Your Web News in One Place

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

Sign up for GreenGeeks web hosting
February 1, 2019 02:12 pm PST

Millionaire dilettantes' "education reform" have failed, but teacher-driven, evidence-supported education works miracles

Rich "education philanthropists" (Bill Gates, the Waltons, the DeVoses, the Sacklers) have had a lot of business-world ideas for "fixing education" over the years, centered on a system of carrots (bonuses for high-testing schools and schools whose students get admitted to top universitites) and sticks (funding cuts for "underperforming" schools), all backed by high-stakes tests and standardized teaching materials.

These have been a catastrophe, making poor schools poorer, spawning massive fraud-rings that gamed standardized tests and sent unprepared kids to top colleges through falsified grades, where they immediately sank beneath coursework and student debt.

But even though running schools "like a business" online makes things worse, there are problems with public schools, especially those serving poor and marginalized students, and, it turns out, there are ways of addressing those problems.

After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform, a 2018 book by Andrea Gabor, documents these success stories and outlines their commonalities: in Massachusetts' Brockton High, the state's largest, poorest school now outperforms the state average, with a well-funded faculty that teach speaking skills, fine arts, drama, sports, and provide extracurricular activities.

In Leander, Texas, strict hierarchy and standardized tests were replaced by "a culture devoted to grassroots-driven quality and experimentation" as well as "long-term thinking" and "meaningful teacher training," inspired by the production systems of Toyota, turning the school into a magnet for the best teachers in the state and reversing its education outcomes.

The commonalities in all of Gabor's success stories are "a respect for democratic processes and participatory improvement, a high regard for teachers, clear strategies with buy-in from all stake-holders, and accountability frameworks that include room to innovate. Read the rest


Original Link: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/YXle-JmKYCo/disruption-vs-democracy.html

Share this article:    Share on Facebook
View Full Article