Goldstein writes:
Although much of the Obama administration's education reform agenda promotes test score-based teacher evaluation and pay, the tide seems to be significantly turning against such policies, at least among wonks and academics.Included in Goldstein's collection is her own excellent piece, The Test Generation in the April, 2011 American Prospect.
Is the tide really turning? Maybe However, I'm not sure Arne Duncan's crowd pays much attention to the mounds of ed research that have long been building in contradiction to current testing, "merit" pay, and teacher "value-added" evaluation policies.
I'm hoping they will respond more to the growing active opposition from among the nation's 8 million teachers and even more parents, students and community activists as the 2012 election approaches.
See you in D.C., I hope, July 30th.
This is the question that the parents, teachers and school leaders who make up the Save Our Schools movement ask daily. I believe the ed-media tide is beginning to turn--you can only ignore solid research demonstrating that silver-bullet reforms are failing, big-time, for so long.
ReplyDeleteI don't see any movement from ED, although there is a change in rhetoric (adapting the language of the opposition to cover the same old policies). As you will remember, it took a half-dozen marches on Washington to end the Vietnam War. Hearts and minds.