What else to make of his admission that the assumptions underlying educational reform were critically flawed? It’s nice to see one of the decision-making elite admitting the fact that it wasn’t the laziness of teachers and students that was dragging down educational progress. Of course, we could have told them that a long time ago. In fact, we tried. But they weren’t listening. We could also could have told them that MCAS tests didn’t really offer any carrots, just sticks (and not a few stones).
Written almost 15 years after education reform was passed in 1993, “Ed reform’s missing piece: Bridging the achievement gap will take much more than carrots and sticks” offers the final realization:
The proposals on which the education reform law were based, which I helped put together, never addressed the question of exactly how schools would make the desired gains. Our assumption was that with substantially more funding, along with the carrot and stick of the MCAS exams, educators would have the tools to achieve those gains. It’s now apparent that there was a critical piece missing: a systematic way to help principals and teachers make the necessary changes. In effect, the reform law was based on the premise that teachers and principals knew what to do but for some reason weren’t doing it; embarrassing them through low MCAS scores, while decreasing their enrollments through school choice, would somehow get them in gear. This fundamental premise was mistaken.
Follow the link to Commonwealth Magazine to learn about the missing piece to education reform that Moscovitch claims to have discovered. The article reads like an advertisement for the Bay State Reading Initiative, a private, non-profit organization that he chairs. BSRI, by the way, relies on government funding for a large part of its budget and costs schools systems $100,000+ a year. Why we should believe anyone, however, who helped set the entire Commonwealth on a multi-billion dollar path that unjustly abused students and teachers is beyond me.
–Mb
I’ve long been amused by presumptions that there are secret magical solutions to any problem in education, and they weren’t implemented due to sheer spite on the part of teachers and administrators.
<
p>
Right now, 10% of the schools in Massachusetts are in the “restructuring” punitive phase due to their MCAS scores. Can you imagine a restaurant where 10% of the orders gave the customers heartburn, diarrhea, and/or vomiting, and then blaming the wait staff for it? That’s ed reform in a nutshell.
Gross, but beautiful.
<
p>
Mark
In effect, the reform law was based on the premise that teachers and principals knew what to do but for some reason weren’t doing it; embarrassing them through low MCAS scores, while decreasing their enrollments through school choice, would somehow get them in gear
<
p>
…but the sad fact is that I’ve been saying pretty much the same thing for years on various message boards and comment threads. Teachers and administrators aren’t the only ones involved in education: students and parents are, too.
<
p>
It’s amazing that it took so long for a so-called expert to (apparently) recognize that fact.
A lot of the strategies Moscovitch outlines in the article sound like things we are implementing at the school where I teach – using data, formative assessment, experienced teachers acting as coaches for colleagues in their subject areas, small group instruction. None of this is new, rocket science although we all need fresh ideas and redirection from time to time.
<
p>
Our school system has not hired his firm (as far as I know) to be our “partner,” and demand for “outside coaches” is not the top solution from any underperforming school I have heard of.
<
p>
I was almost apoplectic two years ago after reading Moscovitch’s 1994 book about special education, published by our differently winged friends and the Pioneer Institute. The reasons for my outrage are too numerous to list here, but the author’s primary goal seemed to be to stop spending money on sending severely disabled kids to special schools (apparently not to be confused with “partners”) where they could receive focused instruction geared toward their unique needs – autism, dyslexia, etc.
<
p>
It appears that Mocovitch’s confession that he has seen the light with regard to MCAS puts his philosophy du jour in closer harmony with that of his Pioneer Institute buddies: “Hey, let’s privatize things so my friends and I can be enriched by those who buy into my policy statements!”
<
p>
The man is an economist (of sorts), not an educator. Apparently he keeps finding people willing to pay him to pontificate or, in this case, to publish a lengthy advertisement and label it as an editorial.
I wrote an article for a now defunct newspaper in November of 2003 about this gentleman after attending a presentation by him to the Progressive Caucus – I’ve copied the text onto my blog as a post, and there is a link HERE
<
p>
Money Paragraph – written 4 years ago –
<
p>
These policy-making types are a funky bunch. The program Moscovitch cites gets most of its money from the state. If you read his article closely, he basically says school systems need outside consultants (like him) to straighten things out. Of course, few schools actually get the money or opportunity to improve without paying someone. There is no DIY when state mandates are involved.
<
p>
Mark