Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Enough With the Analogies!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-merrow/david-brooks-diane-ravitc_b_891189.html

This article from The Huffington Post does a nice job of summarizing the main players facing off in terms of educational reform today. Merrow contrasts Ravitch and her "army" as those battling people such as Klein and Rhee over various education issues, but mainly focusing on testing.

However, I found the most interesting part of the article to be the fact that Merrow offers up one more analogy to illustrate the shortcomings and failures of the current educational system in place. Referring to struggling schools today as the pony express and highly functioning school models such as KIPP and TFA as a more effective pony express says, "that's nice, but what about all 50 million children in need of an education?"

This is very true, but Merrows's article stops short of providing an answer, and instead poses the question to readers. In turn, I ask how we can make these more effective educational models widespread? Why discredit these success stories due to their limited enrollment? Instead, let's figure out what works at these institutions and how to make it work in schools everywhere.

No comments: