You wanted predictions? You got 'em:
Rebounding from a 70 percent funding cut in FY2008, Reading First will rise again, becoming one of the largest and most widely-lauded federal education programs of all time. The creators of DIBELS will receive a 2008 MacArthur "genius" grant for their work.
Plagued by scandal and questions about effectiveness and lawmakers' willingness to pay decent wages to caregivers, universal preschool (UPK) will fall by the wayside as a popular issue. Little children will once again be left alone to watch TV in aunty's living room while their parents are at work all day.
Elite private schools will begin to spin off new, free versions of themselves as public charter schools in order to serve students from all backgrounds. Charter school organizations such as KIPP and Green Dot protest loudly unfair competition.
Thanks to a new 12-step program created by the Poynter Institute (and a powerful new form of crystal meth), education reporters and newspapers free themselves from annoying human interest anecdotes tacked onto the start of their articles, "find-the-exception" stories, stories based almost entirely on classroom teachers' complaints, and -- through a special Knight-funded 28 day residential program -- the use of headlines that use the phrase "left behind."
NCLB will be reauthorized, largely intact, in June, following surprise
endorsements by Jonathan Kozol and former NCLB supporter/opponent Mike
Petrilli. The NEA and AFT will block a last-minute effort to tack on a class size reduction amendment.
Ohio lawmaker Dennis Kucinich will leap to the front of the Democratic field, largely
based on his pledge to use Pentagon spending for education purposes. His surprise choice for VP, longtime Bush ally Margaret Spellings, will propose a radical new plan to give every child in the nation access to the same education that Capitol Hill pages receive.
Inspired by a particularly moving episode of The Wire they saw on Netflix during Christmas, thousands of over-educated education researchers, reformers, advocates, analysts, journalists, bloggers and pundits will suddenly realize that what they're doing isn't really making a difference and apply to start schools and become classroom teachers. Much to the consternation of current teachers and administrators.
Bought by media giant Viacom for an undisclosed amount, This Week In Education will be lauded for its wise, thoughtful, and transformative observations and in November inch past the Huffington Post in daily readership. A month later, its creator will be arrested on charges of tax evasion and impersonating someone who works for a living.
Reponding to a Kevin Carey post about policymakers' decision-making process, the AFTies made a good point yesterday that sometimes policymakers leap into action without knowing where they're going (Action Bias and Education Policy). Not surprisingly, the results aren't always pretty. But researchers and practitioners shouldn't expect them to do any otherwise -- just like economists shouldn't expect goalkeepers to stand still and wait for the penalty kick to come their way (Economists 1, Goalies 0). It's just not going to happen. In penalty kicks as in policymaking, there is an expectation of action that overwhelms the evidence in favor of standing still. This is true in many other parts of life, where research evidence and pure rationality hardly ever wins out. There's not much point in trying to make the goalie seem smarter than he (or she) is, or mocking him (or her) for something that's unlikely to change.
