8 Concerns and What’s Positive About The President’s Plan for Schooling During Covid-19

8 Concerns and What’s Positive About The President’s Plan for Schooling During Covid-19

8 Concerns and What’s Positive About The President’s Plan for Schooling During Covid-19

The Biden-Harris administration faces huge challenges. Addressing school safety during Covid-19 is at the top of their list. This is welcome news. Goals are important for clarity and to give us hope.

President Biden wasted no time getting out his National Strategy for the Covid-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness. Schools are specifically addressed starting on page 77.

Here are concerns and what looks good.

1.  We can teach our children in safe schools.

In his Inaugural Address, the only time the President mentioned schools was when he said We can teach our children in safe schools.

He used the word We which collectively implies all of us, and it’s comforting to know he cares about teachers, students, parents, and schools and is working on this serious issue with experts.

I’m sure the President understands, that when it comes to We, it’s the teacher along CONTINUE READING: 8 Concerns and What’s Positive About The President’s Plan for Schooling During Covid-19

David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: Do No Harm: Reflections on the Impact of Educational Research | National Education Policy Center

David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: Do No Harm: Reflections on the Impact of Educational Research | National Education Policy Center

David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: Do No Harm: Reflections on the Impact of Educational Research

This post is a short piece I wrote in 2011 for a special issue of the journal Teacher Education and Practice on “Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Scholarship.” My one take is that research in education is not necessarily well positioned to enhance education; on the contrary, it often does more harm than good.  See what you think.  Here’s a link to the original.

Do No Harm

Education is a field of dreams and so is educational research.  As educators, we dream of schools that can improve the lives of students, solve social problems, and enrich the quality of life; and as educational researchers, we dream that our studies will enhance the effectiveness of schools in achieving these worthy goals.  Both fields draw recruits who see the possibilities of education as a force for doing good, and that turns out to be a problem, because the history of both fields shows that the chances for doing real harm are substantial.  Over the years, research on teaching and teacher education – the topic of the discussion in this special issue – has caused a lot of damage to teaching and learning and learning-to-teach in schools.  So I suggest a good principle to adopt when considering the role of research in teacher education is a version of the Hippocratic Oath:  First do no harm. 

The history of educational research in the United States in the twentieth century supports a pessimistic assessment of the field’s impact on American school and society.  There was Edward L. Thorndike, whose work emphasized the importance of differentiating the curriculum in order to provide the skills and knowledge that students would later need in playing sharply different roles in a stratified workforce.  There was David Snedden, who labored tirelessly to promote CONTINUE READING: David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: Do No Harm: Reflections on the Impact of Educational Research | National Education Policy Center