Visitor Comments
Three Reforms for Education ... But No Vouchers
It must be wonderful to be as doctrinaire as Mr. Short. Margaret Thatcher was less doctrinaire, hence the British Education Acts of 1986 and 1988 which gave each state school its own citizen board and thus created an army of a quarter million school governors with the capacity to combat unions, whose power and attractiveness to teachers were greatly reduced when grievances could be addressed at building level. Similarly there are public sector institutions that properly pay science teachers and thereby remedy the worst defect of the public system. Schools, public or private, are as good as the teachers in them. Altering certification rules is not a trivial reform; it breaks the educationist monopoly from another direction. Who has gotten further in reforming schools, the Thatcherites or the Friedmanites? Who has displayed a better sense of political realities? The reason the voucher movement fizzled after the Zelman case was the doctrinaire ineptitude of voucher advocates, who never persuaded the public --or tried to--with respect to the real defects of public schools: lack of community control, exclusion of qualified teachers, bad science and math teaching. As long as people like Mr. Short are around--and foundations interested only in pie in the sky and not immediately achievable reforms, this sorry record will continue
- posted by George Liebmann
- July 14, 2008 @ 10:19 pm
- Permalink
Little changes like this will not bring fundamental change. Even performance management systems will sink into a bureaucratic maze.
What's needed is a system that is structured to be responsive to it's customers, and not simply by taking feedback from parents and so on. All such systems are "gamed" in the medium to long term. What's required is the actual notion that the customer can go elsewhere.
Nothing less will bring about radical change.
What's needed is a system that is structured to be responsive to it's customers, and not simply by taking feedback from parents and so on. All such systems are "gamed" in the medium to long term. What's required is the actual notion that the customer can go elsewhere.
Nothing less will bring about radical change.
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