First Goldie Hawn... now Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber are coming to ACPS?

Take a moment to read the following three paragraphs...PLEASE!  There is a common thread running through the three-- the future of education in our public schools.  In particular, each of the three is speaking to the notion that a new, radically different course must be charted if we are to close the "achievement gap" in education.  If you are interested, Michael Winerip has written an outstanding piece, highlighting Harvard professor Ronald Ferguson in the February 13th edition of the New York Times.  He is one smart guy.  And it is easy to be sold on his vision as the panacea to what ails ACPS.  But before you fall in love with Ferguson and the 21st century, take time to read Jay Mathews in today's Washington Post, I've excerpted it below.  His conclusion that this is all "dreamy nonsense" is spot on.
Look, it's not only okay to have these discussions about touchy subjects such as race and poverty and how they relate to intellectual development and how they shape debate about education, it's not just okay--it's essential.  But, when school systems adopt the vision and say, "That's the answer!"  We're in trouble.  As Jay Mathews also writes, "That leaves us with the idea of a new social contract to make this all work.  It is a lovely thought.  We can dream. But it isn't going to happen.  Their European examples sound good, but they don't address negative trends like the demonstrations in France last fall."  (By the way and speaking of demonstrations, did anyone else feel like we were missing something the last couple of weeks by not airing and discussing, at school the Egyptian uprising and its import to the very future of our planet?  I dared not switch on the TV even for an hour at TC.)  But I digress.  ACPS not only fails to look critically and skeptically and yet another cure all for what ails us, we buy the whole damn thing!  And just as our superintendent loves to rub elbows and eat out with Goldie Hawn and the beautiful people, he evaluates these visionaries as if they are Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber.  We don't need no stinkin' rock stars!  Yvonne Folkerts is letting us all know that we are going the very 21st Century route that Mathews warns us about.  In fact, the talk at Central Office is that the pursuit of a new curriculum that will replace all we've ever known, to date, will be a three year process and will guarantee that Sherman and his friends will be around for at least that long.

So, call it yellow journalism, portray it as a grudge by Voltaire but this is a wake up call. We, as a city, are about to expend enormous resources on this new model.  Thousands of teacher hours will be spent training to implement it, millions of dollars will be spent to implement it.  Many fine educators will leave because of it, morale will suffer along with it, great teaching models will be replaced by it and we will be the poorer for it.


Jay Mathews, Washington Post

Posted at 5:00 AM ET, 02/18/2011

Smart people + big report = dreamy nonsense

I had high hopes for the latest high-profile plan to save our schools. "Pathways To Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century" has 63 contributors, including some of the smartest people in education. The project that produced the report is based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and led by two of its brightest luminaries, academic dean Robert B. Schwartz and senior lecturer Ronald Ferguson. Those familiar with the sad history of similarly ambitious reports have already detected the signs of impending disappointment. The reference to 2lst century education is troubling. People who use that term tend to start talking gibberish, without intending to.

Yvonne Folkerts, ACPS School Board

During the retreat, Board members were given a handbook written by ACPS staff titled, “Literacy Framework:  Research-based Best Practices for Promoting 21^st Century Literacy.”  This is a big title for an even bigger task:  providing our teachers and administrators with strategies to promote all students’ literacy development. The book is available online (yes, even parents can access it!) and gives teachers information about how to assess a student’s literacy across all curricula, how to use strategies to improve a student’s reading comprehension, how to use questions and thereby encourage students’ critical thinking skills, how to improve a student’s writing, and more. A second handbook will be issued later this year for math literacy. That handbook will arm teachers with strategies to incorporate math across the board into all subjects a student is studying.

Mort Sherman, Superintendent, ACPS

Morton Sherman, the Alexandria school superintendent, watched him (Ronald Ferguson) defuse the anger at a meeting of 300 people. “He talks about these things in a professorial way, a kind way,” Dr. Sherman said. “It’s not about him. He doesn’t try to be a rock star, although he is a rock star in this field.”

"You're a bitter man," said Candide.
"That's because I've lived," said Martin.
— Voltaire (Candide)