Shoulda known it was Schnur.
Steven Brill, in a piece in the upcoming New York Times Magazine, lays out the political landscape of education reform better than any piece I have seen during this administration. He does not actually get into what these debates mean when it comes to the education of actual children in actual schools, but he doesn’t purport to. And did you know before where “Race to the Top” came from?
posted by Linda Perlstein at
2:37 PM
4 Comments:
Some of the commenters on the Gotham Schools blog aren't so impressed -- these are others' comments, not mine:
"This article is one of the worst instances of journalistic malpractice I have ever read. He managed to interview only the pro-privatization crowd, with the exception of Mulgrew; omitted all mention of controversial co-locations and charter school financial scandals, and failed to mention the ongoing and inexcusable opposition of the charter school lobby to audits from the State Comptroller office. And he swallowed Eva Moskowitz’s line that the students in her charter are exactly like those of PS 149 — whereas the data shows there are 65% more poor students and more than six times as many English language learners at PS 149.
Whoever vetted this piece of blatant propaganda at the NY Times ought to be fired."
"There’s also a major issue with Brill’s description of comparative class sizes between 149 and HSA. [co-located schools, a public school and a charter]
Apparently Brill didn’t notice the many assistant and associate teachers on his visit to the school. One or two more students in a class isn’t really larger class size when you add another adult in the room.
A quick visit to the HSA website would also confront Brill with quite a wide variety of job openings for school based staff for whom there is no equivalent position in the DOE.
I also expect that the difference in per pupil spending might also differ if HSA spending wasn’t hidden in the Success Charter Network budget. I doubt Eva’s $300/400K salary was calculated in the HSA 1 budget, even though she was de facto principal after the other principals all quit or were fired.
I guess Brill didn’t bother to read that New York magazine article, which had at least a little balance compared with the HSA PR.
Although when I read the Brill article, the ed deform web ads were all over the NY Times site, so I guess their bias is in no way surprising."
Also lacking in the Brill article was any discussion about the controversy regarding the misuses of students' test scores for high stakes decisions, such as annual teacher evaluations. Tests are designed to measure student knowledge, and they do a limited job of that. There are not meant, not should they be used in any way, to measure teacher quality. Even Bill Gates said, "A new system requires more than just taking the test scores of the students and seeing how they improve after a year with a teacher. It also involves things like feedback from students, parents, and peer teachers and an investment of time in reviewing actual teaching." http://tinyurl.com/yb22e3w
I as much as anyone have called for a better understanding and explanation of how merit pay would or would not work, what tests do or don't tell us, etc. The Brill piece didn't deal with the substance of those conversations, and didn't pretend to. I liked it for its portrayal of the political lines, which, frankly, in reality reflect the most reductive possible understanding of the issues.
Alexander Russo:
Media: Brill's Big Sloppy Wet Kiss For Reformy Types
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