Borrowing wise words from those truly market-based, Private Independent schools...

Bruce Baker:

Lately it seems that public policy and the reformy rhetoric that drives it are hardly influenced by the vast body of empirical work and insights from leading academic scholars which suggests that such practices as using value-added metrics to rate teacher quality, or dramatically increasing test-based accountability and pushing for common core standards and tests to go with them are unlikely to lead to substantial improvements in education quality, or equity.

Rather than review relevant empirical evidence or provide new empirical illustrations in this post, I'll do as I've done before on this blog and refer to the wisdom and practices of private independent schools - perhaps the most market driven segment and most elite segment of elementary and secondary schooling in the United States.

Really... if running a school like a 'business' (or more precisely running a school as we like to pretend that 'businesses' are run... even though 'most' businesses aren't really run the way we pretend they are) was such an awesome idea for elementary and secondary schools, wouldn't we expect to see that our most elite, market oriented schools would be the ones pushing the envelope on such strategies?

Posted by Jim Zellmer at February 22, 2012 1:58 AM
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