What would real school reform look like?

07-30-2010

Commentary by James Farwell/Education Week

James Farwell is an educational psychologist and a licensed marriage and family therapist, in San Francisco. He spent 22 years working in inner-city schools in Oakland and Richmond, Calif.

Public school reform seems to boil down to closing schools; sending students to higher-achieving schools; converting a “failing” school to a charter school; replacing the principal, reforming instruction, and increasing learning time; and giving teachers monetary incentives to do better. Such “reform” seems as off the mark and ineffective as placing a Band-Aid on a melanoma. So the question that needs to be asked is what would real reform look like? As a society, we, the “village” that it takes to raise a child, need to make a conscious commitment to ensuring that all children receive a free and high-quality public education. (more...)

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What would real school reform look like?

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