Who Will Be Public Education’s Nixon?
For decades, the United States and “Red China” had minimal contact. Communist China was the third rail of politics and no politician could afford to appear to be ‘soft on Communism.’ After all, in the 1950’s the careers and lives of hundreds of people were destroyed because they were accused of having ‘lost China.’
Then, in February 1972, a politician with impeccable anti-Communist credentials did the unthinkable. President Richard Nixon went to China 44 years ago and ‘normalized’ diplomatic relations with that country. Only an avowed foe of Communism could have accomplished that feat.
Public education needs its own Richard Nixon if it is ever going to escape the ‘test and punish’ death spiral that is distorting schooling almost beyond recognition. Education’s Richard Nixon will have to be a strong advocate of testing who has seen the light, someone who has undergone conversion, the educational equivalent of Saul on the road to Damascus.
No testing critic from the left, no matter how eloquent, sensible, or correct, will be able to sway public opinion and move bureaucracies. When Diane Ravitch, Randi Weingarten, Deborah Meier, or Peggy Robertson of United Opt Out speak out about the corrosive effects of excessive testing, their supporters say ‘Amen,’ but others shrug it off: “What else is new?” or “That’s what I’d expect them to say.”
Until a few months ago, I had a pretty good idea who could become education’s Richard Nixon. This educator worships at the altar of testing, and her schools live and die by test scores, but–of critical importance–her schools also focus on science, the arts and physical education. Whenever I’d visited her schools, they seemed to be places of joyful learning.
At one point I even went so far as to imagine her “conversion” announcement:
My friends, you know me as an advocate of standardized testing. I believe in test results and what they tell us about our students. But what you might not know about me is that I subscribe to much of what John Dewey taught us about education. Learning by doing is important. The arts, science and physical fitness are essential parts of quality education. These are vital elements in my schools, although they have not gotten much publicity in the past.
For years I have focused on test results, and I’ve boasted about my students’ success, but now I Who Will Be Public Education’s Nixon? | The Merrow Report:
Education's Nixon: The Success Academy Debacle
In a post he titled "Who Will Be Public Education's Nixon?," the esteemed and estimable John Merrow played around with an interesting idea: what if someone took public education by storm and renounced a previously deep-seated affinity for standardized testing, like Richard Nixon did when he normalized diplomatic relations with China in the 1970s? As Merrow points out, Nixon, well known for his paranoia and for using his office to intimidate his political opponents, bucked conventional wisdom and took the risk of looking "soft on communism" when he visited China in 1972, but did it as one of the most ...In a post he titled "Who Will Be Public Education's Nixon?," the esteemed and estimable John Merrow played around w... http://bit.ly/1RTWtzB
