Keep an eye on this No Child waiver/AMO target issue in Virginia. The Legislative Black Caucus is now speaking out about the different expectations for minority children* and disability groups getting fired up as well. It’s a vivid illustration of the belief system that underlies a lot of educational policy decisions and at a minimum seems to argue for at least giving parents the ability to send their kids to schools where people believe they can learn at high levels. Not a great moment for the Administration either.
Joel Klein argues for a private sector role in education. Our national education conversation is so vitriolic and as Joel points out these days so full of knee-jerk nonsense about for-profits that we can’t have a sensible conversation about where all three sectors – public, non-profit, and for-profit – can and should play a role and the various strengths and weaknesses of each.
Hope Street Group – who just landed Daniel Cruce from Delaware to lead their education work – has a new “playbook” out to help policymakers and educators think about how to design teacher evaluation systems.
*Update: VA Coverage w/o a firewall here.
Your link requires a subscription – why post it?
I know, frustrating, sorry, but was only one I saw early in the day, found this one and posted on Twitter later: http://hamptonroads.com/2012/08/black-caucus-criticizes-new-school-testing-targets
Will add above. Thx for reading.
Agreed. Today’s educational system needs a radical change.
” It’s a vivid illustration of the belief system that underlies a lot of educational policy decisions ”
What on earth are you talking about? Educational policy has, for at least 30 years, been premised on the fact that all students should be held to the same expectations. This is the first time that reality has been acknowledged, that like it or not, different populations have dramatically different demonstrated abilities.
Leaving aside whether it’s desirable or not, I can’t believe you’re so damn dishonest as to pretend that the educational community has been operating under this premise.
30 years? In 1994 the federal law governing most education aid first required what we think of today as common standards w/in a state. it was enormously controversial at the time and a tough win for President Clinton. It became more controversial in 2001 President Bush further tightened those rules in No Child Left Behind. In both cases a debate raged – sometimes openly and sometimes obliquely – about the role of race and class and there has never been a consensus about it. In other words, just because something ends up in federal law doesn’t mean there is a consensus about it – health care and the ACA is an excellent current example. Policies like the one Virginia just adopted show there is *still* no consensus around this issue of what expectations should be.
More fundamentally as to whether “different populations have dramatically different demonstrated abilities,” if you mean systematically as you seem to imply then we will have to disagree, strongly.
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