The other day I noted that Betsy DeVos’ husband was still giving to politics despite her pledge that wouldn’t happen. I’m sympathetic, who can get their spouse to do anything they don’t want to do? In any event, I double linked a Detroit News article rather than linking to the peg for that, this new CAP report.
Haven’t written about this Times story on Charlottesville and schools because while I get the conceit of using C’ville to make the point given recent history, it’s really a story you could write about all manner of education issues in Virginia (and many other places). In the case of the Old Dominion, racial gaps of various kids have persisted – and been swept under the rug – for a long time. The whole state accountability and accreditation regime is politically designed to stay ahead of this rather than confront the hard truths and the public relationists not the achievement realists run the show. So the ratio of happy talk to serious instructional improvement is less than ideal. When is the last time you really heard attention to the appalling gaps in Virginia – and not just on NAEP or the state’s tests but on measures like Advanced Studies Diplomas and other outcomes? And even in 2018 people still say some crazy stuff about why that is…That’s not to minimize anything in Charlottesville, but rather to say it’s a much broader problem that doesn’t get a lot of attention – and especially not in a polarized time because it doesn’t align neatly with left – right divides.
Related: Jason Kamras profile.
Even if you’re not a DC resident a lot to learn from the performance framework the DC Public Charter School Board uses and its impact on parent behavior. Not a perfect system, nothing is, but a lot of strengths.
I’d argue a bigger problem in the ed sector is politics – we do know some things that work far better than the status quo but they run afoul of politics and fecklessness, but regardless, if the ROI of ed philanthropy doesn’t keep you up at night, it should.
We might focus on instruction more?
More push on the unions.
Newsflash: Education usually doesn’t matter a lot to federal races, so this is kind of an evergreen (though not wrong) take.
