Education Reform: we have to get better faster than we ever have in education

EDUCATION REFORM

• Solving the Education Crisis in America: Let's Pretend (Fred Newman PhD and Lenora Fulani PhD, East Side Institute) As referenced earlier, the more privileged of America’s youth, even by a very early age, have had a host of developmental cultural experiences, which leave them to varying degrees and in varying ways, open to learning. Our lower performing children have not, and moreover, have grown up within cultures which often relate negatively or conflictedly to learning. These children must be helped to grow (develop) if they are ever to begin the learning process and to function in the same classroom environment as the more developed children. The remedy cannot be “education” pure and simple. A system which presumes that classroom learning can substitute for, or override, a lack of development has failed to deliver. Does this have racial connotations? Of course. There is nothing in American life and culture that doesn’t. And a significant proportion of kids failing in the classroom are in inner-city areas and are Black and Latino. But that does not mean it cannot be remedied. However, the remedy cannot be remediation. It must be development.
• Illinois Bill Exemplifies Groundbreaking Education Reform - State Shows How Collaboration Can Lead to Change (By Cynthia G. Brown, Theodora Chang, Center for American Progress) The bill, S.B. 7, ties tenure and dismissal to performance in the classroom, rather than experience, and makes it more difficult for teachers to strike.
• Education Secretary Duncan: U.S. schools need to get 'better faster' (Princeton University) "If you look at (education) as a civil rights issue, as an economic imperative, as an issue of national security -- I look at it through all three of those lenses -- we have to get better faster than we ever have in education," Duncan said during a speech Wednesday, April 20, in Richardson Auditorium of Alexander Hall. "Somehow, we have a 19th-century model for a 21st-century economy."
• Gov. Deval Patrick Opens Up About Educating Kids of Color for The Root (by Jamilah King, ColorLines News for Action) Patrick: "Yet for all the five years we’ve had these extraordinary achievement results, we have had at the same time a persistent achievement gap. Stuck in that gap are poor kids and kids who have special needs or speak English as a second language. A disproportionate number are kids of color. It’s an economic and educational issue to have an achievement gap at all, but to let it go for the years and years, decades or more that we had here [in Massachusetts], that’s a moral question. Now we have some tools to reach that part of our family as well."
• Newark's Underperforming Schools Almost Have A New Leader (Joy Resmovits, Huffington Post) "With that investment, if things don't work out in Newark, ... it would have a chilling impact on other philanthropists and on those rising-star politicians who may want to latch onto the education issue," said Kevin Chavous, a former Washington, DC city councilman and current national chairman of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. Zuckerberg's donation, however, represents only one tenth of the budget of a system that White Bradley says has a "base level of distress." And working with that high-profile money will put Newark's new superintendent under closer scrutiny.

Cure for No Child Left Behind: Let's Pretend!

Who has a a solution to the failure of our schools? See Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani's special report Solving the Education Crisis in America below...


EDUCATION REFORM
Most schools could face 'failing' label under No Child Left Behind, Duncan says (By Nick Anderson, Washington Post)

Obama's plan calls for schools to be rated on how much academic growth their students achieve. Those that excel would be rewarded, the vast majority in the middle would be given more flexibility to choose strategies to improve, and the lowest performers would face a stricter federal mandate to adopt a stringent school turnaround program.

The No Child Left Behind brand has deteriorated since Bush left office in 2009, but many educators agree that the law's focus on standardized testing and minority achievement gaps shined a critical spotlight on problems that public schools have long sought to avoid.

There is also widespread agreement that the typical school will never attain the ideal enshrined in the legislation - that all students should become proficient in math and reading.

In a special report for the performance-based after school program All Stars Project, Fred Newman PhD and Lenora Fulani PhD say pretending can solve the education crisis in America.  Children, who have developed the "capacity to pretend to be who they are not", which in this case is a good learner, will also develop the "capacity to become the thing they are pretending to be."

Is this idea as ridiculous as it might seem at first glance? At the risk of seeming ridiculous, our answer is an emphatic “no.” Because the most innovative researchers and practitioners have come to discover that pretending, or “creatively imitating,” or performing in social contexts, is how human development is produced.1 Harnessing the uniquely human capacity to perform someone or something we are not, underachieving kids can pretend their way to growth. We have seen the repeated success of this approach – not only in our after-school programs at the All Stars Project, but also (perhaps unknowingly) in school settings now applauded as the most successful interventions into the “achievement gap” (so-called), like the Harlem Children’s Zone.

Independents couldn't care less about red-blue fights -- want problems solved.

Independent redistricting is high on the list of reforms that independent voters want. Apparently the Texas state legislature has missed that boat -- and we'll see what Gov-elect Cuomo stirs up in Albany....

REDISTRICTING

• Editorial: Bush draws a point Texas GOP, Obama should heed (Dallas Morning News) As they start this chore, legislators should recall that the country just finished an upheaval of an election, where voters stated clearly that they're tired of politics as usual. Independents, in particular, signaled that they couldn't care less about red-blue fights and want problems solved.

NEW YORK

• Public Advocate hires Maloney Challenger (By Azi Paybarah, WNYC/The Empire) De Blasio – whose ties to the Working Families Party and labor movement – make him a contender for the 2013 mayor’s race, now, conceivably, has a bit more access to the Wall Street crowd...
• Nation's worst Legislature must mend its evil ways and follow Cuomo's reforms (EDITORIAL NY Daily News) Those same brief weeks must also bring dramatic reforms in Albany itself - to ensure that lawmakers stop shilling for special interests, stop grubbing for perks and protecting privileges and start putting the public first.
  

EDUCATION REFORM

• School reform: A chance for bipartisan governing (Arne Duncan, Washington Post) This common-sense agenda also reflects the quiet bipartisan revolution underway at the state and local level. With the incentive of the Race to the Top program, governors, states and districts across America are implementing comprehensive plans to reform education systems and boost student achievement.

Youth to Education Secretary Arne Duncan: Don't Leave Us Out!

All Stars Project activist  and actress Francelli Chapman asks Education Secretary Arne Duncan and National Action Network organizers to include young people in discussions of education at Education Panel on April 15, 2010