Mind the Gap-
1)
Quotes for a Response
a.
“In education, this belief in market forces lets
us ordinary mortals off the hook, especially those who have not figured out how
to improve low-performing schools or to break through the lassitude of
unmotivated teens. Instead of dealing
with rancorous problems like how to teach reading or how to improve testing,
one can redesign the management and structure of the school system and
concentrate on incentives and sanctions” (11).
i.
It may be because I’m a pinko at heart, but it
seems simple that market choices leave off an overall sense of ethics and
responsibility. Market forces produce
productivity and allow progress to take over.
Ratvich focuses this idea onto education. In the need for progress (achieving a higher
rate), the forces have used the tool that creates greatest change. But this change does not have a human sense
of responsibility or moderation. This
can also be applied to community poverty and environmental problems. A corporation is a great tool for dramatic
change, but it does not have responsibilities toward local communities. It has a responsibility towards progress and
profit. It can leave and change
communities as necessary to achieve that goal.
This systemic educational change is similar. It wants to prove that testing and choice are
the best solutions, even if they are destroying communities in the process.
b.
“I feared that choice would let thousands of
flowers bloom but would not strengthen American education. It might even harm the public schools by
removing the best students from schools in the poorest neighborhoods” (12).
2)
I’ve connected this quotation with a personal
experience I had when interviewing at KIPP Academy in Oakland. After an interview lesson, I sat down and had
a conversation with the Assistant Principle and talked about the school’s goals
and struggles. Two fascinating facts
stand out from that interview. I found out that KIPP has an admittance test
that target’s the student population at average or above average students. They see themselves as helping students who
really do have a hope of getting out of terrible situations and become college
students. They also exclude students who
would require I.E.Ps because of special education requirements. This allows them to cream the “top” students
from the rest. Where does that leave the
other students? Anyone who has run a
classroom knows that there is a reliance on the middle and upper students to
serve as peer educators for the other students.
Students learn as much from peer study groups as they do from direct
instruction in the front of the class.
The students that are left in the general education population just lost
their “Harvard” and “Stanford” students.
What is the student’s responsibility towards their peers in the
classroom? How does individual ambition
play into this idea? The second
observation I made was that students who misbehaved faced the punishment of
expulsion with little leniency. Their
culture of high discipline work ethic left very little room for students to
make mistakes. And when these students
left this positive experience, they were thrown back into the general education
population and told to deal with the situation.
How does this affect the community as a whole when students are
returning dejected? How does this
support the goal as a whole is the same idea Ratvich is discussing.
3)
Ravitch’s Educated Person:
a.
Students need a coherent foundation of knowledge
and skills that grow stronger each year.
Knowledge and skills are both important, as is learning to think,
debate, and question. A well-educated
person has a well furnished mind, shaped by reading and thinking about history,
science, literature, the arts, and politics.
The well-educated person has learned how to explain ideas and listen
respectfully to others.”
i.
How would you characterize a well-educated
person? What should any well-educated
person know in today’s world?
1.
I disagree with Ravitch’s idea slightly. I categorize an education person not by what
they know, but by what they are aware that they don’t know. This lack of knowledge increases listening,
empathy, and enthusiasm to learn. When
someone recognizes that they do not know, they are more likely to be observant
and gainers of knowledge in a particular community. Imagine that a Chinese student of Economics
walks into a classroom analyzing traditional American literature. Can we categorize them as uneducated because
they cannot readily participate in the conversation? They are knowledgeable about their own information
and are not un-educated. If this person
then chooses to realize that they don’t know the information and begin to
actively absorb new information because they don’t pretend to already know it,
then they are educated.
4)
Class education talk
a.
Class covered the basic ideas. Education is not changing as much as we think
it is, and our reforms should be conservative instead of radical. If the country is going to improve, high
standards are going to be essential.
Ratvich also does an excellent job of expanding our discussion of what
education consists of and how it has changed over the past century.
b.
If we were to further this discussion, the area
that did not receive much attention is technology. Technology really is a game changer. Although it goes against Ratvich’s idea of
slowing down and focusing on instruction, the ability for technology to assess
students and find minute holes in instruction is amazing. Teachers can get instant feedback using
polling and testing information. They can
also be presented with information that goes against their predominant beliefs
and therefore transform their own instruction when it goes against the testing
facts. What are the possibilities with
technology and how can they help standards and instruction.
5)
One of the topics that will come up in preparing
my Comparative Government class is revolution.
Admittedly, I’ve never participated in the revolution and my knowledge
is focused on the American, French, and Russian revolutions. I need to expand my content knowledge within
more 20th century contexts and study the topic.
a.
Book: The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why
Nations Rise and Fall- Ian Bremmer
b.
Article: Democracy: A Global
Revolution?- Dankwart A. Rustow
c.
Website: http://honors.uoregon.edu/class/revolutions-20th-century-0
A course abstract that discusses a theme/guideline to research the topic.
i.
Something as simple as an abstract to a college
course can provide wonderful information.
As a history teacher, I too often think that I need to research “facts”
as my responsibility towards preparing a solid lesson for my students. I forget that researching perspective changes
is also important. This website helps
add a the perspective that most revolutions have a shared component that
relates back to the democratization provided by the French revolution. Revolutions are not the people asking to
revert to oligartical rule of the pre-nineteenth century, but the people asking
for a return to the “reform” movement that will help their society change
towards a more positive future. The
denotative meaning focuses on this point rather than a return to a complete
circle of civil society.
ii.
I’m also starting the J-Curve this week. I’ll report on that next blog.
6)
Topic Questions and Resources
a.
The aspect of my research that I’m most
surprised by is the connection between project based learning and the interdisciplinary
academy approach. Both the New Hampshire
and South Carolina articles introduced academies as a strategy to implement project
based learning. Instead of thinking
about community first, they went about the project as an instructional
goal. I knew that this was a byproduct
of the types of programs, but I was not aware of how prevalent the projects
were. It also seems that the
collaboration between teachers and administrators is very important. Each of these studies reported a tension
because radical changes had to be made in order to break away from the
traditional system. These changes caused
stresses that in one case (Urban Education) caused several teachers to abandon
the new reform movement.
Student Responses:
Tanya Shah
Karen Vigna
Wilson Pang
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