Posts
My district has completely lost its mind.
- Super’s plan: replace college prep with “workplace” prep
- Teacher-centered v. learner-centered classrooms
- "Fast trends"
- Teachers “taking risks”
All that time spent ousting the last superintendent, only to amass further evidence that it can always be worse.
4 comments:
I was at a prospective parents night the other night for a private high school in the area. It's amazing how much Kool-Aid they have been drinking there. They kept talking about how progressive their school was, while spouting decades old constructivist methods. Isn't progressive supposed to be new and improved, not a rehash of decades of failure? The head of the entire K-12 school literally mentioned Dewey in his speech, and Dewey's been dead for 63 years. Progressive!
The head of the high school actually said that with all the information now at kids fingertips, they need to learn how to think, not a set body of knowledge.
I stared with bulging eyes, as they made it clear that they hadn't even considered keeping up with the research and science around cognition and education, but are locked into their model.
Catherine-Please read my book Credentialed to Destroy: How and Why Education Became a Weapon. It explained all of this and just keeps getting corroboration on top of its extensive footnotes.
Not to mention the rocket I launched today.
By the way the Ed Lab that governs CT came up with its vision of Competency- Based Ed that came out this month that also covers what is really intended.
Has anyone else noticed that the increasingly-negative public opinions of teachers began at about the same time teachers were no longer seen as transmitters of important academic and cultural knowledge? Maybe the sage on the stage was more significant and had higher status than the guide on the side.
My district is a little further along. What came next was DE, while AP was dropped. DE is paid for by the student, and does not include anything an accel student needs, such as Chemistry or Physics. The student pays for everything not needed for the diploma, such as Trig, Foreign Language 4, etc. if there are enough students available to have the class. There is no transportation to the Community College....although the district will bus students to job placements, BOCES, sped programs near the CC , has room on the bus for students who arent old enough to drive themselves to CC., and has several McKinney-Vento runs in the vicinity. (NY has graduated licensing. The typical accel fall bday 16 year old senior has his license, but no experience with ice and snow and would be driving in daily; sophomores and juniors are too young to drive). So, basically, a middle class accel child is now to pay for his high school education, or sit in study hall. Parents have been told off the record to consider private school if they are looking for elitist classes such as AP Science....those are considered college level so wont be offered on the public dime. Meanwhile the President talks about STEM. Clearly STEM at the level leading to engineer, scientist, or physician is not for rural students, they are to be kept down.
Post a Comment