Education Secretary Arne Duncan asks the question that assumes schools--their design, structure, programs--are the answer, and simply drops out all sociological realities.
The opportunity most desirable in the most successful schools is likely something a school can't replicate--the family and socio-economic circumstances of the student body/neighborhood. The opportunities that matter are not a better curriculum or more computers or a particular pedagogy. Stable families with enough resources (not just money, but time and willingness) to engage in a child's learning do a lot more than those things.
But schools, districts, bureaucrats, etc., have to do something, so they grasp for things that are possible within the organizational capacities available to them. For bureaucrats who live and work far away from the schools they're governing that something might be to ask vapid questions like this.
2 comments:
This is not related to Arne Duncan, but to your teaching of 8th grade students:
One of the best teachers I had in a seminar during my student teaching began his course with this statement: "I once taught 8th grade for 3 years in a row, and I have lived to tell the tale."
- thought you might appreciate this.
Pam,
Yes, I enjoy that...thanks.
AM
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