David Truss, in commenting on yesterday’s 2¢ worth, points to an upcoming cover article for Time Magazine. It is available now, online.
TIME.com: How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century — Dec. 18, 2006 — Page 1:
For the past five years, the national conversation on education has focused on reading scores, math tests and closing the “achievement gap” between social classes. This is not a story about that conversation. This is a story about the big public conversation the nation is not having about education, the one that will ultimately determine not merely whether some fraction of our children get “left behind” but also whether an entire generation of kids will fail to make the grade in the global economy because they can’t think their way through abstract problems, work in teams, distinguish good information from bad or speak a language other than English.
This is a great article, if only that it validates what most of us have been saying for years. This simply says it more loudly and to more people — and probably more eloquently. Read it!
~~~~~~~~~ half-hour later ~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now what do you think?
Technorati Tags: warlick education technology timemagazine future nclb
Dave:
Definitely validating. I just hope that it brings more voices to the table wanting to push things forward. It just seems that getting the two groups of people to the table that need to be there has proven to be the most daunting challenge. The first are school superintendents and administrators, who given the climate of testing with NCLB, are dependent on high scores to keep their jobs. The second being IT directors, who routinely lock down networks to the point that they become useless for student learning. (Tentacle Amputation) Getting these two groups in to the discussion has become one of my rallying cries in education. Anytime I attempt to engage anyone in either of these groups about real educational reform, I get a statement that I don’t have their perspective and that they are ‘forced’ to behave in the way they have. I decided not to wait for reform to come to them… I took it upon myself to have the perspective of each of them. I have an A+ certification (Computer Technician’s License) and a CCNA (Networking Certification) and I also have a California Administrative Services Credential.
I think it’s not either of these groups that are the problem. It’s the people in the government who are checking up on these scores. Everyone is starting to think like wall street and sacrificing the long benifits for the short term successes.
I thought I should just point out – further to my trackback above, that the UK edition on Time didn’t run this article – the cover article for us was The Best Photos of 2006. In one of those weird coincidences, I was reading the article online when the hard copy of vol 168 plopped through my mailbox, and I immediately sought out the article.