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Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Smoking Toward New Jersey: Education Reform and What I Learned at Taft High School

Smoking Toward New Jersey: Education Reform and What I Learned at Taft High School:


Education Reform and What I Learned at Taft High School

Here's what education reformers like:
- Tenure reform, which would end tenure to stop protecting “bad” teachers who supposedly are responsible for “failing” schools.
- School turnaround, where lots of teachers at “failing” schools get fired in order to stop the failing.
- Closure of “failing” schools. Self explanatory.
- Merit pay, where teachers get extra money to teach better, because presumably, without financial incentive, they’re not teaching as well as they could, resulting in - you guessed it - more “failing”.
- High stakes testing, based on which teachers are evaluated and “bad” teachers are identified. Again, this is supposed to cut down on the “failing.”
- Ending LIFO (Last In First Out), a system said to promote failing because