Current debate about education policy is dominated by several zombie ideas. One idea that should have been dead, but keeps coming back to life is the “government is the problem“-inspired commitment to public disinvestment. The other better left for idea is to distrust educators, but trust tests and markets to improve education. There is a better, third way to […]
Tag Archives: education reform
What’s the purpose of education in the 21st century?
Debate about the purposes of education never seems to end. Should young people become educated to get prepared to enter the workforce, or should the purpose of education be focused more on social, academic, cultural and intellectual development so that students can grow up to be engaged citizens? … But it doesn’t have to be either-or. […]
U.S. education policy: Federal overreach or reaching for the wrong things?
Great advances for economic and social justice, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and civil rights laws are the result of federal legislation and Supreme Court decisions. All of these benchmarks of progress been initiated by local social and political action, but they have been achieved nationally….. The problem over the last several decades of […]
You Say You Want a Revolution?
In his 1992 autobiography, Sam Walton wrote, “Frankly, I’d like to see an all-out revolution in education.” Similarly, advocacy for an education revolution has been adopted by Pearson, the education publishing and assessment giant. Well, you know we all want to change the world. …. Strangely, we are now confronted with a different brand of revolutionaries, […]
How to Reframe the Education Policy Debate
Education policymakers have successfully framed the language of modern school reform to reflect specific values — “accountability,” for example, means standardized test-based accountability, and “no excuses” means that teachers are to blame if students don’t do well. To move past this limiting reform model supporters of public education will have to reframe the debate with […]
Go Ahead. Ask. No, Demand
Improving education is not simple because the human beings who inhabit schools, their relationship with one another and the social system in which they live are complex and varied. While simple solutions to complex problems always fall short, the elements of effective systemic solutions in education are not so hard to imagine. In fact, they […]
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