Education
“Zombie ideas … are policy ideas that keep being killed by evidence, but nonetheless shamble relentlessly forward, essentially because they suit a political agenda.” Paul Krugman
Zombie Ideas!?!
Exactly! Policymakers have been using zombie ideas to dismantle, transform, and restructure the public education system. So with a mountain of evidence that the zombie ideas in No Child Left Behind didn’t show any appreciable improvement in student achievement, now is the time to end the zombie invasion killing our public schools.
Zombie Ideas in Education?
The test-based, metric-driven accountability of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law is based on a political agenda, not proven education reforms. NCLB is now called the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) but the same policy ideas and political agenda remain in place. The same detrimental consequences persist because the aim and purpose of the law did not change.
Zombie Ideas in Education: High-Stakes Testing and Graduation Policies*
Solórzano (2008) found that the results of high-stakes tests used as a high school diploma requirement “show quite clearly that Blacks and Latinos (and English Language Learners) are disproportionately failing them, whether enrolled in Texas, New York, California, or Minnesota” (p. 312).He goes on to say that students who do poorly on these exams “are viewed as the problem; they are retained, tracked, or denied Continue reading: Zombie Ideas Are Killing Public Education - The Crucial Voice of the PeopleThe Crucial Voice of the People
