tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21843852.post115728667793468467..comments2024-01-04T05:57:26.735-06:00Comments on Education Policy Blog: Hosted by the Forum on the Future of Public Education: I think we have lost our wayCraig A. Cunninghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18160288758906798678noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21843852.post-1157490811324398052006-09-05T16:13:00.000-05:002006-09-05T16:13:00.000-05:00I think the way to promote effective school reform...I think the way to promote effective school reform is to think outside the box. You are right, there is reason to be concerned with too much rigidity placed in maintaining 40 minute classes or advancement by age. At the same time, the "box" of the American public school system is so strong that I'm not sure if it will ever be possible to think outside the box, if we don't utterly destroy it. The problem with destroying it and starting over is that there are kids in school right now. What are we going to do with these kids. When I was a first year doctoral student I made the comment that if we could get to the moon we should be able to improve our schools. One of my classmates responded that it might be harder to improve schools. It just might be...<BR/><BR/>Andrew Pass<BR/>http://www.Pass-Ed.com/blogger.htmlAndrew Passhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03467297626934604339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21843852.post-1157429006314859682006-09-04T23:03:00.000-05:002006-09-04T23:03:00.000-05:00A wonderful new paper has just been published at T...A wonderful new paper has just been published at The New Atlantis, "The Shop Class as Soulcraft". I think it bears in many interesting ways on Ken's post, and on some of the other discussions we have been having. It's points aren't so much new as they are accessibly pulled together. It can be accessed at: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/13/crawford.htm <BR/><BR/>By the way, none of you probably know that the Labor Day weekend is the yearly date of the international Three Day Novel contest. So over the last three days, I wrote a 70 page novella (which may or may not be execrable, since I haven't actually reread any of it) called "Doctor Death and the League of Almost Superheroes." Thought you might be amused.Aaron Schutzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10667097977144954236noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21843852.post-1157382526883962742006-09-04T10:08:00.000-05:002006-09-04T10:08:00.000-05:00May I suggest another way we have gone astray?Corp...May I suggest another way we have gone astray?<BR/><BR/>Corporations were dying at an increasing rate from the seventies onward, the pace of change was picking up, and human knowledge was expanding exponentially. Everybody saw this long ago and understood that our system of public education appeared to be falling behind other nations in key areas.<BR/><BR/>Unfortunately, the changes made in the last twenty years have not been modeled on how the corporate survivors adapted. While it may not be entirely true to say that, it is true that successfully re-born corporations have been few and vastly different from one another.<BR/><BR/>Agility, or the ability to adapt rapidly to change in the environment is one characteristic of their success. A second is valuing knowledge as a core asset at levels other than management.<BR/><BR/>I think our quest should be examining the public management of education on the part of government.<BR/><BR/>My observation leads me to think that the style of management is what needs to change. There are plenty of works on the new corporation and how it works. There are not too many books on failure. The assumption is that when things become unstable, a business has the option to collapse and die. A public school, on the other hand, will continue to live in a state of turmoil.<BR/><BR/>As far as I can tell, all attempts to reform the public sector of K12 education are managed in a way that ensures failure. As standards are imposed, they cause greater rigidity. I believe this is one subject of Ken's concern.<BR/><BR/>The other subject of concern is clarifying the goals of K12 education itself. I believe that NCLB is a de facto clarifying statement. The act is telling us that the Nation's fathers want a manufacturing paradigm to continue to produce "workers" of some undefined sort. In order that this be effective and that crime should be reduced, it is imperative that high school graduation rates be raised. In fact the Act can be viewed as a national dropout prevention program. But because the definition of worker is not clear, standards will merely cement a basic and self-limiting curriculum in place.<BR/><BR/>Private schools that have traditionally had the purpose of grooming the privileged experience no disorientation. In fact the disorientation period for them ran from the mid-seventies through the late eighties. Their goal is clear and inexpensive to gauge because it is understood by the student body and the parents to be higher education. (Aren't you glad I didn't say stakeholder and buy-in or *shudder* "own the process"?) Admission to an appropriate university and involvement in alumni activities is almost a spectator sport at those schools. It can be a desperate and bloody competition, but let me stress that it is a well defined goal.<BR/><BR/>John Adams' third generation is safe in their hands. But what of the children of the increasingly marginalized non-wealthy classes? NCLB seems to be designed to limit their horizons. Proponents will say that nothing could be further from the truth. However an unfunded NCLB guarantees it.<BR/><BR/>Who is surprised that the Gates' schools prosper with a budget of ten thousand dollars per pupil? Who is surprised that a private school is successful with a budget of over twenty thousand dollars per pupil? Finally who is surprised that high poverty schools fail with a budget of less than five thousand dollars per pupil?<BR/><BR/>So I leave you with two things. Agility and funding.<BR/><BR/>Funding is obvious except that the legislative bodies insist that an unsuccessful system that funds at a rate one fifth that of the most successful institutions is in fact adequately funded.<BR/><BR/>Agility is what comes from rapid, effective communication and rapid deployment of systems in such a way that explicit goals are achieved in a dynamic system. As evidenced by the rapid die-off of corporations, this is difficult to achieve. We will not achieve it by creating a system of activities that stipulate the level of professional behavior teachers must exhibit. It is not because this would be bad. It is because this is just a small part of a complex part of life.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05874420997475288571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21843852.post-1157336401757870562006-09-03T21:20:00.000-05:002006-09-03T21:20:00.000-05:00Well, yes, what has passed for reform in this coun...Well, yes, what has passed for reform in this country is insane and illogical. Until teachers and administrators, those in higher education, parents, and students wake up and rise up to counterargue and counterpose the bureaucratic institutions that dictate policy, I hardly have much hope for change. Whose interests are being served? Not the children of the United States of America. It truly is tragic and I appreciate the thought, effort, and research all of you are doing to state the issues and back up what you are saying by analyzing and critiquing current educational policies.Kathryn M. Bensonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09144622337472566242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21843852.post-1157331408051984052006-09-03T19:56:00.000-05:002006-09-03T19:56:00.000-05:00The neo-con (Fordham) and neo-liberal (PPI) sludge...The neo-con (Fordham) and neo-liberal (PPI) sludge tanks have been using the same education-reform-by-testing textbook since the late 1990s, but now they are on the same page, together reading aloud in unison: “We want a national testing program.”<BR/><BR/>Jay Mathews, the leading testocrat at the Washington Post and Hoover-paid critic of alternative assessments, writes this morning in his inimitable op-news style to pump the Fordham Foundation’s recent report on how to go about creating a national testing program to replace the failing one recently sold to the Congress by these same geniuses. Instead of using state tests this time, which have thus far kept the privatizers from their goal of entirely destroying public confidence in the public schools, the sludge tank sophists are now urging a national test (NAEP) to achieve the same end, and thus open the door to charters (the PPI solution) and vouchers (the Fordham solution).<BR/><BR/>Mathews, who has made his fortune nurturing a unique kind of intellectual laziness to best serve the political power brokers in Washington, offers up another piece of dumbed down blather to take the Fordham talking points, remove all context markers, and then make them seem inevitable. For instance, he ignores the fact that NCLB offered states the option to make their testing proficiency targets tough in early years or tough later on toward 2014. Mathews then selectively cites those states with low up-front proficiency targets in order to make the contrast between easy state and the tough NAEP scores all the more dramatic and to paint state departments of education as the unresponsive malingerers that stand in the way of real standards and accountability.<BR/><BR/>For Hickok, Kress, Rotherham, and the hack-ademics on ed industry retainer, reauthorization of NCLB offers the last good chance for privatization before this crowd of corporate welfare artists is swept out of Washington.James Hornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04462754705431590571noreply@blogger.com