Yes, it’s more than possible.

While he talks about lots of things in the comparison with how other good school-nations do it (including getting better teachers from the get- go and paying them well, etc., etc., and not focusing on charter schools, testing, accountability, vouchers, etc., etc., I will write about only one of those aspects. 

Testing and accountability…

I believe that our curent obsession with accountability to “get rid of bad teachers” is over the top– it’s like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly. It’s too much. Too complicated. Too, too, too. And it’s not going to change our system–as most teachers are already good enough and many teachers are excellent.  We are upending the entire system in order to be able to fire perhaps 5%- 10% of teaching staff.   Makes no sense to me.

http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/?p=5060

I recently got a whiff of this…. I had put in a proposal to speak to the superintendents group about reforming special education and was told there’s no room on the program because it’s all devoted to evaluating teachers. Really?  I do believe we are heading in the wrong direction.

About Miriam

Miriam Kurtzig Freedman, JD, MA—an expert in public education, focused on special education law— is a lawyer, author, speaker, consultant, and reformer. For more than 35 years, Miriam worked with educators, parents, policy makers, and citizens to translate complex legalese into plain English and focus on good practices for children. Now, she focuses her passion on reforming special education, with her new book, Special Education 2.0—Breaking Taboos to Build a NEW Education Law. Presentations include those at the AASA Conference, Orange County (CA), Boston College (MA), CADRE (OR), and the Fordham Institute (DC). Her writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Education Week, Education Next, Hoover Digest, The University of Chicago Law Review on line, DianeRavitch.net, and The Atlantic Monthly on line.

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