Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Still Searching for Miracle Schools and Superguy: Updates on Houston and New York City « School Finance 101

Still Searching for Miracle Schools and Superguy: Updates on Houston and New York City « School Finance 101:


Still Searching for Miracle Schools and Superguy: Updates on Houston and New York City

I was following a conversation on Twitter a short while back in which one student activist – Stephanie Rivera of Rutgers asked another – Alexis Morin from Students for Education Reform – why SFER chooses to focus almost exclusively on charter schools as beacons of “success” and thus a significant part of the “solutions” for urban education moving forward. Observing this interaction brought me back once again to the astounding gaps in logic which are so pervasive in the current reform rhetoric which seeks to find policy solutions almost exclusively in charter schools and in changing teacher compensation and dismissal policies.  The reformy solutions are pretty much a given regardless of the original question or what the analyses yield.
Too often, the following faulty reasoning is applied in search for solutions in the education reform debate:
  1. Scan the horizon for successful charter schools (even though charters are no more successful, on