Larry Cuban, Teachers College Press
January 2003
Veteran Stanford educationist Larry Cuban based this 96-pager on his Julius & Rosa Sachs Lectures at Teachers College two years back. Think of it as a broadside trained against the standards-based reform fleet, which Cuban terms a "corporate-inspired reform coalition." He says the "present educational orthodoxy is bad for American schools" for four reasons: (1) The goal of preparing students to succeed in an "information-based workplace has largely overwhelmed the fundamental purpose of tax-supported public schools in a democracy," namely building citizens. (2) There's no credible evidence that students who pass tests and finish high school will go on to succeed in college and employment. (3) The "nurturing of a one-best-school" ignores student differences and the "historic diversity of 'good' schools." (4) Schools and students are overburdened with responsibility for making this regimen succeed while society's "structural inequalities" (e.g. racism, poverty) get ignored. A cri-de-coeur, to be sure, from a literate, passionate and decent man with long experience in the education trenches. But it's also stereotypical educationist thinking tinged with Marxist paranoia, and it doesn't offer much of an alternative to the regimen that he laments. Have a look, if you will. The ISBN is 0807742945 and you'll find more information at http://store.tcpress.com/0807742945.shtml.
