The pick took a while and in the interim a spate of stories appeared characterizing the selection as symbolic of various internecine education policy fights with the Democratic party. Of course, such divisions exist. But there's a growing tendency among various observers to engage in a certain kind of education policy high Broderism, using the disputes as an excuse to call for a renewed effort to build consensus, move beyond entrenched ideological positions, find common ground, set aside anger, and combine the best ideas of both sides in forging a new synthesis on behalf of the children.
Look, maybe there are education issues where the middle way is best. But maybe there aren't. Sometimes the middle ground is a no-man's-land full of trenches, shell craters, and standing water. As is often the case, opposing ideas are sometimes irreconcilable. The new edu-centrism would be more convincing if people spent a little more time articulating what these synthesis policies actually look like, and why they're better than the ideas currently being debated. That's the difference between a position and a pose.
1 comment:
Thanks Kevin for illustrating the issue. Why do you take your position.
I don't deny my approach is generational. I was raised on the principles of the Loyal Oppostion, that Compromise is the best outcome, that government must play the role of umpire, and that we should welcome checks and balances, that we should live up to contracts and handshake agreements, that knowledge and learning is a seamless web and that education must have the same checks on imposed orthodoxy, and that ABOVE ALL the voice of democracy is not so all-fired sure that it is right. When I entered the classroom at age forty after a decade of working with high risk children and lobbying at my more modest level, I decided to always listen to veteran teachers even if I didn't agree. And I brought the same sensibility to the classroom that I'd had in the State Capital and the Street. I had to clean up my jokes, but still education is a people business. If you can't get along, and build trusting relationships, no curricula will work.
But why do you believe what ypu believe?
I'd like to hear your response to this wonderful passge:
The group [of new superintendents] had recently read a research brief high-lighting the effect of teachers on student achievement as well as the inequitable distribution of teachers within districts, with higher-income, higher-performing schools getting the pick of the litter. The aspirants were fired up and ready to put this knowledge to use. To a roomful of nods, one declared, “Day one, we’re going to start identifying those high value-added teachers and moving them to the schools that aren’t making AYP.”
Now, although I was generally sympathetic to the premise, the certainty of the stance provoked me to ask a series of questions: Can we be confident that teachers who are effective in their current classrooms would be equally effective elsewhere? What effect would shifting teachers to different schools have on the likelihood that teachers would remain in the district? Are the measures in question good proxies for teacher quality? What steps might either encourage teachers to accept reassignment or improve recruiting for underserved schools?
My concern was not that the would-be superintendents lacked firm answers to these questions,” Hess recalls. “It was that they seemingly regarded such questions as distractions.”
A generation ago, or if those superintendent's had worked their way up the system they would have all known that: a) their goal was impossible, (those teachers would mostly just move to the suburbs and in our system we can't shoot them if they disobey) and b) even if they could move people around like chess pieces, it wouldn't work because the talents required in this people business are so different, and c) we have laws, contracts and collective bargaining agreements FOR A REASON. You may not like all of the reasons, but we are a nation of laws not men.
But notice the dog that didn't bark. The new generation of superintendents didn't seek the institutional history.
Finally, there is a middle ground that should make everone happy enough, Diane Ravitch's proposal.
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