The New York Times editors say to Congress: Don't??gut No Child Left Behind.
Here's some pessimistic reading for your Friday morning, from California teacher Kate Applebee. Her thesis:
Yes, the responsibility of educating should rest on the shoulders of teachers, but as teachers, we cannot change the choices of students and their families. Unfortunately, neither presidential candidate is capable of the mind control necessary to influence the choices that students and their families make regarding education. True education reform can only begin with an adjustment to the attitudes and beliefs of the individuals directly affecting the state of education: the students and their families; it's an adjustment that remains nearly impossible in a democratic republic.
So true education reform is only possible in undemocratic regimes? Interesting. But she's right that it is unfortunate that neither candidate is capable of mind control.
So??commands Stanley Fish in this Policy Review article, which is based on his new book.
Pick up the mission statement of almost any college or university, and you will find claims and ambitions that will lead you to think that it is the job of an institution of higher learning to cure every ill the world has ever known: not only illiteracy and cultural ignorance, which are at least in the ball-park, but poverty, war, racism, gender bias, bad character, discrimination, intolerance, environmental pollution, rampant capitalism, American imperialism, and the hegemony of Wal-Mart; and of course the list could be much longer.
Many inquiring minds write in to ask, what exactly is the Education Olympics? To which we say, tune in next week to find out. But in the meantime, here are some suggested events from Henry Olsen, head of the American Enterprise Institute's National Research Initiative:
The 200m Education Disability Hurdles - teachers compete to overcome the disabling home and social conditions their students bring with them to the classroom to get them to finish line with enough skills to compete in today's economy.Education Dressage - self-proclaimed school reforming superintendents compete to move the educational horse of their school districts toward reform without seeming to make a single reform-oriented movement.
Greco-Roman Curriculum Wrestling - advocates of traditional education wrestle with a massive educational bureaucracy to overthrow the textbook culture and re-instate classical learning.
Got some event ideas of your own? Let's hear about them!
Mike's Gadfly editorial about teacher quality is attracting comments like ... like ....
Oh, whatever,??it's Friday afternoon.
And Liam has been pushing for more of this.
(That's not some weak attempt at a joke; he really has.)
I wasn't around in the salad days of American public schooling, but if The Wonder Years or Archie comics are any indication, most high schools used to offer auto shop classes. Not many do these days, unfortunately, which allows things like this to happen.
I found on Matt Yglesias's blog a link to this article,??which argues that housing vouchers have not??increased urban crime rates.
They don't seem to have increased urban??educational achievement, either. And that??they haven't??seems to damage the claim that poor kids,??when enrolled??in??schools or classrooms with??lots of middle-class kids, will learn more. It's not about who's in the school--it's about the school itself.
Update: To avoid confusion about this post and the post directly preceding it: I do believe that schools??that enroll??lots of low-income and minority students can do a fine job of educating their pupils. I wonder, though, if??lots of??urban districts, because of the entrenched big-city politics under which they operate, can successfully implement??educational reform unless the demographics of their customers shift. (Washington, D.C., is an outlier.)
Checker has been pushing for this for over 20 years.