Opinion of the U.S. education reform movement

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

One of the most dangerous political movements in America today. Referring to this one:

[Sumner 1868]

HM, although you should have just said "privatization movement" as there are endless reform movements.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

The main reform current, the sort pushed by Rhee and Cuomo and Jindal and the like, is that of privatization.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Reform my foot. The last thing we need is to give the millionaires more influence over our lives.

[TNF]

Parasitic scum.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The constellation of policies that this term refers to, even in the sense it is usually given, refers to so many different policies one needs to evaluate every aspect on its own merits. It doesn't make sense to conflate it with "privatization" either.   On the whole it is something which generates a great deal of uncritical enthusiasm, but it's not as though there aren't some very good reasons why people are attracted toward these ideas. The emphasis on standardized testing is troubling, but cutting through the staid and unaccountable bureaucracy of school systems is necessary.

[Mr. Illini]

I'm a cautious fan of Race to the Top because it is clear that some sort of reform is needed to save the public education system from losing the confidence of the people and subsequently being taken over by charters

[NerdyBohemian]

I work in a public school so I see the terrible effects and consequences these programs have.

HM.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Charter Schools are like the British 'free school' nonsense right?

[Torie]

Odd that so many are not particularly dissatisfied with the dysfunctional status quo, as the US ratchets down to close to the bottom of educational achievement among richer nations.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

One of the oddest things about charter schools is that, although it is mostly reformers who promote them, they owe a great deal of their success (at least in terms of attracting students) to the fact that they are often exempted from other policies that the same reform movement advocates - teacher credentials, standardized testing, administrative fads, etc.

Why does this sound so strangely familiar?

[TDAS04]

Negative. 

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Odd that so many are not particularly dissatisfied with the dysfunctional status quo, as the US ratchets down to close to the bottom of educational achievement among richer nations.

Almost entirely thanks to poverty and uneven school funding.

[Torie]

Odd that so many are not particularly dissatisfied with the dysfunctional status quo, as the US ratchets down to close to the bottom of educational achievement among richer nations.

Almost entirely thanks to poverty and uneven school funding.

Correcting for SES does not close the gap much on a country comparison basis. There is little correlation between funding and academic achievement alas. The problem is the low quality of the teachers. They need to be culled, and the incentives made right in the future to attract and keep the best and the brightest. This is one area where the liberal orthodoxy is a total and unadulterated failure in my opinion.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

From a 2010 review of the shoddy neoliberal propaganda "Waiting for "Superman"":

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http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/

[AggregateDemand]

The solution to every problem in the US is spend more money. Reform is just evil corporate malevolence.

While America invents sexy melodramatic conspiracy theories, the world passes us by.

[Torie]

From a 2010 review of the shoddy neoliberal propaganda "Waiting for "Superman"":

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/

Read what I wrote more closely.

[TDAS04]

Odd that so many are not particularly dissatisfied with the dysfunctional status quo, as the US ratchets down to close to the bottom of educational achievement among richer nations.

Almost entirely thanks to poverty and uneven school funding.

Correcting for SES does not close the gap much on a country comparison basis. There is little correlation between funding and academic achievement alas. The problem is the low quality of the teachers. They need to be culled, and the incentives made right in the future to attract and keep the best and the brightest. This is one area where the liberal orthodoxy is a total and unadulterated failure in my opinion.

Blaming the teachers is absurd.  Bad teachers exist, but most teachers in the US already deserve more money and respect than they get.  If you look at two countries that rank especially high in education--Finland and South Korea--the one thing they have in common is that they both value teachers.  Perhaps that should be a hint.  Education in the US is not going to improve until the US treats its teachers better (this is especially true for my state).

[The Mikado]

As a general rule, I've become very skeptical of anything that has "reform" in the name.

[Beet]

At first I thought this thread was going to be about John Dewey.

[Simfan34]

Odd that so many are not particularly dissatisfied with the dysfunctional status quo, as the US ratchets down to close to the bottom of educational achievement among richer nations.

Almost entirely thanks to poverty and uneven school funding.

Indeed, you're quite right. We spend more per student, generally, in poor districts than in wealthy ones. And poverty makes it difficult for students to have an environment conducive to learning. Indeed, when you are surrounded by a culture that treats educational attainment as essentially devoid of practical value or return, it hard to get students motivated no matter how much money you throw at them. I've always wondered what the educational metrics used to compare countries' performance (PISA, etc) would look like in the US broken down by race. I suspect that if one were to remove Blacks and Hispanics from the figures, our (well, I guess your) performance would be at a more satisfactory level. (It is curious that these sort of measures tend to place the more homogenous countries at the top; one could argue "at least we tolerate the presence of disadvantaged minorities.") Which suggests that, yes, there are broader environmental issues at play.

So the solution is to... not do anything differently? Because if we all agree that the status quo is indeed "dysfunctional", we all ought to support "reform" of one sort of another. Critics of "reform" are in this regard somewhat like critics of Obamacare- the find lots of problems with it but are mum on what they'd do instead, and in this case the implication is that the present system suits them just fine. "Them" here being the education unions, of course.

The thing about charter schools, as a common criticism goes, is that while they may very well owe their success to their ability to attract bright students (the implication being that they aren't all that great), the "bright kids" from low-income backgrounds would otherwise fare more poorly in their absence. Which is perhaps the greatest tragedy of our education system's dysfunction- that students with potential and enthusiasm are being stifled by it and denied the opportunities for success that they would take if they were available.

Indeed, one could make the case that one of the more egregious imbalances of our education system is the excessive focus given to special-needs education at the expense of, in many cases, programs for advanced students.

Either way, the problem of how, even with tenure and the "inflated" salaries, no one (capable) really wants to be a teacher these days remains a difficult challenge to overcome, at least with normal assumptions about incentives and such.