Yesterday I had one of those "driveway moments" while listening to an NPR report on rethinking educational priorities. Actually, it was more of a "parking lot moment" as I was on my way in to work, and as a result I couldn't wait and listen to the whole thing. I tracked it down:
http://www.npr.org/2013/02/22/172674083/commissions-report-outlines-education-priorities
A key element of the findings is that all public schools need greater support, but that will mean different things in different districts. For example, the needs in Oakland are going to be different than the needs in Beverly Hills, especially when it comes to ESL students and students starting with educational deficits due to having poorly-educated parents. Community resources also vary widely, and there needs to be recognition of the different realities of different districts. Equality is not relevant in this context, but equity is..
The report references the 1983 report "A Nation at Risk" commissioned during the Reagan era, which was the beginning of enormous educational reforms. No Child Left Behind is an intellectual descendant of this report, and any educator can tell you what a disaster this has become. I need to delve into "A Nation at Risk" and see what happened. 1983 was the year I graduated high school, so whatever reforms were put into place immediately after that missed me completely. I know that "whole language" (one of my chief nemeses) started before that, but I expect that it was reinforced by the findings of the report.
More on this later.
No comments:
Post a Comment