Education at risk: Fall out from a Flawed Report is an article from Tamim Ansary a contributing writer to Edutopia. She writes about the ‘Nation at Risk’report of 25 years ago and what has happened since. Tamim moves on to describe three currents of education reform competing with each other.
One sees inspiration and motivation as the keys to better education. Reform in this direction starts by asking, “What will draw the best minds of our generation into teaching? What will spark great teachers to go beyond the minimum? What will motivate kids to learn and keep coming back to school?”
In this direction lie proposals for building schools around learners, gearing instruction to individual goals and learning styles, pointing education toward developing an ever-broader range of human capacities, and phasing in assessment tools that get at ever-subtler nuances of achievement. Overall, this approach promotes creative diversity as a social good.
A second current, the dominant one, sees discipline and structure as the keys to school improvement. Reform in this direction starts by asking, “What does the country need, what must all kids know to serve those needs, and how can we enforce the necessary learning?” In this direction, the curriculum comes first, schools are built around the curriculum, and students are required to fit themselves into a given structure, controlled from above. As a social good, it promotes national unity and strength. This is the road we’re on now with NCLB.
A third possible direction goes back to diversity and individualism — through privatization, including such mechanisms as tuition tax credits, vouchers (enabling students to opt out of the public school system), and home schooling. Proponents include well-funded private groups such as the Cato Institute that frankly promote a free-enterprise model for schooling: Anyone who wants education should pay for it and should have the right to buy whatever educational product he or she desires.
She ends by suggesting that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) will end up channelling into the third vision.
Read the whole article http://www.edutopia.org/landmark-education-report-nation-risk
