"Also a sense that anyone who picks Rahm Emanuel for his chief of staff and Larry Summers for his economics adviser is not looking to play it safe policywise."

What could this possibly mean? Both RE and LS may be irritating self-regarding macho posturers, but they are as centrist as centrist come, and have a habit of talking down to reformers (at least, those to their left).

Of course, picking someone who loves charter schools and wants to rile up teachers unions is another way of playing it safe, at least with regard to monied interests.

I think the reformers are incrementalists. I would toss the whole idea of public schools or manadatory attendence at schools. While there are a lot of lousy teachers out there, the real problem is that children are not motivated to learn and a big reason is that their parents--if they are even around- do not provide a role model or encourage their children. Perhaps if children and their parents viewed education as a privilege and the only realistic opportunity for secure financial future for most people, educational services would be consumed more responsibly. As it is--including charter schools, choice schools etc, -what we spend as a society on education is lot more like throwing money down a rathole than bailing out the Detroit 3. If we are unwilling to dump the whole system, than the next best alternative is to pay the kids for attendence and achievement, and not just poor kids.

Linda Darling-Hammond is not Stanford's president. That's John Hennessy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_L._Hennessy

Who the hell is Linda Darling-Hammond? And where did you get the idea she is president of Stanford?

The Wash Post editors claim "reformers" who want to "radically restructure" the schools are against the status quo, but then the editors go on to slobber praise over No Child Left Behind, which as the most current federal education policy, IS the status quo.

Linda Darling-Hammond is a faculty member in the School of Education at Stanford, not president. That's John Hennessy, as noted above.

http://ed.stanford.edu/suse/faculty/displayRecord.php?suid=ldh

So, black is white on how you read policy appointments, Steve? Must be that wishful thinking kicking in.

David's right. Picks like Emanuel and Summers argue strongly that Obama will pick a non-reformer at Ed.

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As for the school system, we do need a radical who will start with this premise: Our school year is too short.

Western Europe, South Korea, Japan, all have one thing in common as their children academically lap us -- a school year of 200 days or more.

Until we start by changing THAT -- and I've talked with school superintendents who know we need to change that -- anything else is window dressing indeed.

I'd favor some radical solutions at this point. The U.S. education system is in deep disrepair and any attempt at "incremental" changes just won't cut it in a global economy. My wife teaches (she just finished Teach For America) and the urban school districts are horrible, more like day care for than a place for education. My mother works in a suburban school which has its own set of problems. A one-size-fits-all, no-child-left-behind, standardizing federal approach simply doesn't work in such a heterogeneous culture. For example, the inner city children my wife teaches are held to a suburban school model of accountability. The standardized tests they take (and they spend at least four-six weeks out of the year taking them) are written for a white child's experiences and perspective. The inner city children speak ebonics, are much more likely to live in broken and transient homes, and are frequently abused or neglected. Their world view and expectations are drastically different than their peers' in suburban and rural areas.

One thing I think "disruptors" and "incrementalists" CAN agree on is that under funding is a big problem.

Paul, have you taken the time to read Darling-Hammond's scholarship? Your "wishful thinking" clearly puts you in line with ideologues more concerned with reforms lacking in empirical justification than with putting the most qualified individuals in strategic government posts.

Darling-Hammond's recommendations are bold in the extreme, but they require a significant and sustained commitment to quality public education. The degree to which so-called progressives buy into neo-conservative ideology in regard to education policy is stunning. Please do some investigation in this matter.

but then the editors go on to slobber praise over No Child Left Behind, which as the most current federal education policy, IS the status quo.

And is there good evidence that it is even working? Bob Somerby has taken a close look at what supposed radical reformers in D.C. and elsewhere have actually achieved, and it's nowhere near as impressive as Republican tools like the WashPo editorial board or Brooks would have you believe.

anyone who thinks that chicago's arne duncan represents radical change (or much of anything else) has been smoking something:

http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2008/12/transition-davi.html

he's malleable, and amenable, but that's about it. the reformy crowd is just too wimpy to push for joel klein, who wouldn't get swallowed up in DC.

It would be a mistake to retreat from the accountability that No Child Left Behind has brought in improving learning and narrowing the achievement gap for minority students.

From the WashPo editorial. And what is their evidence that it has improved learning, or narrowed the "achievement gap" anywhere but the ability to pass a standardized test?

The incrementalists are indeed obstructors, right along with the so-called professional associations, read teachers' unions. Neither secondary schools nor colleges and universities have done much of anything to move into the current century. As long as they persist in clinging to an outmoded model of teaching and learning relying on lecture/discussion in egg crate classrooms, little or no progress will be made. Meanwhile, people young and not-so-young, continue to learn at their own pace (often ever so much faster than schools permit) from the wide world available to them. Not only will schooling become better when we begin to use technology more effectively, but it will be cheaper. - Ted

From the June 7 edition of the Howler, and why you should be very skeptical of the Post's claims about NCLB--

Were New York’s eighth graders really that much better this year? We don’t have the slightest idea. But in the past decade or so, there has been a problem with state-run tests, a problem observed all over the country. This problem has been widely discussed; most likely, it’s what Fuller meant when he told Paley (in today’s Post) that many states have “dumbed down standards� in the past five years, producing a misleading gain in test scores. Here’s the problem: All over the country, states have shown improved passing rates on state-run tests—score gains which haven’t been matched on other tests, like the federally-run NAEP. Repeatedly, experts have suggested that these hard-to-replicate statewide score gains have reflected easier tests, not a real gain in student achievement. Presumably, that’s the problem Professor Fuller cites in this morning’s Post feel-gooder. But Fuller isn’t quoted until paragraph 23—and even then, his quoted statement is so brief that it’s hard to tell what he’s talking about. In this morning’s Post, the nation’s test scores have risen (or “soared�). The Post makes little attempt to quote experts who suggest that these gains may be bogus.

For years, the Post has been deeply irresponsible in the way it handles these feel-good stories. Today, it has been irresponsible again. The paper makes almost no attempt to explain the objections to this new study—and its headlines tell the world about the great gains that are being achieved nationwide. Ironically, this morning’s report in the New York Times does a vastly better job noting the potential problems with this latest feel-good study. But alas! The Times report is on page C15. The Post displays its contempt for the interests of poor children right out on page one.

Have American school kids been reading better in the years since 2002? That’s a very important question. But we aren’t a very serious people, as the Post has proven again with a feel-good, know-nothing report. Go ahead! Read your Post! It will let you feel good all over!

There is nothing reformist about Arne Duncan. Duncan and his predecessor Paul Vallas have pretty much obliterated the genuine school reform in favor of gimmicks and other phony nonsense that Mayor Daley just loves. They've managed to further segregate the student body racially and economically. And they've brought no real gains in learning. They've helped build a culture of teaching to the test -- which is not education and not learning.

Taking the current school "reforms" of Arne Duncan nationwide would only further dumb down the educational system.

Gimmicks just don't work. Changing how teaching is conducted; changing the culture of the classroom and school; and further engaging the parents in their children's education are what work.

The reality is that standardized test scores measure only a very narrow slice of the learning that should be going on in public school classrooms - and the focus on those scores as a measure of what reformers think of as "increased" achievement has progressively forced schools and educators into scripted, teach-to-the-test programs that raise test scores but destroy relevance and motivation. Real reform would call for school, teacher, and student accountability that evaluates learning and growth not only on standardized measures, but on individual measures that recognize that we need more than a factory-production education system. So-called "reformers" like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee have no vision beyond test scores, and so long as they fail to recognize that teachers are more than test-score-quota production-line workers, they will facilitate, not improve, the decline in our nation's educational capabilities. Why would great - or even good - teachers want to work in a system that dictates a narrow political standard rather than recognizing and encouraging the intellectual professionalism of educators? Sure, get rid of tenure and hold teachers accountable - just do it in a way that recognizes the real scope of what they're trying to accomplish in our nation's classrooms.

What Katherina said. I'd like to know why Glastris thinks supposed "reformers" that he cites are actually any good, with actual empirical evidence.
Sorry, but editorials and self-serving statements aren't convincing at all.

And just like clockwork, today's Howler has an excellent takedown of both the WashPo and Brooks, noting the overall ineptitude of the press on this subject--

http://dailyhowler.com/dh120508.shtml

he also points out Rhees', um, embellishment of her achievements as an educator. But hey, she's a real "reformer", not a member of the "status quo", so who are we to question?

I repeat, we need to start with a 200-day school year. At least. Even better would be 210-220.

Short of that, EVERYTHING else is "incremental."

Does it really matter who heads the Department of Education? We know that the Department can inflict considerable harm to local school districts--just witness NCLB--but what good can it create? The feds provide, on average, just nine percent of the money that funds the public schools. School change happens in the classroom and at the school level, and if we're really lucky, on the district level, not because of who is sitting at the top of the Ed. Dept. thousands of miles away. In the mean time, the recession is clobbering the schools, as Robert Reich writes in his blog this week. Districts don't get much money from Washington. On average, federal tax dollars contribute only nine percent to our districts' revenues. Let's get serious about funding public education in a way and in amounts that reflect the importance of investing in human capital and stop this nonsense that school districts should be run like businesses and by businesses--which businesses: Enron, the financial institutions, the auto industry?