(The Responsibility Deficit).

It’s great to see our friend, Philip K. Howard, featured in David Brooks’ column. Of course, he’s right. Teachers need the freedom to teach and students need to know that it is their responsibility to learn.

It’s always amazing to me that when we make comparisons of student achievement with other countries (Finland, comes to mind) we ignore the student, parent, and teacher responsibility parts. There are key. Yet, not on the table usually.

Instead we focus on systems and more rules and more requirements, taking us further and further away from what works: responsibility by key players. Thank you again, Philip, and thank you David Brooks for recognizing his important work!

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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