“What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must we want for all children in the community. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy”
Some of the best work in education comes from magnet school and charter schools (unfortunately, when poorly implemented, some of the worst also comes from these schools). In the best case, charter schools do what Darling-Hammond suggest- they implement education at the school level to meet the needs of the students in a decentralized atmosphere. The more I read and about learning, creativity and the brain, the more I am impressed with the charter schools that I am most aware of: Stone Bridge School in Napa and Health Sciences High and Middle College in San Diego. Both schools do what Darling-Hammond recommend. The schools set for themselves and their students:
The equitable and adequate resources will require federal, state, and local attention to opportunity-to-learn standards. These sound great! What I want to know, however, is what these may look like in the real world of the United States. I think this may be done, but the standards that we compare ourselves to, Finland, Korea, and Singapore, are very different to what we have here. Their populations are much smaller and their percent of population that are of the dominant ethnic group or language are much bigger. These differences may be significant.
2 Comments
Joseph Hall
11/22/2016 01:50:07 pm
As someone who works at a Charter school, I realize not all charters are alike and some are stronger than others and others might be weak. There are flaws at my school, but I am proud to work where I do. The charter where I work at offers educational opportunities that differ from all other schools in our county with the exception of one school that just started offering those same opportunities a few years ago. The educational opportunities exist at our school that never existed in the county of Napa when I was a k-12 student.
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12/10/2016 03:08:07 pm
I agree that the examples used all come from places that have not had the same molding and things are very different. This reminds me of a TV show "Inside Man with Morgan Spurlock". On one of his episodes about education he visited Finland to check out the educational system. It was awesome but then he came back to the US and visited some forward thinking schools in NY and when he made a comparison he said that the two countries dynamics are so different that it would be difficult to have their school system here in the states due to the vast differences in populations and social structures.
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About MeAfter teaching for 20 years, I've decided to pursue a master's degree! Archives
July 2017
CategoriesThis is me working on my classwork... usually at night after the heater is off.... sitting long times makes me cold!
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