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Sunday, February 24, 2013

Does school reform perpetuate inequity?

Does school reform perpetuate inequity?:


Does school reform perpetuate inequity?

unequal-sharesMany critics of modern school reform say that while reform efforts are intended to close achievement gaps and provide equitable educational experiences for all students, they are having the opposite effect. Here’s that argument by Paul Thomas, an associate professor of education at Furman University in South Carolina. This appeared on his blog, the becoming radical.
A half century seems to be a significant amount of time for change, but Minnijean Brown Trickey’s visit to Little Rock Central High School fifty years after the federal government had to monitor her and eight other African American students entering public school shows that much more time is needed. Felicia Lee captured Trickey’s experience, documented in the HBO film “Little Rock Central: Fifty Years Later”:
“On a recent visit to Central High, Ms. Trickey spoke to a self-segregated classroom: 


The big misunderstanding about MOOCs


Every day it seems there is an announcement about another school offering another MOOC, those Massive Open Online Courses that some think will revolutionize higher education. Here educator Larry Cuban explains why people misunderstand the potential of MOOCS. Cuban was superintendent of Arlington Public Schools for seven years and a former high school social studies teacher for 14 years. He is professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, where he has taught for more than 20 years. This was first published on his blog about school reform and classroom practice.
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