Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Missouri Education Watchdog: Rethinking Reform

Missouri Education Watchdog: Rethinking Reform:


Rethinking Reform

Current education reform discussions revolve around modifications to the existing system of education delivery.  They rarely touch on what is being delivered. Though there is a big push to develop a set of "Common Standards" which would cover the "what", those standards still really on focus on creating efficiencies in the delivery of education. If everyone is learning the same things, from the same source materials, we get economies of scale and measurable production line improvements. This is why charter schools are under tremendous pressure to teach the same thing as public schools, so only the delivery method is modified. Efficiency. Even discussions like linking teacher pay to student performance still focus on evaluating how well a particular cog is working in an existing system and not evaluating whether the system itself is working to produce the best product.

If you have just under twelve minutes to spare, this video is a creative way to show the rut we are stuck in and a different way of looking at education.  It is worth the time to get your head out of the box the so called experts and bureaucrats want you to remain in when thinking about education. Even thought the video is two years old, the narrator covers many of the terms we use on MEW; school-to-work, standardized assessments, 21st