Alan Borsuk has a piece highlighting how bad education has become in Wisconsin and the nation and laments that people are not treating it as the emergency that it is.
How willing are people, including education leaders and politicians, to tackle the needs of kids? The generally predictable reactions to the NAEP scores don’t provide encouragement.
The huge disruptions in schooling nationwide are become matters more for unhappy memories than present concerns. And it appears that many aspects of education are returning to the way they used to be. That’s good in some ways — and worrisome in others. There were big needs before COVID. There are big needs now. Is there much willingness to address them urgently and honestly?
To paraphrase a comment I read, the biggest emergency may be if people don’t think there’s an emergency.
Well, there happens to be an election in a couple of weeks. Who is looking at our deplorable education system and calling for substantive changes to improve it? Who is saying that the only answer is to pour more money into the same systems and have the same failed leaders spend it?
There’s no real argument about the current state of public education, but how certain are you that this crop of Republicans have the balls to enact the scorched earth reforms necessary? Political tongue wagging isn’t going to get it done. It’s going to require plenty of spine and ultra thick skin. And a willingness to wage war daily.
It’s going to require plenty of spine and ultra thick skin. And a willingness to wage war daily.
Are you suggesting that past actions, like running away from problems and passing useless legislation, should be predictive of future (R) activity?
Robin and Devin will be displeased with you.
There definitely needs to be reforms in schools, but any solution isolated to that will fail because this is not a school s-only problem. If we think of schools like factories (and yes that’s not a great analogy) we also need to think of the inputs to them. For example
* How well are parents preparing children for school versus the past?
* What consequences are children facing at home for not performing well?