Linda Darling-Hammond makes sweeping recommendations for changes in educational policy. If implemented, these changes have the potential to overhaul the public education system and accomplish her goal: “a system of high-achieving and equitable schools that ensure every child the right to learn.” This supports John Dewey’s quote about how our democracy is predicated upon equal opportunities for education for all children.
Her overall plan allocates responsibility to states (for resources), districts (for distribution of resources, effective staffing, and standards for teaching), schools (for work environments of growth, assessment, and communication), and teachers (for meeting the needs of individual students and developing themselves professionally). Several of Darling-Hammond’s recommendations stand out to me as particular interesting.
Overall, Darling-Hammond makes a strong case for these institutional changes, and the international evidence is compelling. However, change needs both time and money in order to be effective, and these types of changes would take lots of both. I would value Darling-Hammond's thoughts on how to begin these changes (top down? bottom up? from the states? from the teacher prep programs?), as well as a timeline and plan for rolling them out. For my first grade classroom, though, even without change on an institutional level, I can work to engage my students with meaningful thought-based lessons and performance-based assessment.
Jane Gould
11/22/2015 06:26:55 pm
I too like the idea of fewer topics, covered more deeply. This is in close alignment with the European schools such as in Finland and Great Britain that she mentions. I think that the open ended approach to assessment and having assessments be implemented by individual schools is a great idea as well, especially when thinking about America's huge diversity. Comments are closed.
|
Masters in Innovative Learning:
|