Twenty-five years ago, when the National Commission on Excellence in Education released A Nation At Risk, overhauling our country's schools became a national priority. In the intervening years, some of the recommendations in the report, such as those related to standards, have been followed, but overall their implementation remains woefully inadequate.
This is from their new report, Laggards and Leaders, a truly horrible "report card" on educational innovation. You'll find praise of EdisonLearning (for devising "promising approaches to important challenges"), abundant praise for charter chaingangs and privatizers, and a whole host of other pro-corporate reform proposals.
Not surprisingly, "this report would not have been possible without the funding of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation."
My comments on the finance portion of the report are here:
ReplyDeletehttp://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com
The capitalist economy of the United States no longer has the capacity to maintain a public school system. For that matter, public health care (Medicare/Medicaid) and a public program of old-age and survivors insurance (Social Security) will be sacrificed in the coming year for the sake of the US military's war making capacity and the bank's survival.
ReplyDeleteWhat struck me was the way it didn't deal with the problems associated to the elements of reform. Just because the money follows a student doesn't make education better, or am I crazy?
ReplyDeleteThere is so much desperation in the research here that it appears like we'll try anything no matter how illogical.
The message I got was we are throwing out the baby and the bath water hoping something will work. And when something might work, there won't be anyway to duplicate it through out the now privatized hodge podge of systems.
This was a well written piece of free market lunacy, and not a serious weeding out of bad ideas. I'm depressed by the hopeless way reform has been framed in this paper.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteYour report has evaluated the significant points which I have read in the feedback. I guess the capitalist economy of US should now consider some ways to find and maintain a comprehensive public school system
Hi,
ReplyDeleteInteresting topic! Hope you will elaborate more on it in future posts