Welcome to other side of the looking glass, and into the Bizarro world of so-called "education reform" - an upside-down universe in which up is down, left is right and multimillionaire CEOs are civil rights heroes championing social justice, while public school teachers are corrupt fat cats, maintaining a status quo which oppresses students in poverty and racism.
In the first, the teacher (rightfully) wanted to scare the worst students straight and push the mediocre ones to do better. But it was the best student (I'd like to think) who was mortified, not the worst ones. Many years later, I found out my Mom had relayed my reaction to the teacher, who had sighed, shaken her head, and said something like "it's always the wrong ones who get scared."
In the second, I (rightfully, I sure hope) wanted to scare the worst students straight and push the mediocre ones to do better. But the only reaction I got was from possibly the best student in the class -- the one who doesn't need to spend any time fretting about what the end of term report card will say.
In the third, the district (rightfully, I think) wanted to scare the worst teachers straight (and/or just fire them) and push the mediocre ones to do better. I can't say how the other teachers responded, but the model teacher I know is the one who's been scared, despite being straight as an arrow to begin with.
Critics of America’s public schools always seem to start from the premise that the pre-kindergarten-through-12th-grade public education system in this country is failing or in crisis.
This crisis mentality is in stark contrast to years of survey research showing that Americans generally give high marks to their local schools. Phi Delta Kappa International and Gallup surveys have found that the populace holds their neighborhood schools in high regard; in fact, this year’s survey found that “Americans, and parents in particular, evaluate their community schools more positively than in any year since” the survey started.
How could there be such a disconnect between a national narrative about public education and opinions about local schools? The two contradictory narratives draw on completely different sources of evidence.
By Bob Sickles, President and Publisher, Eye On Education
As my staff and I began planning a roundtable webcast on teacher evaluation, a fundamental question emerged: What does a teacher do? Examining this question might shed some light on the teacher accountability debate which had been discussed in a recent issue of Education Week.
As the founder and CEO of a profitable education publishing company, I’m all for the entrepreneurial spirit and the push for accountability. Yet I feel uncomfortable when my MBA friend argues that our educational problems would be resolved if only schools would behave more like for-profit companies in the private sector. He wants to tie teacher evaluation to standardized test scores. His sole focus on high stakes tests is grounded in his desire to equate profit growth with test score increases.
Although charter school operator and GOP donor David Brennan has long maintained that he does not have to show how his charter schools spend the millions they receive in taxpayer money each year, a Franklin County judge disagreed and ordered Brennan to open his books.
The ruling is a remarkable victory for open and accountable government and for parents who have been struggling to learn why schools run by White Hat Management have consistently had abysmal academic records.
Voucher proponents have shifted their advocacy efforts from extolling the academic achievement of voucher participants to focusing on the value of school choice as a virtue in itself, according to a report from the Center on Education Policy, in Washington.
The education research and advocacy group reviewed and synthesized a selection of a decade’s worth of research and policy moves in vouchers and school choice for the report, released today. In it, the researchers note that studies generally have shown that vouchers have “no clear positive impact” on student academic achievement and mixed results overall. In response to those studies, the CEP suggests, voucher advocates have started talking more about other perceived benefits of vouchers, including more parental choice and satisfaction, and higher graduation rates.
