I'm not regretting having spent 50 years trying to reform American public education, and I think it's more imperative today than ever. But the future doesn't depend on it the way it does on our economic crisis, our political system crisis, and our planetary self-destruction. Read Full Post >
Like No Child Left Behind, the Soviet state set goals for everyone to meet—or else. Since they were unmeetable goals, it produced a culture of lies and cover-ups and a climate of fear. Does that sound familiar? Read Full Post >
If charters had stuck to their original selling point—the need for innovation on a small, less-regulated scale before we mandated it on a large scale—there'd be a few grumbles and otherwise just curiosity. Read Full Post >
In a world in which the money some folks earn in a day is more than what others hope to earn in a year, a decade, a lifetime, it's hard to calculate likelihoods. Even the word "earn" is problematic. Read Full Post >
I have no problem with businesses making a profit when they offer value for goods and services. But there is something about this for-profit education industry that feels unseemly. Read Full Post >
Most of the new charters are not accountable to any public but their own privately chosen board (and a very distant appointed oversight committee). None of its constituents—parents, students, or staff—are by law part of that board nor have any choice but speaking with their feet. Not their voices. Read Full Post >
Today, the question of democracy looms large as we see increasing efforts to privatize the control of public schools. There is an even more worrisome and allied trend, and that is the growing influence of money in education politics at the state and local levels. Read Full Post >
We CANNOT afford the existing gross confusion between achievement and test scores. It has led us to promote the kind of education quick fix no one would propose for its "ruling class." Read Full Post >
But, for the moment, my unambivalent "Hurrah!" to the protesters on Wall Street, to Van Jones' effort to mobilize nationally, to SOS (Save Our Schools), and many more. The future looks, at least, interesting. Read Full Post >
Like me, Wendy thinks that the media should not print the names of teachers and their "effectiveness ratings." We agreed that The Los Angeles Times was wrong to do so a year ago. She agreed with me that naming names is fraught with inaccuracy and can only demoralize teachers. Read Full Post >
© 2012 Editorial Projects in Education
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