More Notes on Re-Thinking K-12

Amanda Paulson:

What if the solution to American students’ stagnant performance levels and the wide achievement gap between white and minority students wasn’t more money, smaller schools, or any of the reforms proposed in recent years, but rather a new education system altogether?
That’s the conclusion of a bipartisan group of scholars and business leaders, school chancellors and education commissioners, and former cabinet secretaries and governors. They declare that America’s public education system, designed to meet the needs of 100 years ago when the workplace revolved around an assembly line, is unsuited to today’s global marketplace. Already, they warn, many Americans are in danger of falling behind and seeing their standard of living plummet.

Rotherham adds:

I think we need to think more daringly, yes, but I don’t think we tried everything or nearly hard enough to improve American schools within the current context. But I think that is sort of irrelevant today because the context has changed so much and consequently more of the same amounts to trying to make the current system work to do things we don’t want it to do anymore anyway.

Locally, dealing with the recently disclosed 7 year structural deficit in the Madison School District’s $332M+ budget will require strong leadership, open minds and the ideas contained in Peter Gascoyne’s words.
V. Dion Haynes has more.

One thought on “More Notes on Re-Thinking K-12”

  1. This topic is extremely interesting. Public opinion about the education system doesn’t necessary correlate with the report’s recommendations. Believe it or not, most parents think their child will have the skills to succeed — even if many business leaders believe they’re wrong. When it comes to math and science, American parents are actually less concerned than they were a decade ago. And when it comes to teachers, while the report recommends raising wages, our research shows that they are dissatisfied other issues. Feel free to go to http://www.publicagenda.org/headlines/headlines_blog.cfm for more.

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