Dive Brief:
- David L. Kirp, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, writes in The New York Times that good teachers — not technology or markets — are the answer to any classroom dysfunction.
- Kirp starts his piece describing the two current "education reform" camps, which place value in either competition (charter schools) or disruptive innovations (technology and online learning). Both, he says, are impersonal and run counter to what school is all about due to the "messy human relationships" involved.
- For Kirp, good education can be boiled down to "bringing together talented teachers, engaged students and a challenging curriculum," and the best education initiatives from the past understand the need for "strengthening personal bonds by building strong systems of support in the schools."
Dive Insight:
In Kirp's opinion, the market-based, technology-centered takes on education sound great — even plausible — in their abstract forms, but they are failing in practice. "Firing teachers, rather than giving them the coaching they need, undermines morale ... Merit pay invites rivalries among teachers, when what’s needed is collaboration. Closing schools treats everyone there as guilty of causing low test scores, ignoring the difficult lives of the children in these schools — 'no excuses,' say the reformers, as if poverty were an excuse," he writes.