Trust but verify: The real lessons of Campbell’s Law
This is so spot on it hurts.
Ravitch Profile In New Yorker = Didn’t Read The Book, Saw The Movie Instead
“So the lingering Ravitch question I’m still left with, after reading this and other profiles, is when Ravitch ever parted ways with her fellow travelers at some point in time? When she was with the conservatives she did not take issue with their excess – she stood with people not just criticizing public schools but denigrating the entire enterprise. Now that she’s on the educational left I have yet to see her denounce the outrageous things that come from that side – on the contrary she feverishly retweets them on Twitter while going ad hominem on those with opposing views. Meanwhile, the comment section on her blog often lapses into the noxious. This summer the Anti Defamation League sent a note to her about the use of the term “Nazi” – to describe education reformers, natch – by her blog commenters. Denby merely writes glowingly about her website stats – which aren’t usually impressive anyway. Echo chamber anyone?
In the article, Ravitch demurs when asked about teacher pension reform by Denby. And that’s an issue that even union leaders (privately) acknowledge is a fiscal problem. You can disagree about the remedies and even the causes but as our political leaders like to say, when it comes to the problem it’s “math.” It’s illustrative. Sidestepping what upsets one’s base is not well-considered reticence and it’s not the mark of a public intellectual. It’s what the politician does. And it’s indicative of tribalism. And whether you think our schools need dramatic improvements or incremental change or whatever your views on various issues are it should be clear that the last thing education needs more of right now is tribalism, or easy celebration of its tribalists.”
Beware The Writing Panacea
I agree with every word in this post by John Thompson. That’s a pretty rare thing.
AP courses are not, in fact, remotely equivalent to the college-level courses they are said to approximate…Despite the rapidly growing enrollments in AP courses, large percentages of minority students are essentially left out of the AP game… The AP program imposes “substantial opportunity costs” on non-AP students in the form of what a school gives up in order to offer AP courses, which often enjoy smaller class sizes and some of the better teachers.
What’s happening here is that U.S. manufacturers simply changed their priorities in to the recession. They’re doing just fine with the workforce they’ve got; they cut staff and are producing more with fewer employees. More skilled workers might be nice, but companies aren’t willing to pay much more to obtain (or train) them.
…whatever teacher quality problem we have is mostly a supply problem. Administrators mostly know which teachers on staff they want (or don’t), but doubt they can find better replacements. This supply problem is worsened by the fact that helping individual teachers improve is difficult to do.
