Dear Diane,
I know you saw this article in last Sunday's New York Times.
" 'You get the religion fast.'"Mr. Petry, 38, and Mr. Greenblatt, 52, may spend their days poring over spreadsheets and overseeing trades, but their obsession—one shared with many other hedge funders—is creating charter schools, the [...]
Dear Deborah,
We promised to keep a close watch on what is happening at the federal level, and now it begins to get interesting. And a bit scary, if you care about the future of public education.
The U.S. Department of Education announced its plan to spend at [...]
Dear Deborah,
I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving. We have much to be thankful for in this wonderful country. I am forever thankful that my mother came to this country after World War I (from Bessarabia), and that my paternal grandparents came to this country in the mid-19th Century [...]
Note: This column was scheduled to appear on Nov. 25, but was not published until Nov. 30 due to an editing error.
Dear Diane,
I went up to Boston last weekend for the memorial service/celebration of Ted Sizer's life at Harvard's Memorial Church. Rituals can be wonderful things when we are [...]
Editor's note: This week, Bridging Differences will run on an altered holiday schedule and publish a piece by Deborah Meier on Wednesday. Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, Ms. Meier's entry will be the only update to Bridging Differences this week. Bridging Differences will resume its regular Tuesday-Thursday schedule next [...]
Dear Diane,
Someone calling himself "natturner" had a sharp reply to Jay Mathews' column on closing big high schools. Even though I was part of such an effort many years ago, and still brag about the results, I think natturner made a good rhetorical point in his comment on' [...]
Dear Deborah,
The legislators who passed the Elementary and Secondary Act in 1965 repeatedly assured their colleagues and the American public that the federal government would never interfere with state and local control of schools. The purpose of the law was clear: To provide additional funding to the nation's neediest' [...]
Dear Diane,
The bad news does seem to overwhelm the good news of late.
For starters, when talking about education, we need a new vocabulary. The term "achievement" has become synonymous not with the intellectual tasks of schooling, the "using one's mind well" as Ted Sizer put it, but with' [...]
Dear Deborah,
I have been trying to ascertain what President Obama plans to do to reshape the federal role in education, and the outlines of his policy are becoming clear. So far, we have not heard much about what he will do to fix the No Child [...]
Dear Diane,
The absurdities you describe are on the mark and ought to kill the idea of paying teachers based on their students' test scores. But we both know the idea won't die that easily. Even the most renowned of testing experts argue that we're nowhere near being able' [...]
Dear Deborah,
What a lovely tribute to Ted Sizer! I did not know Ted nearly as well as you did, but I admired him very much. He was very much the gentleman, and truly a gentle man. I had many disagreements with Jerry Bracey over the years; [...]
Dear Diane,
I have been feeling sad during the past month. First came awareness that the health of an old colleague of mine has moved into its final stages. When she joined us at CPE 32 years ago, she was the first person my age to be my colleague. It [...]
Dear Deborah,
Well, I certainly agree with you that all kids should have the quality of education now available only for students in the best schools. Given how much our nation spends on education, this should not be a pipe dream, but we know that it is [...]
Dear Diane,
We've got to stop agreeing so much! I can't wait to read your new book so I can go into "attack mode" again. I always wonder, however, whether our disagreements are "fundamental" or based on our very different entries into the world of schooling. I think it's a' [...]
Dear Deborah,
It is a good idea to explore the separate elements of the federal education agenda, one by one. Merit pay, the first issue you raise, now stands high among the priorities of the Obama administration as it did for the Bush administration and as it has for the [...]
Dear Diane,
Let's explore, one by one, the separate elements of the federal education agenda, Diane. Are they based on reason and evidence or ignorance and irrationality? (I could have asked myself the same thing about our differences regarding the trade-offs and risks involved in a national curriculum.)
Merit pay is' [...]
Dear Deborah,
The elephant in the room is No Child Left Behind. This, as you know, is the latest manifestation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which was passed specifically to help educate disadvantaged children. NCLB was passed by Congress in the fall of 2001 and signed [...]
Dear Diane,
On standardized standards: I'm a fan of disagreements and messiness—and maybe that's beyond the call of Reason. But here's a try.
If we all agreed on everything, or even came close, democracy would be an inefficient and cumbersome business and a luxury we could ill afford in tough' [...]
Dear Deborah,
I am somewhat crazed and stressed-out today because my book is due to the publisher, with no more edits allowed. So, needless to say, I am focused on meeting that deadline. But since the book deals with the same issues that we discuss every week, it is not [...]
Dear Diane,
"To the extent that we can teach students to seek evidence and rational explanations, we will reduce magical thinking and encourage the application of reason and intelligence." —Diane Ravitch, Bridging Differences, Sept. 29
We agree! That's my "core."
We also agree that Arne Duncan's agenda lacks evidence or rational explanations. [...]
Alternate title: What Does the Best and Wisest Parent Want?
Dear Deborah,
I am glad to see that you are trying to draw us back to the issues where we have genuine differences! You and I agree that testing and accountability—as currently practiced under NCLB—have become enemies of [...]
Dear Diane,
We can go on forever about why "testing as we know it" cannot lead to becoming a well-educated people. We agree, we need to invent a road test—which might in some cases look like AP exams. Or, it might look like the examination system used at Central Park [...]
Dear Deborah,
Over the past week, you and I have each weighed in on the defects of testing. You have been arguing for many years that standardized testing is replete with flaws. I have only recently recognized the ways in which pressure to raise scores, mainly prompted by NCLB, has [...]
Note to readers: Bridging Differences will be off-line on Saturday, Sept. 19, while the edweek.org staff attends to technical issues. The blog will be accessible again on Sunday. Edweek.org apologizes for any inconvenience.
[...]Diane Ravitch, Deborah Meier, educationweekly, Mary-Ellen Phelps Deily, edweek.org
