By DFER Policy Director Charlie Barone
While the majority of content on the DFER website addresses substantive policy and political issues in education reform, as does most of that by other think tank and advocacy groups, there is a whole lot out there that doesn’t meet the (multiple measures, 21st century skills) laugh test.
We thought it’d be fun to compile a collection of such content in the education realm on semi-regular basis that we are calling the #YHGTBFKM series. Today is the first edition.
In the Sunday, June 16 edition of The New York Times, author Sarah Carr penned an op-ed entitled, “Can School Reform Hurt Communities?” Here’s her central thesis:
“The [reform] movement [sweeping across the country] is rooted in the notion that ‘fixing’ schools is the strongest lever for lifting communities out of poverty.”
Speaking for myself, and I think for a lot of other left-leaning reformers, it’s not a matter of whether fixing schools is the strongest anti-poverty lever. Other things are, at the very least, equally important. Rather, it’s that we think most poor communities are currently getting a terrible deal from our public education system—and have been for decades. We believe that kids shouldn’t have to put their developmental timelines on hold waiting for uncertain changes to our current economic inequities which may not occur for years, if at all, somewhere down the the road.
Carr goes on to say that:
“For teachers it has meant a bias toward a kind of youthful idealism that prevails in many New Orleans charter schools.”
Yep. It’s become pretty clear to all of us that what youth today need is a healthy serving of pessimism with a little nihilism thrown in for good measure. Especially in New Orleans.
The kicker, though, is this quote in Carr’s piece from Andre Perry, associate director at the Institute for Quality and Equity in Education at Loyola University:
“Kids are smarter, but communities are weaker.”
I will give Carr and Perry the benefit of the doubt that neither of them intended it this way, but it sounds an awful lot like we need dumber kids in order to get stronger communities.
Stay tuned for #YHGTBFKM Vol. 2
Charles Barone has more than 25 years of experience in education service, research, policy, and advocacy. Prior to joining Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) full-time in January of 2009, Barone worked for five years as an independent consultant on education policy and advocacy. His clients, in addition to DFER, included the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, the Education Trust, The Education Sector, and the National Academy of Sciences. Read more here.