One Reply to “Free Books”

  1. Stop it already! Just stop this education-hero-bucks-status-quo-through-authentic blah, blah, blah…amazing results were achieved when quality teachers were valued…blah, blah, blah.

    Kenny wants to “charterize” the country. OK? She makes almost half a million dollars. In Harlem. Oprah, Forbes, Bush…are names which justify her plan and her salary. Is it real or is it bs? It’s BS if you look at her teacher and student attrition rates. “The middle school teacher turnover rate at Harlem Village Academies is also high: more than 50% of the teachers left or were fired in both the 2006-07 and 2007-08 school years.”

    What? Oprah did not think to look at the numerous devils in the details of Kenny’s system? Come on now, rich and famous people who got that way for being good at other fields of endeavor like entertainment totally know what it takes to succeed in a small, urban school district so why diss them, jeffrey?

    And here’s what really takes the cake. So Kenny writes an op-ed for the NYT in which she appears to be all for teachers and their professionalism and how the state is a poor arbiter of quality teaching http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/opinion/want-to-ruin-teaching-give-ratings.html She is a HERO of education because media celebs say so who makes half a mil per year and her genius system is, is, is,…?

    “A government-run teacher evaluation bureaucracy will make it impossible to attract great teachers and will diminish the motivation of the ones we have. It will make teaching so scripted and controlled that we won’t be able to attract smart, passionate people.” Says Kenny. She prefers to let teachers teach, which sounds really nice to teachers. Right?

    See, Kenny is a REAL reformer because she is eschewing nasty state-mandated teacher evals based on state-mandated student tests. Cool. But wait. She is also saying that education delivery should be more like a business where the principal is like a CEO with the ability to hire and fire at will. No union safeguards. Cuz, as we all know, that’s how we get competence. Poverty is eradicated because the children of poverty get good teachers based on good principals and we know those are good principals because…um…ok, let me find it here, because…they are good and wise, like any good boss.

    For me, Kenny is the worst of the worst. She has commendable academic pedigrees and actual classroom experience and yet has little understanding of how to transform American education–if it even needs transformation. Here is a nice example of Kenny penning her best effort at explaining why FREEDOM conquers all http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303703004577472422188140892.html She has a Ph.D., right? From Columbia! And yet, she provides no data for the Wall Street Journal readers. Hey, who needs like facts, anyway?

    Dear John, about your book recommendation? Stuff it.

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