Technology and School Choice: The False Dichotomy

July 18, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Terry Moe has a great article in today’s Journal about how entrepreneurial innovation taking advantage of new technology is putting the teacher’s unions on the road to oblivion. It’s a great article, except that it draws one false dichotomy.

Fans of JPGB know that we do love us some high-tech transformation of schooling around here. Matt has been on this beat for a long time, and hardly a week goes by that he doesn’t update us on the latest victory of “the cool kids” over “edu-reactionaries” in the reinvention of the school. But he doesn’t own that turf entirely; I made this the theme of my contribution to Freedom and School Choice (as did Matt, of course).

The problem is that Moe insists high-tech transformation of schooling, and the destruction of union control it entails, is absolutely, positively a separate phenomenon from the wave of school reform victories this year:

This has been a horrible year for teachers unions…But the unions’ hegemony is not going to end soon. All of their big political losses have come at the hands of oversized Republican majorities. Eventually Democrats will regain control, and many of the recent reforms may be undone. The financial crisis will pass, too, taking pressure off states and giving Republicans less political cover…

Over the long haul, however, the unions are in grave trouble—for reasons that have little to do with the tribulations of this year…The first is that they are losing their grip on the Democratic base…Then there’s a crucial dynamic outside of politics: the revolution in information technology.

Really? The victories of 2011 – “the year of school choice” – aren’t in the same category with the long-term path to oblivion the unions are on? On the contrary, 2011 is the year of school choice precisely because it has become obvious that the unions are on track for oblivion, for the reasons Moe identifies.

Moe’s argument relies on the assumption that when Republicans are in power, they always make dramatic and innovative school reform policies their #1 priority.

Sorry  . . . lost my train of thought I was laughing so hard . . . let me pick myself up off the floor . . . there, now where was I? Oh, yes.

The GOP hasn’t touched real school reforms with a hundred-foot pole in years. Why did it all of a sudden embrace real reform this year?

Could it be because…

  1. …the unions are losing their grip on the Democratic base, meaning squishy Republicans don’t have to worry about being demonized as right-wing loonies simply for embracing real reform, and…
  2. …the revolution in information technology has made it obvious to MSM and other key cultural gatekeepers that the unions are the reactionaries, once again reassuring squishy Republicans they won’t be demonized for embracing real reform?

Obviously the financial crisis was also a factor here, as Moe rightly points out. But is that really an immediate-term phenomenon, bound to disappear next week? What really counts is whether the nation feels so rich it can afford to ignore ballooning school costs. Technically the recession ended two years ago and we’ve been in “recovery” for two years. How’s that feeling? Do we feel rich and luxurious again? Are we on track to restore a widespread national sense of inevitable prosperity by 2012? By 2014? By 2020?

Bottom line, the unions losing Democratic support and taking their stand in opposition to entrepreneurial change was the crucial, indispensable precondition for this year’s wave of school reform success.

Oh, and guess what? Sustaining those policies, especially school choice, will be the only way this wave of advancing technology will produce the results Moe is expecting. Only school choice can prevent the blob from neutralizing any reform you throw at it. If the techno-innovators turn their back on choice and competition, they’ll be dead meat. (For more on that topic, see the aforementioned chapter by your humble servant in Freedom and School Choice.)

3 Comments | Digital Learning, instructional reform, online learning, politics, school accountability, tax-credit scholarships, teacher pay, teacher quality, teacher union, vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Greg Goes Heisman in 2011 Reform Blowout

July 1, 2011

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

In 1916, legendary Georgia Tech coach John Heisman had a score to settle with Cumberland College. His engineers led 126-0 at halftime, inspiring Heisman to tell his players “We’re ahead, but you just can’t tell what those Cumberland players have up their sleeves. They may spring a surprise. Be alert, men.”

The final score: Georgia Tech 222, Cumberland College 0. The Atlanta Journal reported, “As a general rule, the only thing necessary for a touchdown was to give a Tech back the ball and holler, ‘Here he comes’ and ‘There he goes.’ ”

Greg has followed Heisman’s example by scoring 4 more times in the Mathews bet. Ohio dramatically expanded their Ed Choice voucher program, their Cleveland program, and upgraded their autism voucher bill to a full fledged special needs voucher. In addition, North Carolina became the first state to enact a tuition tax credit for special needs children.

Let’s see if I can recall them all:

Utah (1) Carson Smith expansion

Arizona (1) Education Savings Accounts

Colorado (1) New voucher program

DC (1) Opportunity Scholarships reenacted, expanded

Florida (2) McKay Scholarship expansion, Step Up for Students Tax Credit Expansion

Georgia (1) Tax credit expansion

Oklahoma (1) New tax credit, (major fix of special need voucher)

Indiana (3) New statewide voucher, expansion of tax credit, new tax deduction

Louisiana (1) Tax deduction expansion

Wisconsin (2) Milwaukee Expansion, New Racine Program

Iowa (1) Tax credit expansion

North Carolina (1) New special needs tax credit

Ohio (3) Cleveland expansion, Ed Choice expansion, Autism to Special needs expansion

Most legislative sessions are winding down this year, but we could see some additions to the list. There are too many great stories to cover here, from the heroic struggle to save the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, to Colorado’s turning a court defeat based upon “local control” on its head, and Wisconsin emerging from years of toil and struggle to enact an amazing expansion, to Arizona lawmakers embarking on an experiment in liberty to give parents control down of the education of their child down to the last penny.

Lots of important reforms outside of private choice as well- major tenure reforms, charter caps lifted, some pathbreaking expansions of digital learning. It will take time for the smoke to clear just to see what actually passed, much more before we will have any clue about results.

A few states have taken what I would describe as deep reform dives-embracing a broad set of reforms making truly historic changes. Florida of course has long been in the lead here, and Florida had a fantastic education reform session this year, reforming tenure, expanding digital learning and passing a truly amazing law to expand high quality charter schools.

Indiana however may be the pupil that has exceeded the master.

Indiana adopted critical Florida reforms, like grading schools A-F and social promotion curtailment, last session. During this session, Indiana’s reformers went far beyond enacting the most far reaching choice programs.  Go and read the transcript from Governor Daniels speech at AEI. After detailing Indiana’s far reaching collective bargaining, teacher quality and parental choice reforms, Daniels sort of casually mentions:

And here’s another little calendar quirk that we just moved the school board elections from the spring to the fall. So test from the fall to the spring, elections from the spring to the fall, what’s up with that, you want to know? Well, spring is when we have primaries, nobody votes. It’s a lot easier to dominate, for a small or for an interest group to dominate the outcome and elect a friendly school board in the sparsely attended primary elections. And so now they will have more of the public at least eligible or at least on hand to take part in those elections, we’ll see if it makes a difference.

Now this, ladies and gentlemen, is comprehensive education reform: grading schools A-F based on student proficiency and gains, curtailing social promotion, tenure reform including the mandated use of student performance as a part of formula, throwing out the 900 page collective bargaining agreements, and what will be the nation’s largest system of parental choice. Oh, and by the way, we are going to take a shot at massively increasing democratic participation in school districts while we are at it, just for fun.

Govenor Daniels described these reforms as “mutually reinforcing” in his AEI speech. When I heard that line, I literally gasped and thought to myself: he really gets it!

Indiana lawmakers have not however suspended the law of unintended consequences. Many challenges known and unknown attend such profound change, and the hardest work lies ahead. Among the known challenges: Indiana has term limits, and these far reaching reforms come in the twighlight rather than the dawn of the Daniels terms of office. Seeing this business through will be an enormous challenge for the next crop of Indiana policymakers, if they choose to accept it.

Ok, enough of the grim warrior business. If you can’t pause to celebrate victory, you won’t last the season. This has easily been the best year for K-12 reform, and the best is yet to come.

15 Comments | instructional reform, tax-credit scholarships, vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Questions for Jeb and Joel

June 28, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Today’s Wall Street Journal carries my letter to the editor responding to last week’s op-ed by Jeb Bush and Joel Klein advocating national (“common”) education standards.

In my letter, I ask a few questions:

I greatly respect Jeb Bush and Joel Klein. But if Common Core is voluntary and state-driven, how do they explain the federal government repeatedly threatening states to join it or lose federal funds? Why are the testing consortia associated with this effort federally funded and controlled?

Confusingly, Messrs. Bush and Klein praise decentralization and local control for pedagogy while urging states to submit to a centralized command-and-control system for content standards. If nationalization is bad for pedagogy, why is it good for standards? Is it even possible to nationalize standards without nationalizing pedagogy?

Common Core’s standards are so mediocre that they set a “college readiness” level that is below what students need even to apply to most colleges. And they’ll get worse over time, since centralization facilitates teacher union control. What about the perpetual culture war national content standards would create? What is the upside?

Greg Forster

Foundation for Educational Choice

5 Comments | instructional reform | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Confusion over National Standards

June 24, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

I greatly admire both Jeb Bush and Joel Klein, so I have mixed feelings saying that I’m confused about their op-ed this morning.

The article is entitled “The Case for Common Educational Standards.” But the article does not contain any case for common educational standards.

Quite the contrary, the article emphasizes the case against common standards. As in:

And, while education is a national priority, the answer here does not appear to be a new federal program mandating national standards. States have historically had the primary responsibility for public education, and they should continue to take the lead.

So that would be an argument against common standards.

It is the states’ responsibility to foster an education system that leads to rising student achievement. State leaders, educators, teachers and parents are empowered to ensure every student has access to the best curriculum and learning environment. Governors and lawmakers across the country are acting to adopt bold education reform policies. This is the beauty of our federal system. It provides 50 testing sites for reform and innovation.

Again, a great argument against common standards.

Bush and Klein depict the Common Core standards and the two testing consortia as products of state, not federal, initiative. As regular readers of JPGB know, there’s another reality behind that superficial appearance. If Common Core and the testing consortia are really state-driven, why has the federal government spent more than a year pushing states into them, openly and explicitly threatening loss of Title I funds to states that fail to kowtow? Why are the consortia federally funded (and therefore federally controlled)? Is it even possible for these efforts to be genuinely state-driven when the federal behemoth is openly using its funding club to threaten everyone to get on board? Bush and Klein fail to mention these issues.

However, let’s leave all that to one side. Let’s pretend – even though we know it’s false – that these efforts are really state driven. Why is it valuable for states to do these things together in a single group? If states should lead the way, if what we want is a decentralized 50-state laboratory of democracy, why not actually do that instead of rounding up all the states to all do it one way?

Bush and Klein argue that standards are being set nationally (in “common”) but pedagogy isn’t. Once again, let’s leave aside the reality that you can’t have national (common) standards while preserving freedom and diversity of pedagogy. Let’s pretend you can set national standards and then let a thousand flowers bloom on pedagogy. Why do it? Why is it valuable to set a single national (common) standard? The article’s title promises an answer to that question, but the article doesn’t deliver.

If, as Bush and Klein argue, most states have woefully inadequate standards, isn’t it likely that the central bureaucracy you’re creating will gravitate to mediocrity rather than excellence? And isn’t that just what Common Core represents, given that its standards for what count as “college ready” are actually set below what you need to even apply to, much less succeed at, most colleges?

So color me confused.

13 Comments | instructional reform | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

One of the Best Education Books I’ve Read

June 13, 2011

(Guest Post by Stuart Buck)
And I’ve read quite a few. The book is Barker Bausell’s “Too Simple to Fail: A Case for Educational Change”, which just came out from Oxford University Press. Bausell was a biostatistician and professor for many years at the University of Maryland, but he started out in graduate school doing some fascinating educational experiments that showed the irrelevance of teacher training. He brings the perspective of a brilliant outsider.

His main thesis: that the only thing that improves education is spending more time on instruction at a given child’s level. In his words:

All school learning is explained in terms of the amount of relevant instructional time provided to a student.

That’s it: more time + suitability for a child’s level.

This may seem too simplistic at first glance, but Bausell marshalls evidence that his theory explains, well, a lot. Possibly even the achievement gap. Studies of home behavior have shown that middle-class families spend much more time talking and reading to their children at a high level. This is the most elegant explanation for why those children do better in school — they have had much more time devoted to their learning.

Consider too the success of KIPP. This is almost surely because KIPP has kids spend much more time in class. And reducing class size works for many kids (all else being equal), because teachers are able to 1) keep classroom discipline better, and/or 2) give more personal attention, both of which boil down to kids having more time being instructed at their own level.

Bausell also looks at historical studies on teacher quality. From a NY Times op-ed based on the book:

Thirty years ago two studies measured the amount of time teachers spent presenting instruction that matched the prescribed curriculum, at a level students could understand based on previous instruction. The studies found that some teachers were able to deliver as much as 14 more weeks a year of relevant instruction than their less efficient peers.

There was no secret to their success: the efficient teachers hewed closely to the curriculum, maintained strict discipline and minimized non-instructional activities, like conducting unessential classroom business when they should have been focused on the curriculum.

And both studies found that the teachers who taught more were also the teachers who produced students who performed well on standardized tests.

In the book, he describes a fascinating study he did early in his career: designing an elementary math lesson based on a few number theory topics and a test based on the lesson, and then having 15 accredited teachers and 15 undergraduates teach the same lessons for a week to children. It turned out that “there was absolutely no difference . . . between the amount the children learned in the 15 classrooms taught by experienced elementary school teachers and the amount the children learned in the 15 classrooms taught by inexperienced untrained undergraduates” (p. 29). As long as kids were taught the material for the same amount of time, it didn’t matter who was doing the teaching.

Bausell also has a provocative chapter ripping apart the entire industry of standardized tests. He contends that there should be no such thing as tests that aren’t matched perfectly to the curriculum. That is, if time is being spent teaching a certain curriculum, then any test should be based on that curriculum and nothing else. Whenever tests include anything outside of the curriculum (let’s say, a reading passage about snowboarding), they end up measuring something other than what was learned in school — such as one’s experience with snowboarding.

Bausell is scathing in his assessment of what standardized tests tell us:

This would be comparable to receiving a bank statement that tells you only that you have more money in your account than 52% of all U.S. citizens who have a checking account. Although perhaps an interesting piece of trivia, you might want to know a few more details. So, let’s pretend that you decided to call your local bank, which resulted in the following conversation with a help-center employee:
You: I’m glad to know that I have more money than the average person in the country, but what I’d like to know is what my balance is. You see, I have a more pressing concern. What I need to know is how much money I have in my account because I want to buy a mattress.

Help Center: I’m sorry, but we don’t keep records in that manner. We can provide you with an age-equivalent financial score, and we can predict what that score will be upon your retirement. We can even predict what your percentile rank is in terms of property and stocks, based upon your account. If I may be allowed to put you on hold for 45 seconds, I will provide you with all this information.

You: But I need to know how much money I have in my account. I don’t need to know all of this other information. . . .

Now as absurd as this conversation may sound, this is the only type of information that a standardized test is capable of providing. And what does it profit you (or a teacher for that matter) to know how well your child stacked up against other third-graders from Washington State or Florida . . . ?

For one thing, even this odd level of information can be quite misleading if our public schools as a whole are drastically underperforming — which they are. Wouldn’t it make more sense to you and your daughter’s teacher to know what percentage of the curriculum she had mastered? Even better, to inform the two of you exactly what your daughter hadn’t yet learned and how much additional instructional time would be required for her to correct this deficit? (pp. 133-34).

What are his policy prescriptions? Here are most of them; they’re all geared towards increasing the amount of relevant instructional time delivered to each child.

1. Pre-K, using direct instruction rather than constructivist principles (for which Bausell has contempt).

2. Increase the length of the school day, and devote the entire day to relevant instruction (not ‘candy sales, worthless school assemblies, loudspeaker announcements, sports activities, ad nauseam”).

3. Increase the length of the school year.

4. No tolerance for any behavior that prevents or distracts students from learning. (“If this means that we have to leave certain children behind because they can’t meet behavioral expectations (or we don’t know how to enable them to conform), so be it. . . . Schools exist to teach, not to be law enforcement agencies.”).

5. The entire curriculum should be exhaustive and detailed, and computerized tests should be based exclusively on the curriculum.

6. Grades and classrooms should be largely irrelevant, because students should each be learning material at their own level, whatever that happens to be.

7. Teacher behavior should be “monitored constantly to ensure the delivery of sufficient instruction, as well as satisfactory coverage of (and minimal departures from) the established curriculum.”

Bausell adds that the view of the teacher as an autonomous professional is “woefully outdated. Professions such as medicine have largely abandoned this intuition-laced mode of operation for a more evidence-based approach accompanied by practice guidelines. Thoracic surgeons, for example, perform the vast majority of their professional tasks according to rigidly prescribed protocols. Of course, they also don’t have tenure, and they can be sued if their outcomes are substandard, following divergence from these protocols.”

8. Use efficient instructional methods. Bausell points to an example of inefficiency: “my son once had a teacher who had an elaborate class project involving building a medieval castle out of popsicle sticks that stretched over a period of several months. Regardless of what the teacher thought she was accomplishing, this is valuable time wasted . . . unless there is an instructional objective in the curriculum mandating the ‘construction of medieval structures out of popsicle sticks.'”

9. Find lots of free tutors from parents, older students, retired persons, or welfare recipients. A high school diploma “isn’t required to give children (a) practice reading sight words or (b) learning simple mathematical operations via a set of flash cards.”

* * *

All in all, a great and thought-provoking read. Highly recommended.

3 Comments | instructional reform | Permalink
Posted by Stuart Buck

Is Opposing National Standards “Conservative”?

May 10, 2011

Stay in your hole, little pigeon!

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

As I expected, the nationalizers have responded to our manifesto, Closing the Door on Innovation, not only with weasel words that avoid confronting all the essential issues (and that Jay has already demolished) but also by trying to stigmatize us as “conservative.” Virtually all the coverage of the manifesto describes it, or its supporters, as “conservative” and the nationalizers themselves seem very keen on leveraging that for stigma value.

Apparently nationalization of education, carried out behind closed doors by people who have a direct financial stake in the outcome, is not a scary hidden political agenda, but opposing it is.

A while back, Fordham was trying to convince people that supporting national standards was “conservative.” So much for that! I wonder what Checker thinks, seeing his quotation placed cheek by jowl with Randi Weingarten’s in the official Shanker response, offering the same dodge-and-weave evasive approach that she does, and all as part of a post that treats “conservative” as a dyslogistic term.

This whole line is just cheap, hollow misdirection – “manipulation of the narrative,” as they now say.

The following propositions seem to me to be so obvious that it isn’t even worth the trouble to argue for them.

  1. There is nothing in the manifesto that is distinctively conservative, although there is much that conservatives can agree with. Conservatives can and should agree with obvious facts and common sense arguments, but just because the manifesto articulates obvious facts and common sense arguments that doesn’t make it “conservative.”
  2. There are plenty of non-conservatives among the signatories.
  3. By immediately rushing in to frantically point fingers and shriek “Conservative! Conservative! CONSERVATIVE!” while offering evasive weaseling on the substance, the nationalizers have proven my point that national standards are a great way to reignite the very worst aspects of the culture wars of the 1990s.

Instead of bickering over labels, how about we argue over the substance? Oh yeah, that’s right – I forgot.

2 Comments | instructional reform | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Check Out Our All-Star Lineup!

May 9, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

We couldn’t land Troy McClure, but the manifesto we released today opposing nationalization of K-12 education, Closing the Door on Innovation, did land a lot of big stars – Abby and Stephan Thernstrom, Shelby Steele and Richard Epstein among them. Big names in the education world include Blouke Carus, John Chubb, and Herb Walberg – on top of our very own Bill Evers, Jay Greene, and Sandra Stotsky, of course.

Moments ago, we added our first new batch of additional signers, bringing the total to 144. Among the new signers: Princeton’s Robert George.

In his coverage of the manifesto, titled Now It Gets Interesting, Rick Hess runs down some of the rest of the original lineup:

Signatories include legislators who chair or vice-chair of education committees in Minnesota, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas; state board members from Colorado and Alabama; two former general counsels at the U.S. Department of Ed; and a grab-bag of Republicans like former California governor Pete Wilson, former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, former U.S. House member Pete Hoekstra, anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, and Spellings Commission chair Charles Miller. They also include William Estrada of the Home School Legal Defense Association; Bob Enlow, president of the Foundation for Educational Choice; the heads of a number of state-level conservative think tanks; and academics including Shelby Steele, U. Chicago’s Richard Epstein, Stephen and Abigail Thernstrom, and, intriguingly, progressive icon Joel Spring.

Shout out to Bob Enlow for being big enough to make the marquee!

1 Comment | instructional reform, politics | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Closing the Door on Innovation

May 9, 2011

Today a Manifesto was released opposing the effort by the U.S. Department of Education-Gates-AFT–Fordham to develop a set of national curriculum and assessments based on the already promulgated Common Core national standards.  Centralization of education is bad for everyone except the central planners.

The Manifesto is being announced with 118 original signatories who come from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives.  The list includes former Attorney General Edwin Meese, education professor Joel Spring, law professor Richard Epsein, U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Abigail Thernstrom, and many more.  To see the Manifesto and a full list of those who have endorsed it, click here.  Now that the document is public more names will be added as people add their signatures.

Greg has already penned a short essay on the manifesto, which you can read here.

UPDATE : Catherine Gewertz at Education Week also has this piece.

And here is the text of the press release:

For Immediate Release (May 9, 2011)
For further information, please get in touch with:
Bill Evers, bill@k12innovation.com, (650) 380-1546
Jay Greene, jay@k12innovation.com 
 
Broad Coalition Opposes National Curriculum Initiative by U.S. Dept. of Education
Over 100 leaders sign manifesto against nationalization of schooling
 
Stanford, Calif. & Fayetteville, Ark. – A broad coalition of over 100 educational and other leaders representing diverse viewpoints released a manifesto today opposing ongoing federal government efforts to create a national curriculum and testing system.
 
The manifesto, entitled “Closing the Door on Innovation,” is available at www.k12innovation.com. It argues that current U.S. Department of Education efforts to nationalize curriculum will stifle innovation and freeze into place an unacceptable status quo; end local and state control of schooling; lack a legitimate legal basis; and impose a one-size-fits-all model on America’s students.
 
Congress is now preparing to debate renewal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the main law authorizing federal aid to K-12 education. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education has been quietly funding efforts by two assessment groups to develop a national K-12 curriculum, along with a national testing system that tests every public-school student multiple times each year. This federal initiative will create a national system of academic-content standards, tests, and curriculum. It is in line with the goals of a manifesto released on March 7, 2011, by the Albert Shanker Institute that calls for a single nationalized curriculum in every K-12 subject.
 
“A one-size-fits-all national curriculum based on mediocre high-school standards will stifle the educational innovation essential to closing the racial gap in academic achievement,” said Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom in a joint statement on why they signed the new manifesto. Abigail Thernstrom is vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and a former member of the Massachusetts Board of Education; Stephan Thernstrom is a professor of history at Harvard University.
 
“Closing the Door promotes what is for high schools the most important innovation in a century,” said signatory Blouke Carus, leading children’s magazine publisher, math and reading textbook developer, and chairman of the Carus Corporation. “Our schools need to offer each student a choice among six or more challenging and rigorous high school curricula, as do other, higher-performing countries.”
 
“The federal government’s effort to impose a national curriculum on all schools spells trouble for the educational system,” said Richard Epstein, law professor at New York University, also a signatory. “No one in Washington can craft a curriculum that works well throughout this diverse nation. Once errors are built in at the national level, corrections will be ever more difficult to make at the local level. Only decentralized control over education can prove nimble enough to root out errors and spur innovation. Washington bureaucrats should not trumpet their own omniscience, but should become more cognizant of their own fallibility.”
 
“To some, a national curriculum sounds like a redemptive cure-all for the shame of our public schools’ failures,” said signatory Shelby Steele of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. “And a national curriculum gives the education establishment elite a powerful warrant for ‘doing good.’ But we must not discard the proven constitutional discipline of our federalist system. Decentralization has been the engine of educational innovation. We shouldn’t trade our federalist birthright for a national-curriculum mess of pottage.”
 
“National curriculum becomes, in effect, a nationalization of what teachers teach,” said former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, another signatory. “We must always evaluate policy proposals in light of principles like rule of law and the logic of our constitutional system. The Education Department’s sponsoring and funding of national curriculum runs counter to both laws of Congress and the wisdom of the Founders.”
 
The coalition of leaders releasing its counter-manifesto today opposes both the Shanker Institute Manifesto and the U.S. Department of Education initiative on a variety of grounds:
 
  • These efforts are against federal law and undermine the constitutional balance between national and state authority.
  • The evidence doesn’t show a need for national curriculum or a national test for all students.
  • U.S. Department of Education is basing its initiative on inadequate content standards.
  • There is no research-based consensus on what is the best curricular approach to each subject.
  • There is not even consensus on whether a single “best curricular approach” for all students exists.
 
With federal education law coming to the top of Congress’s agenda, the U.S. Department of Education’s push to create national curriculum and assessment is becoming a hot topic.
 
The manifesto opposing a national curriculum was organized by Bill Evers, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution; Greg Forster, senior fellow at the Foundation for Education Choice; Jay Greene and Sandra Stotsky, professors at the University of Arkansas; and Ze’ev Wurman, executive at a Silicon Valley start-up.
 
(Here and in the list of founding signers, all affiliations are given for identification only.)

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Are there any actual “Dinosaurs” on this Dinosaur tour?

May 2, 2011

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

We interrupt this foreign policy celebration for a little “education policy news” on this “education policy blog.”

I have just received word that bills to grade Oklahoma schools A-F and to curtail the social promotion of illiterate 3rd graders are off to the Governor. Congratulations to the great ed-reform team of Oklahoma!

Please resume celebrations:

2 Comments | instructional reform | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

NYT on Governor Bush

April 26, 2011

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

New York Times on Governor Bush’s visit to Minnesota.  Someone needs to write some new material for the “skeptics” these newspapers put in for “balance” in their stories. It’s the same stuff every time and it is still weak.

Nice cocktail reference Jay!

Also- Oklahoma passed their tax credit bill, and Wisconsin lawmakers have introduced a special needs scholarship.

3 Comments | instructional reform | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

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