Sunday, March 27, 2011

ASCD Inservice: Duh!: Should Public Schools Do More to Protect Themselves from Privatization?

ASCD Inservice: Should Public Schools Do More to Protect Themselves from Privatization?

Should Public Schools Do More to Protect Themselves from Privatization?

Are public schools doing a good job of defending themselves during a time when critics are gaining momentum on voucher and charter-school efforts?

Not at all, said members of an ASCD annual conference panel presented by the Horace Mann League, a group that advocates for public education as one of the cornerstones of American democracy. "I think this is the biggest threat to education we've ever had," said Evelyn Blose-Holman, the superintendent of Bay Shore Schools in New York.

The panelists, all members of the group's board of directors, sought to discuss ways to protect schools from privatization and arm public education advocates with information to counter arguments for charters and vouchers. However, they also acknowledged that there needs to be tough discussions among educators about what public schools are doing right and

Why Top-down School Systems Don't Work

In the past 80 years, the number of school districts has shrunk from 127,000 to 16,000, but the number of students has grown from 25 million to 50 million. That has created top-down systems that must be decentralized to allow...