From the Center for American Progress we get the same old tired "elitist" consumer capitalist agenda disguised in the cloth of education reform based on meritocratic (read fascist) ideology.
Good teachers are the most important part of good schools. Today, we require teachers to obtain many credentials before going into the classroom, but then do little to distinguish among teachers once hired. In a new paper from the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, Center for American Progress Senior Vice President Robert Gordon, Harvard Professor Thomas Kane, and Dartmouth Professor Douglas Staiger argue that we should flip this system around--requiring fewer credentials on the front end, then using measures of teacher effectiveness to raise the bar for getting tenure and to raise pay for high-performing teachers in poor schools. In a column in today's Wall Street Journal, "It's the Teachers, Stupid" (subscription required), David Wessel writes that, "These proposals won't change the world. But they would make it better. And they could change what's become a sterile debate over how best to remedy one of America's biggest weaknesses: its public schools. That alone would be a good thing."
Does the new proposal make sense? Are there better ways to improve the effectiveness of America's teachers?
Simple and complete answer for first question: NO, not ever!!
Simple and incomplete response for second question: Probably but that comes later!!
There really is only one responsible retort to this new version of the same old crappy vintage wine, and that is to get rid of the economic first principles and replace them with enlightened ones. Interestingly the progressives here use economists whose lives and tax rates are predicated on the success of globalization and supporting the expansion of their markets to reward themselves. They are in essence promoting an educational reform that serves no other purpose than to increase the hierarchical architecture of arranging the population based on economic status, linked to the elites determination of just what is effective for them. Ponder if nothing else that a columnist for the Wall Street Journal is weighing in on this and being honored for that by the Center for American Progress. This is another sham on their part to play like radicals for change but honing ever closer to the promotion of capitalist agendas at every turn. Remember these are the people who are against the Iraq war, not because it is wrong, but because it wasn't prosecuted and executed correctly.
To encourage capitalist economists to enter the education debate, but to shut out the marxist and socialist economists reeks of such philosophical absurdity that the stink you smell is more children dying in the US from neglect and poverty. The system these proto-fascists (they are wannabee or maybe they really are part of the entourages and courtesans of the neo-feudal lords of capital) wish to reform is one they never ever wish to engage on its failing philosophical merits. It is the philosophy of public education, hell all education, that is the most serious problem with it. We have not once, since the end of the nineteenth century, opened up the discussion regarding educational philosophy as it applies to why we have and fund public schools. The automatic unwritten assumptions are all capitalistic; all reflecting the premises of wealth and profit and markets, rejecting out of hand premises of healthy planet, diversity of species and languages, and harmonious and sustainable living practices. Why??
Well gee, if you are vested in our system of consumer capitalism, and you control the money process through whatever means, you certainly will never want to question or challenge a system that encourages and increases your wealth. Public education in the US is a $600 billion a year industry, and it is just that: an industry. One that produces products, mining the minds of children as the ore and energy to run the system, throwing out the tailings and toxic remains of those that aren't assayed as the finest quality, and only treasuring and honoring the few that are real gems. When you realize that this is what it is, you quickly see the new CAP proposal for what it is: mining the minds of the teachers in the same way it is done to the children. I can't wait to start seeing the ever expanding landfills of the scrap waste of our nation's teachers, where the real and honest creative, innovative, earth- centered, ones will lie broken for the rest of time.
