Some Good Reading About Education

From that awful site DU, however, is a good piece someone reposted from an email. It's all about education and shaming.

You better believe education is an oppressed profession:

Public education is an oppressed profession. This oppression is not about poor working conditions, rowdy students, or even low pay. Some misfortune is expected everywhere. This oppression takes the form of shaming. No one gets their teacher's certificate, only to be forced to deliver “teacher proof education,” lessons that are entirely scripted from “Hello” to “Good-bye.” Shaming is the most underestimated condition in public education today.

There is no one issue that accounts for this humiliation. It must be viewed as a gestalt, a totality, what amounts to a system of shaming.

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Surprise!! Former NYDOE chancellor Joel Klein is a liar or at least twists the truth:

“Sleight of Hand” shows that, indeed, in no meaningful sense can Joel Klein be said to have had a deprived background, comparable to that of children from the projects today. It shows that in no sense can Joel Klein accurately attribute his success, not to an advantaged middle class family, but only to his teachers.

“Sleight of Hand” describes Joel Klein’s father, a federal postal employee who passed a civil service exam and later retired with a secure federal pension; and his mother, a bookkeeper. The Klein family income was about at the national median income, perhaps much higher. The public housing project in which young Joel lived was almost all white and attractively landscaped. Applicants to live in his project were screened by New York City Housing Authority investigators who visited these applicants’ previous homes to ensure that they had good furniture and that their children were well behaved. And while Klein claims that his depressed ambitions from a life of hardship were raised only when he encountered an inspiring high school teacher, the record shows that his educationally motivated family produced a young man who was already academically very successful by the sixth grade, if not before.

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Another piece yet proving that education "reform" is just a bunch of malarkey.

Milwaukee's voucher program is and has always been a big flop:

Fundamentally, however, the issue of school vouchers goes beyond education achievement and parent preference. Above all, vouchers are an abandonment of this country’s commitment to public schools—a commitment rooted in an understanding that strong democratic institutions require a citizenry educated not just in the three Rs but also in their civic responsibilities.

Every state constitution in the country enshrines the right to a free and public education for all children—an honor that is not bestowed on other requisites for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, whether housing or employment or healthcare.