It's long been said that public education must achieve both public and private aims. The public, which foots the bill, has an interest in a well-educated populace. Parents-schools' primary clients-want a strong foundation for their own children. Much of the time these two interests are in perfect alignment. But what happens when they're not?
Michigan state Republicans said this week they are preparing a package of bills to privatize public school teaching -- eliciting concerns about working conditions and trading academic quality for cost effectiveness.
In my last post, I was considering how ineffective it is to rely on numbers, scores, policies, sanctions, or rewards to bring about the results we want in education. At my most optimistic, I believe that education stakeholders all want the same things - though some people have a hard time articulating what they want without relying on test scores as a proxy for achievement or learning. Still, for the sake of argument, let's leave motives out of this discussion.