It must be Spring! Maryland educrats and lawmakers fight over Baltimore school children as Lawmakers Vote to Block Takeover of Schools in Baltimore - New York Times from the forced takeover of those schools by the State superintendent of Education. The fight is based less on what is good for children than what is politically expedient during an election year.
The real problem is not low-performing schools but the lack of attention paid to race, class, culture and gender diversity by limiting the definition of performance to single instrument test scores. Testing is but one of the tools, and not the best one at that, for measuring performance. Testing, especially the high-stakes nature of the testing programs mandated by NCLB, is expensive and seems to benefit the test publishers more than it is of benefit to educators and their students.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Lawmakers Vote to Block Takeover of Schools in Baltimore
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Schooling is not a business. Unlike manufacturing processes that can, and probably should, be designed with maximum efficiency in mind, teaching and learning are not linear processes that can fit into a specific model that is good for all. Teaching and learning are complex relationships that are, at best, quite messy. By turning over control of schools to corporate entities as a for profit enterprise the underlying purpose of schooling is undermined. School should prepare students to be able to defend and to know when to defend democracy and freedom--not to produce cogs in the economic life of the country. What corporation can possibly understand this idea?
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