Education reform: "Like measuring Hansel & Gretel more often & expecting them to gain weight"

[Hannah Bell]

Education reform is an unmitigated disaster. Years ago, before the advent of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), I observed that the rapidly spreading inclination toward standards and accountability in public education was like measuring Hansel and Gretel more often and expecting them to gain weight. Since then, American educational policy has wandered deeper and deeper into the forest.

While it is disturbing and ironic that federal policy and funding are driving poor educational practice, there is a significantly larger elephant wandering through this thicket.... the symptoms of educational decline in America have nothing to do with schools, teachers, pedagogy, standards or accountability. Decades of research indicate strongly that the decline in student achievement can be accounted for entirely by the dramatic increase in wealth disparity and the persistence of racism in America.

One such study, from the Institute for Research on Poverty, reported a nearly straight-line correlation between growth in the wealth "gap" and the increase in educational inequality. Countless other studies confirm this basic relationship. Whether in terms of college matriculation, test scores or drop out rates, the problems driving current misguided policies can be traced to an increasingly inequitable society.

The best predictor of academic success has always been financial and social capital. This is true in looking at school success by district or SAT score by individual. Everyone knows this but no one wants to talk about it. People and communities with more resources enjoy advantages such as more home stability, more books and oral language at home, more pre-school opportunities, better air quality, better educated parents, less stress and perhaps most powerfully, more cause for optimism and a higher sense of self-worth....All the hot rhetoric over educational achievement is nonsense. The problem in America is a dangerous class divide...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/education-reform-crashing_b_787303.html

[Hannah Bell]

1. bread crumbs

[rpannier]

2. Thanks for the post.

Your posts are appreciated by me.
I rec'd it, but it sits at zero.

[ejpoeta]

3. weird. i recced it and it is also at zero still.

[Reader Rabbit]

4. The Unreccers get up early.

It would be nice if you couldn't unrec something without posting about it. Then they'd be required to provide reasons for their actions, instead of mindlessly pressing a button.

[LWolf]

5. "Education reform is an unmitigated disaster." Nailed it. nt