Positions on School Reform I

Research

Note: A review of published positions on school reform: a speech from Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan; Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System; Frederick Hess’s The Same Thing Over and Over; Charles Payne’s So Much Reform, So Little Change; Anthony Byrk ad others’ Organizing School for Improvement; and Valerie Kinloch’s Harlem On Our Minds. I will review each position in several consecutive blogs. RayS.

 Quote: Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education: “At Princeton University, Duncan (2011) represented the need for public education reform as ‘real and desperately urgent.’ Seeking to position the entire audience as his allies, Duncan drew three frames around his remarks, ‘Whether you look at it as a civil rights issue, as an economic imperative, or as a matter of national security, we have to get better faster than ever before at education;.’…. He placed the agrarian calendar, collective bargaining, and small class sizes outside these boundaries because they hinder desired changes, and he promoted healthy competition, ‘game changer’ technology, and common standards and assessments because they are ‘a radical investment, not in the status quo but in transformation.’ The Federal government’s Race to the Top competition provides government funding as an incentive for state governments to choose that transformation.” P. 109.

Comment: “Healthy competition” in education is the Secretary’s suggestion for reform.  Keep reading in the next several blogs for other experts’ views of reform in education. RayS.

 Title: “School Reform in the United States: Frames and Representations.” Books and Statements reviewed by Patrick Shannon. Reading Research Quarterly (January/February/ March 2012), 109-118.