Posts Tagged american schools
Standards vs. Criteria….a distinction worth maintaining?
This is a comment on Ken’s post about Alfie Kohn’s article on national standards, and Barb’s comment. This got to be too long to “fit” into the comments, so I decided to make it a post on its on.
I agree wholeheartedly with Ken’s post (and Alfie’s thoughts, mostly). And Barb’s distinction between standards and standardization is useful, although in a practical sense, I’m not quite sure how national standards would NOT lead to national standardized tests, especially if “accountability” remains the mantra of federal “reform” efforts.
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if you care about schools, A Pedagogic Creed worth reading
originally posted at Daily Kos
I believe that all reforms which rest simply upon the enactment of law, or the threatening of certain penalties, or upon changes in mechanical or outward arrangements, are transitory and futile.
If the author of those words is correct in his belief, then the entire thrust of American educational policy of the past few decades, since the release of A Nation At Risk in the Reagan administration, is doomed to failure.
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Creating a Democratic Learning Community
is the focus of a new book by Sam Chaltain, National Director of the Forum for Education and Democracy. Sam previously worked with the First Amendment Schools Project, an experience that helped shaped this book. He is also founding director of the Five Freedoms Project, which is a community educators, students and citizens committed to First Amendment Freedoms, democratic schools, and the idea that students should be seen and heard (and of which I am a member).
American Schools: The Art of Creating a Democratic Learning Community has a Foreword by former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor – herself long committed to a revitalization of civic education – and is valuable both as something to read to provoke one’s thinking, and as a resource for further exploration of the topic, especially for anyone concerned about preparing our students to learn to be citizens of a democracy.
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