Education Dept. steps in the right direction
I don’t much cotton to this bloggish practice of holding internal conversations in public view, but this time I think Mike is over the top–and he didn’t ask my advice before “publishing”. He’s right about NCLB’s built-in flaws and the need to rethink the law so as to set them right. A fair amount of that is statutory repair work; some, however, is regulatory. Insofar as it’s possible to repair NCLB unilaterally, i.e. by action of the executive branch alone, most of what the Education Department announced today strikes me as steps in the right direction. Some of it involves imaginative new interpretations of the statutory language and some is trying to rectify the Department’s own regulation/implementation foul-ups the first time around. But better late than never, I say. Why should Margaret Spellings leave office with problems undealt with (the more so when they’re problems she caused or helped to cause)??
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October 28th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Sorry, Checker, but I agree with Mike Petrilli.
The federal government has been trying to micromanage the nation’s public schools for the past six-plus years. It hasn’t worked. The gains in NAEP scores have been small, smaller than in the years preceding NCLB. Anyone who has read the book you edited with Rick Hess, “No Remedy Left Behind,” is aware that the remedies have not worked. According to the papers in that book, 1% or so of eligible kids choose to leave their “failing” school, and only 20% or so take advantage of free after-school tutoring.
The people who are responsible for teaching kids and running schools–the teachers, principals, and superintendents–know that NCLB isn’t working. They hate it. If the people who have to do the work of schooling say that the law is harmful to kids and education, why do the policymakers love it so? Could it be that power is intoxicating, and it is good to be the King (or Queen)?
Let’s stop punishing schools and begin to acknowledge that the U.S. Department of Education, the Congress, and Think Tanks inside the Beltway are not exactly the right places to decide how to reform the nation’s schools.
Diane Ravitch
October 28th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Let me add that this “bloggish practice of holding internal conversations in public view” is immensely valuable. Those of us who don’t have the policy chops of a Checker Finn, a Mike Petrilli or a Diane Ravitch benefit immensely from seeing first-rate minds wrestle with vexing issues in public view. Opening the discussion to other well-informed voices, as Diane suggests, can only be good.
Bravo, Fordham.
October 30th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I agree 100% with Robert. This blog is a good thing for lots of reasons; if anything I would encourage the Fordham folks to engage more with interested readers. I think you’ll learn a lot, as we do by reading these public internal conversations.