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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe facts that school reformers ignore By Valerie Strauss
Education reformers have a common playbook. First, assert without evidence that regular public schools are failing and that large numbers of regular (unionized) public school teachers are incompetent. Provide no documentation for this claim other than that the test score gap between minority and white children remains large. Then propose so-called reforms to address the unproven problem charter schools to escape teacher unionization and the mechanistic use of student scores on low-quality and corrupted tests to identify teachers who should be fired.
The mantra has been endlessly repeated by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and by reform leaders like Michelle Rhee, former Washington D.C. public schools chancellor, and Joel Klein, former New York schools chancellor. Bill Gates foundation gives generous grants to school systems and private education advocates who adopt the analysis. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel makes the argument, and in New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has frequently sung the same tune.
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But this applause line about school failure is an urban myth. The governor, mayor and other policymakers have neglected to check facts they assume to be true. As a result, they may be obsessed with the wrong challenges, while exacerbating real, but overlooked problems.
Careful examination discloses that disadvantaged students have made spectacular progress in the last generation, in regular public schools, with ordinary teachers. Not only have regular public schools not been the great discriminator they continue to make remarkable gains for minority children at a time when our increasingly unequal social and economic systems seem determined to abandon them.
more . . . http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-facts-that-school-reformers-ignore/2012/01/23/gIQABWQRMQ_blog.html#pagebreak
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)redqueen
(115,103 posts)eppur_se_muova
(36,261 posts)If someone were to make a doc'y to rebut "Looking for Superman", that title would fit nicely.
proud2BlibKansan
(96,793 posts)And you can get a DVD for free if you go here --> http://www.waitingforsupermantruth.org/
Here's the trailer -->
eppur_se_muova
(36,261 posts)I'm going to be sharing that DVD.
proud2BlibKansan
(96,793 posts)Teachers put that movie together and paid for it themselves.
annabanana
(52,791 posts)I am more than sick of it.
proud2BlibKansan
(96,793 posts)I walked out of a meeting last night. I've belonged to this group for a long time. They had a speaker who was discussing social justice and launched into a diatribe about some of the "awful" things teachers say to children. She said "Can you imagine a teacher telling a student they will never amount to anything?" And I thought no, I've actually NEVER heard a teacher say that to a student. And I'm in a school every day - for over 30 years now, so you think if it was something teachers routinely say to kids, then I would have heard it by now??
And I just felt myself exploding inside so I grabbed my coat and left. Walked out. On the way home, I kept asking myself how have we gotten to the point where it's part of our everyday conversation that teachers say bad things to kids and schools suck. Why don't we talk bad about nurses? When they screw up, people DIE. But you never hear anyone saying nurses suck, do you?
I'm sick of it too.