Robert J. Samuelson of The Washington Post takes on school reform today in his column noting:
“‘Reforms’ have disappointed for two reasons. First, no one has yet discovered transformative changes in curriculum or pedagogy, especially for inner-city schools, that are (in business lingo) “scalable” — easily transferable to other schools, where they would predictably produce achievement gains. Efforts in New York and the District to raise educational standards involve contentious and precarious school-by-school campaigns to purge “ineffective” teachers and principals. Charter schools might break this pattern, though there are grounds for skepticism. In 2009, the 4,700 charter schools enrolled about 3 percent of students and did not uniformly show achievement gains.”
Let us know what you think, has school reform been successful on the federal level?
No, because our education policy is being run by business interests. Duncan is not a certified teacher and has only a BA in a non-edu related field. Why are we trusting these people?
This article also discusses the potential that motivation is a source of poor performance. While I am not one for fads nor do I believe in quick fixes, Daniel Pink’s new book, Drive, offers an interesting review of some research on motivation as well as some creative ideas. And at least one teacher, Mark Barnes, is piloting some of the ideas in his classroom. His efforts are linked here:
http://gorowe.com/2010/09/02/role-on-1st-update/
In my non-board experience, a problem is rarely about one thing, and I doubt that improving school performance will be any different. Schools are systems like so many other complicated organisms and we have to study them as a system.
In the end, I suspect it will take the creativity and drive of many Mark Barnes’ to make a difference.