We believe in investments in education and done as much as we could within our duties. But reform has to go along with it. If dollars alone were enough, this problem would have been solved a long time ago.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, noting that the Hoosier State spends more than half of its budget on education, in his speech on his school reform agenda.
In the end, the best hope urban teachers and schools have to close the practice gap is to—quite literally—maximize every moment… This isn’t a pedagogy of poverty. It’s a pedagogy of practice. And there is a reason that, given the choice, poor parents will make extraordinary effort to seek it out for their children. They know that the road out of poverty is paved with thousands of hours of hard work acquiring the skills, knowledge and abilities…
Kathleen Porter-Magee of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, arguing why the fantasies of education traditionalists such as Alfie Kohn and Diane Ravitch (including the myth of class size reduction) are not worth anyone’s time.
Stating that local funding calls for local control is a moral failing of the highest order. It obscures the fact that districts across Connecticut rely on state and federal subsidies in order to perpetuate the myth of local control. This in turn is used to justify why some students should receive a better or worse education based on the accident of where they live.
Hartford Courant columnist Jamir R. Hagland on the need to end the use of property taxes to fund education, which is discussed in this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast on expanding school choice and reform.
