Dear Readers,
Funny how the web leads to unexpected discoveries. Tonight I found a blog post on Education Week called Remembering Vito Perrone, by Deborah Meier. She says, "I met Vito in 1973 when the North Dakota Study Group came into being...."
I met Vito Perrone (1933-2011) about the same time, as a transfer undergrad in elementary education at the University of North Dakota. Vito was the dean of the Center for Teaching and Learning, a visionary thinker and risk taker. At that time, I was still pursuing my goal of being a teacher, and Vito made it seem like a calling, a movement, a means to social change. When he left to become dean at the Harvard School of Education, I felt a vindication of my unorthodox (and long ridiculed by my father) choice of going to school in North Dakota.
It feels like a lifetime ago, and my career turned a corner to special education and then law, but I am drawn to Deborah's description of Vito's books: "Still, great individuals make a difference. And Vito did. For starters, take a look at his last three books: A Letter to Teachers, Lessons for New Teachers, and Teacher With a Heart, in which Vito argues why all individuals make a difference."
More books to add to my list.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Utopian Dream
Dear Readers,
I just finished the best article on "education reform" that I've read in many years. In School Reform: A Failing Grade, Diane Ravitch, a professor at NYU, reviews two recent books, one ostensibly about education but really about power and politics, and the other about a 30 year veteran teacher in the Bronx. Diane Ravitch has been writing about education reform since the 70's and her breadth and depth of knowledge is formidable. She writes, unflinchingly: "Because of its utopian goals, coupled with harsh sanctions, NCLB has turned out to be the worst federal education legislation ever passed."
And this: "No nation has ever achieved 100 percent proficiency for all its students, and no state in this nation is anywhere close to achieving it. No nation has ever passed a law that would result in stigmatizing almost every one of its schools. The Bush-era law is a public policy disaster of epic proportions, yet Congress has been unable to reach consensus about changing it."
Her criticism is equally lobbed against Obama administration, which she says has "offered to grant waivers from the onerous sanctions of NCLB, but only to states willing to adopt its preferred remedies: privately managed charter schools, evaluations of teachers on the basis of their students’ test scores, acceptance of a recently developed set of national standards in reading and mathematics, and agreement to fire the staff and close the schools that have persistently low scores. None of the Obama administration’s favored reforms—remarkably similar to those of the Bush administration—is supported by experience or evidence."
I don't think NCLB is all bad - it has shined a light on the dark corners of our school systems and brought a measure of accountability for forgotten populations. Diane Ravitch's most recent book is called The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (2010). After reading her review, I am going to look for this book - maybe it will explain how we go forward from the "utiopian goals" of NCLB to a more realistic approach for closing the achievement gap and reaching and teaching all students.
Suzy
I just finished the best article on "education reform" that I've read in many years. In School Reform: A Failing Grade, Diane Ravitch, a professor at NYU, reviews two recent books, one ostensibly about education but really about power and politics, and the other about a 30 year veteran teacher in the Bronx. Diane Ravitch has been writing about education reform since the 70's and her breadth and depth of knowledge is formidable. She writes, unflinchingly: "Because of its utopian goals, coupled with harsh sanctions, NCLB has turned out to be the worst federal education legislation ever passed."
And this: "No nation has ever achieved 100 percent proficiency for all its students, and no state in this nation is anywhere close to achieving it. No nation has ever passed a law that would result in stigmatizing almost every one of its schools. The Bush-era law is a public policy disaster of epic proportions, yet Congress has been unable to reach consensus about changing it."
Her criticism is equally lobbed against Obama administration, which she says has "offered to grant waivers from the onerous sanctions of NCLB, but only to states willing to adopt its preferred remedies: privately managed charter schools, evaluations of teachers on the basis of their students’ test scores, acceptance of a recently developed set of national standards in reading and mathematics, and agreement to fire the staff and close the schools that have persistently low scores. None of the Obama administration’s favored reforms—remarkably similar to those of the Bush administration—is supported by experience or evidence."
I don't think NCLB is all bad - it has shined a light on the dark corners of our school systems and brought a measure of accountability for forgotten populations. Diane Ravitch's most recent book is called The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (2010). After reading her review, I am going to look for this book - maybe it will explain how we go forward from the "utiopian goals" of NCLB to a more realistic approach for closing the achievement gap and reaching and teaching all students.
Suzy
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