History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Teaching strategies that work! But for what?
- 08-11-2011
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Guest blog by Alfie Kohn/Washington Post
So here’s the dilemma for someone who writes about education: Certain critical cautions and principles need to be mentioned again and again because policy makers persist in ignoring them, yet faithful readers will eventually tire of the repetition. Consider, for example, the reminder that schooling isn’t necessarily better just because it’s more “rigorous.” Or that standardized test results are such a misleading indicator of teaching or learning that successful efforts to raise scores can actually lower the quality of students’ education. Or that using rewards or punishments to control people inevitably backfires in multiple ways. Even though these points have been made repeatedly (by me and many others) and supported by solid arguments and evidence, the violation of these principles remains at the core of the decades-old approach to education policy that still calls itself "reform." (more...)
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