This article on middle school education got me thinking again about my beliefs on education in general. What the NY Times piece highlights is a lack of development in middle school education policies. We have ideas in other grade levels that I think are very strong (early intervention in elementary schools in the form of extended day and year programs and Advanced Placement, IB and other ways to increase rigor in high schools), but very little for middle school improvement.
The article also reminded me that right now I am at a point where I am really questioning some of the things I have supported before in education policy. I think this makes sense given that we now have some tools to evaluate NCLB and some conservative policies. For example, while I thought I supported more accountability for performance, I don't think I agree with how it is implemented or even talked about.
Also, while I agree that teacher quality is an issue, I don't think NCLB does a good job of dealing with it. Unfortunately, I think the unions are a big problem, and no president, governor, or mayor (with two exceptions) can do much about that. I strongly believe that unions do a major disservice by standing in the way of significant reforms like merit pay, ending or changing seniority in placement, and tenure. Even here though I wonder how much good it will do; will this will really improve education all around, or just help get better teachers in lower performing schools (which is very important, but not the only end of our efforts).
This has been a quick and very cursory post, but I wanted to highlight the fact that some of my excitement for education improvements has decreased (both nationally and in watching NYC experiments). I can say though that I will be doing a lot more thinking about this in the future.
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