Those who seek to apply business thinking on education make a huge error. SomeDAM Poet, a regular commenter, cites the work of the brilliant education scholar Yong Zhao, who has consistently argued that progress and creativity relies on diversity, not standardization. This is, for example, a fundamental flaw of the Common Core, which claims without evidence that the imposition of national standards for teaching, testing, teacher education, and curriculum will lead to vast improvements. Predictably, over a decade, it has failed to produce what was promised.
Bill Gates saw the Common Core standards, which he funded in their entirety, as necessary and beneficial standardization that would transform education. In 2014, he told a conference of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards that teachers should defend the Common Core.
He said:
“If you have 50 different plug types, appliances wouldn’t CONTINUE READING: SomeDAM Poet: Education Needs Variation, Not Standardization | Diane Ravitch's blog