Education Reform

[Patrick McMahon]

I found this New York Times article to be interesting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/us/politics/11web-educ.html

Like health care, education reform is on President Obama's to-do list. Unlike health care, however, the education system of the US is still in shambles. (Some say health care is still in shambles, but that is neither here nor there.) Private schools are limited in size and number of students, and public schools continue to falter. Accountability seems to be the key idea behind the Obama education reform plan: hold teachers accountable by rewarding good teachers. The capitalist work ethic is powerful. The United States thrives on the individual drive to succeed. What place this work-for-reward system has in education is yet to be seen. Hopefully we will know soon.

[Daniel Bassill]

I spend time on another Ning group where discussions like this on "data driven nonsense" help us understand why this drive to accountability will stall. http://firesidelearning.ning.com/forum/topics/diane-ravitch-on-brid...

If you read my posts on Fireside and elsewhere, I say "let's open another channel to reach kids in neighborhoods where schools are underperforming" where people with ideas about how kids can learn, or companies who want more kids to be better prepared for jobs, can implement their ideas without having to go through the inertia of public education bureaucracy. Those channels can be tutor/mentor programs operating in non-school locations, and they can be places on the internet where kids can learn and find mentors.

If the global competition for workers gets severe enough and schools cannot respond, then I suspect some business and education people will begin to look for more "out of the box" solutions.