More food for thought on Common Core: As education historian Diane Ravitch wrote in her new book Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education: Our schools will not improve if we continue to focus only on reading and mathematics while ignoring the other studies that are essential elements of a good education... Our schools will not improve if we value only what tests measure... Not everything that matters can be quantified. There is a common notion in American education reform circles that we are falling behind other countries with high-achieving school systems in large part because we don’t have national standards. But in her new book, “The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future,” Stanford University Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, who served as Barack Obama’s chief education adviser duringn the presidential transition, makes clear that this isn’t the case. She explains how Finland--now widely hailed by U.S. policymakers--turned around its school system. But, contrary to popular belief, it didn’t do it by establishing a highly centralized national system with detailed national standards. It “shifted to a more localized system in which highly trained teachers design curriculum around very lean national standards,” she wrote. All assessments are school-based, designed by teachers, rather than standardized.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 11:12:45 +0000
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