NYU's Pedro Noguera, one of the nation's foremost advocates for equity in the schooling for poor and minority youth, writes this week's cover editorial in the Nation magazine and delivers one of the most articulate critiques of the Obama Administration's approach to reform. After the Obama administration was elected on the need for change away from the failed NCLB policy, Noguera maintains, Obama's education Department set to work continuing that failed approach, exhibiting a profound lack of understanding of what was wrong with NCLB. The Obama administration has no vision of its own, says Noguera, serving up instead a hodge podge of quick fix programs that resemble George W Bush's philosophy of punishment, blame, and narrow test driven accountability. The Nation's education edition also features pieces by Linda Darling-Hammond and Diane Ravitch. Its worth picking up at your newstand and is probably worth the cost of a subscription its so good. Click here to read.
I just read those same articles and am so glad to see them referred to here as I have no blog to broadcast their existence and they are, as you said, "so good."
ReplyDeleteThe president's approach to Ed Reform is so poor I can hardly believe it but another article, "The Teachers' Unions' Last Stand." in the NY Times Magazine of May 23 by Steven Brill was very enlightening to me as to where Mr. Obama got the idea for his approach as well as the "ed reform" movement that Michelle Rhee fits into.
Given that my views for what's needed is so much more along the lines of Ms. Darling-Hammond's thinking, I see what the Prez/Ed Sec and DCPS chancellor are doing as nothing but a silly, shallow, frustrating setback to real reform.
Hopefully, they are so off base, that they won't last long!