"Fixing" America's schools

Ripley's believe it or NOT

Time Magazine's cover story, "How to fix America's Schools", is paper thin with little more than the usual collection of cliches and misinformation. It goes so far as to claim that it was McCain, not Obama, who made the boldest case for reform." Know-nothing writers like Amanda Ripley kill perfectly good trees to fill pages with crap like this:

The biggest problem with U.S. public schools is ineffective teaching, according to decades of research.

Did you get that? Decades of research? Now instead of weighing school research by the pound, Time measures it by age. Of course there is no such decades of study tagging teachers as the "biggest problem" in schools. Ripley made that up. But in this era of researched-based policy making, you can sell anything by adding the words, "research shows."

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D.C. super-star conservative "revolutionary" Michelle Rhee is treated with the usual Time puff. But what cracked me up was this intro:

Teachers hate her. Principals are scared of her. How Michelle Rhee became the most revolutionary — and polarizing — force in American education

Maybe they could explain how someone could be an education revolutionary and still be a polarizer, hated by teachers and frightening principals? There's certainly nothing revolutionary about teacher bashing and taking away their collective bargaining rights. Maybe she uses revolutionary toilet paper or revolutionary toothpaste.