Who wrote the narrative, the frame through which we view the world of public education? Today the (often unstated) assumptions seem firmly in place: “America is losing the education race, test scores can be trusted, and teachers are the key to learning.” Once you accept all that, it’s logical to fire teachers whose students do poorly on standardized tests, even if those tests are of dubious quality. It makes sense to give Race to the Top dollars only to states who pledge to hold teachers accountable for student achievement based on test scores.
There are those, however, including Merrow and Diane Ravitch, who do not agree with this narrative that American schools are failing. In addition, Merrow cites 6 problems with the belief in the underlying narrative mentioned above:
1. More testing
2. Teachers being judged by scores of students they do not teach
3. A narrower focus
4. More answers, less inquiry
5. Teach me, or you’ll get fired
6. More cheating
John Merrow of the Taking Note blog, which admits to standing on one side of the current education debate (the side which disagrees with the aforementioned focus on test-based accountability), hopes that there could be a move forward in the education wars if those on each side could sit down for constructive talks. Merrow recognizes that this would be difficult to set up and more difficult to keep focused; however, Merrow hopes that the two sides could at least agree on a clear measure of success for each student.
Following is a link to Merrow’s full blog post: http://bit.ly/1jmJZuI
