Great essay, thank you. I am an educator and I have seen the benefit of Early College High Schools catapulting students to completing a college degree. Also, Head Start is another good thing educators have acknowledge works.
Michael Seelig. I am 73 and have been fighting the good fight for ed reform for many years. And just recently, with a companero of mine, we were reflecting on why we seem to have achieved/changed so little—relatively speaking. Thank you for your eloquent article and substantial research. Your contribution is deeply appreciated by me and my friend—and I suspect/hope many others! I was in LA from 1989 until 2015. Just curious, if you would tell me, what kind of work or volunteer efforts you participated in during your California years? Thank you again! Ray Reisler .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Having taught in Australia and Canada, this article echoes in several ways.
First, schooling in Australia began as a private (read church enterprise) before public schooling became the way of educating the young. These schools were not free and private schools hold a place near and dear to Australians. It signifies belonging to a better(?) class of citizens who have their schooling paid for.
Second, even within the private school sector, a range of pricing creates social strata.
Third, and this is where PISA shows up: If parents have the same or very similar economic status and if your parents send you to private school and parents of your friends send them to public school, the PISA performances are statistically the same. Sadly, parents have not asked the tough questions about what private schools deliver beyond good art, music and athletic programs, especially when a school touts its University preparatory credentials.
The other disquieting trend is that many wealthy business people seem to “know how to fix the education system when these individuals have never stood and taught in front of a class of students, let alone done so for five years or more. Their expertise amounts to having been taught, not having taught. It is a little like an awake patient–who experienced a procedure– pronouncing they are ready to do such surgery having seen it. We would question that patient’s sanity!
This is not to say their point of view should not be elicited. Successful people can provide their perspective just like parents, but it is just one perspective and should not be why the whole system veers towards such perspectives.
Schools transmit values, shape characters and inculcate community and other norms. The question is: is quality or inequality the driving force in public education?
reform means making something better. Education since its been corporatised is seeing much greater inequity, the working poor has spread to teachers who are now little more than glorified babysitters, while private schools flourish and the greedy just create inter-generational greed.
COMMENTS
BY Maria Straus
ON June 20, 2020 08:52 AM
Great essay, thank you. I am an educator and I have seen the benefit of Early College High Schools catapulting students to completing a college degree. Also, Head Start is another good thing educators have acknowledge works.
BY Danny
ON June 20, 2020 10:37 PM
I’m a fairly new teacher (12 years), but what happened transitioning to distance learning because of COVID probably made every measure worse.
BY Ray Reisler
ON June 21, 2020 06:09 AM
Michael Seelig. I am 73 and have been fighting the good fight for ed reform for many years. And just recently, with a companero of mine, we were reflecting on why we seem to have achieved/changed so little—relatively speaking. Thank you for your eloquent article and substantial research. Your contribution is deeply appreciated by me and my friend—and I suspect/hope many others! I was in LA from 1989 until 2015. Just curious, if you would tell me, what kind of work or volunteer efforts you participated in during your California years? Thank you again! Ray Reisler .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
BY Christian Stapff
ON November 15, 2022 11:45 AM
Having taught in Australia and Canada, this article echoes in several ways.
First, schooling in Australia began as a private (read church enterprise) before public schooling became the way of educating the young. These schools were not free and private schools hold a place near and dear to Australians. It signifies belonging to a better(?) class of citizens who have their schooling paid for.
Second, even within the private school sector, a range of pricing creates social strata.
Third, and this is where PISA shows up: If parents have the same or very similar economic status and if your parents send you to private school and parents of your friends send them to public school, the PISA performances are statistically the same. Sadly, parents have not asked the tough questions about what private schools deliver beyond good art, music and athletic programs, especially when a school touts its University preparatory credentials.
The other disquieting trend is that many wealthy business people seem to “know how to fix the education system when these individuals have never stood and taught in front of a class of students, let alone done so for five years or more. Their expertise amounts to having been taught, not having taught. It is a little like an awake patient–who experienced a procedure– pronouncing they are ready to do such surgery having seen it. We would question that patient’s sanity!
This is not to say their point of view should not be elicited. Successful people can provide their perspective just like parents, but it is just one perspective and should not be why the whole system veers towards such perspectives.
Schools transmit values, shape characters and inculcate community and other norms. The question is: is quality or inequality the driving force in public education?
BY Lili
ON November 23, 2023 02:33 AM
reform means making something better. Education since its been corporatised is seeing much greater inequity, the working poor has spread to teachers who are now little more than glorified babysitters, while private schools flourish and the greedy just create inter-generational greed.