School & District Management

Education Reform: Panacea or an Energy-Suck?

By Liana Loewus — February 07, 2011 1 min read
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Alexander Russo over at This Week in Education writes that about five years into his ed reform coverage, he’s had an epiphany: The major difference between “reformy types” and “career educators,” he claims, is that the latter believe (not without reason) that reform could actually make things worse.

This possibility might seem hard to believe for reformers, many of whom can't imagine things being any worse (and many of whom, it should be said, have yet experienced few major setbacks in their own lives). But for those with a longer perspective (historical, personal, professional) the possibility of things going from bad to worse is real; they've seen good but wrong-headed ideas take root before, sucking energy away and wasting a lot of time, and they know that there's no guarantee that the current status is a baseline below which nothing worse can happen.

Which side do you fall on? Or is there an area in between?

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Teaching Now blog.