TOP NEWS & ANALYSIS
Recession is a springboard for school reform
by Patrick Youngblood
As a public high school teacher and a parent I think often about the role of schools in our society and closely follow the current debate over school reform. Recently I read a concise, insightful letter to the New York Times that has stuck in my mind, almost haunted me, since –
To the Editor:
Standardized test scores can provide some evidence of what knowledge and skills students have learned. But lost in the debate is the fact that it’s possible to teach a subject well but to teach students to hate the subject in the process.
If one of the goals of schooling is to create lifelong learners, then high standardized test scores may be a Pyrrhic victory. That’s because long after the subject matter is forgotten, attitudes remain.
WALT GARDNER
Los Angeles, April 22, 2012
The letter reminds us that debates over school quality and the so-called reform movement have the power to distract from more fundamental questions about the role of education in our society. Schools that we might consider successful — producing a lot of university bound students with high test scores — may fail completely to cultivate the curiosity and engagement that create lifelong learners.
The author of the letter, Walt Gardner, maintains a blog at Education Week called Reality Check. His May 2 post continues the theme with a critique of a recent Wall Street Journal op/ed by former George H. W. Bush Secretary of State George Schultz and economist Erik Hanushek, a prominent proponent of “value-added” measures of teacher performance. Schultz and Hanushek, both fellows at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, argue that the sluggish growth of the U.S. economy would change dramatically if we embraced school reform. High science and math scores lead to increased economic output, they write.
Schultz and Hanushek are both are part of what has come to be known as the education reform movement. I don’t want to over-generalize the reform position, but it’s fair to say that they advocate using standardized testing as a key component for identifying schools that should be de-funded and teachers who should be fired, this would result in greater efficiencies at the school level. To the reformers, a move toward charter schools is positive because they are less constrained by local districts and teachers’ unions.