Anyone who reads this blog knows my fondness for the work of Diane Ravitch. IN her latest book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, Ms. Ravitch, lays out a plan to improve America’s schools. Let me present several to you:
- leave decisions about schools to educators, not politicians or busieness people.
- devise a truly national curriculum that sets out what children in every grade should be learning
- expect charter schools to educate the children who need help the most, and not to compete with public schools
- pay teachers a fair wage for their work, not “merit pay” based on deply flawed and unreliable test scores.
- encourage family involvement in education from an early age.
I believe that the ideas listed above provide a basis for discussion. What do you think about them?