Reform ‘Insanity’ in a Single Chart
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Public School Problem
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“No Excuses” Reform
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Poor, Latino/Black, special needs, and ELL students assigned disproportionately inexperienced and un-/under-certified teachers
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Assign poor, Latino/Black, special needs, and ELL students Teach for America recruits (inexperienced and uncertified)
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Public schools increasingly segregated by race and socioeconomic status
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Charter schools, segregated by race and socioeconomic status
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Three decades of standards-based testing and accountability to close the test-based achievement gap
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Common Core State Standards linked to new tests to create a standards-based testing and accountability system
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Inequitable school funding that rewards affluent and middle-class schools in affluent and middle-class neighborhoods and ignores or punishes schools in impoverished schools/neighborhood
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Drain public school funding for parental choice policies that reinforce stratification found in those parental choices
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State government top-down and bureaucratic reform policies that ignore teacher professionalism
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Federal government top-down and bureaucratic reform policies that ignore teacher professionalism
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Rename high-poverty schools “academy” or “magnet” schools
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Close high-poverty public schools and open “no excuses” charters named “hope” or “promise” [see above]
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Ignore and trivialize teacher professionalism and autonomy
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Erase experienced teachers and replace with inexperienced and uncertified TFA recruits [see above]
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Poor, Latino/Black, special needs, and ELL students assigned disproportionately to overcrowded classrooms
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Poor, Latino/Black, special needs, and ELL students assigned to teachers rewarded for teaching 40-1 student-teacher ratio classrooms
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Poor, Latino/Black, special needs, and ELL students tracked into test-prep classrooms
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Poor and Latino/Black students segregated into test-prep charter schools; special needs and ELL students disregarded [left for public schools to address—see column to the left]
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Teacher preparation buried under bureaucracy at the expense of content and pedagogy
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Teacher preparation rejected at the expense of content and pedagogy
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Presidents, secretaries of education, governors, and state superintendents of education misinform and mishandle education
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Presidents, secretaries of education, governors, and state superintendents of education [most of whom have no experience as educators] misinform and mishandle education
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Fail to acknowledge the status quo of public education (see above): Public schools reflect and perpetuate the inequities of U.S. society
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Fail to acknowledge the status quo of public education [see above and the column to the left]: NER reflect and perpetuate the inequities of U.S. society
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