Thompson: Reformers Brought This On Themselves

Richard Rothstein’s recent piece, Joel Klein’s Misleading Biography, shows that the former New York City chancellor has not only played fast and loose with social science evidence regarding the challenge of overcoming extreme poverty, but that he also misrepresented the facts of his own childhood.  Rothstein calls it “obscene” that Klein’s claims have been used to attack teachers.

Attempting to respond to this and other posts, Sarah Mead adds insult to injury in Why Our Current Education Debate Is Toxic, complaining that "our national education debates have come to focus on the character, motivation, experience, and relationships of those who hold different views."  

The problem is that the implementation of solutions depends on trust. Given the cavalier relationships of so many accountability hawks with the truth, how are educators supposed to anticipate the real world effects of "reforms" without considering the agendas and the track records of the ideologues who will be implementing them?-JT(@drjohnthompson) Image via.

Comments

[Paul Bruno (@MrPABruno)]

I remain baffled as to why reformers aren't more aggressive about tackling out-of-school factors as part of ed reform. There are plenty of reformers who support policies that would ameliorate out-of-school factors, and I think it would build considerable trust with their critics.