=DeeperChalk= Where teachers can tell the truth about Public Ed.

ARE WE FIGHTING THE WRONG BATTLES IN EDUCATION REFORM?

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Here is a very timely article from the TRUTHDIG site:

Paul Cummins: Fighting the Wrong Battles in Education Reform

EXCERPTS:

"For too many years now, we have allowed the wrong issues to dominate the debate over the reform of public education.

We are too caught up in questions of who will control the schools and how we implement our obsession with testing; we pay far too little attention to improving the content of what we teach and finding new ways to fund that teaching."

AND...

"Whether the mayor or the superintendent has the ultimate authority is less important, I believe, than the conditions in which teachers teach and the content of what their students are asked to learn: It is possible, in overcrowded classes, to force-feed students enough regurgitable information and to administer enough practice tests to raise test scores some. But it is not possible, in overcrowded conditions, to really teach—to have dialogues; to attend to individual differences; to carefully read, correct and return essays; to get to know your students. For an English teacher who has five or six classes a day of 35 to 50 students per class, it matters not a whit whether the mayor, superintendent or board is calling the shots.

Furthermore, if the classroom teachers are so bound to teaching-to-tests, then the real values and critical issues of our time will go unattended."

LINK:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060905_education_reform/

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posted by Da Manijment @ 10:05 PM