"Philadelphia’s current plight illustrates a broader national trend: public schools are being intentionally underfunded and dismantled. Over the past ten years, teachers have been forced to follow scripts and rigid pacing guides, practices that contradict research about culturally relevant, responsive, and inquiry-based teaching as methods to deeply improve student achievement. These labor conditions amount to what Jessie Hagopian and John Green call “public sector speedups,” on the model of factory work. But this speed-up is not directed towards increased productivity – the work is being deskilled not because of evidence that the system can work with this scripted model, but because such a model does not work. As public school teachers and students are pushed to failure, private interests will swoop in to provide alternate solutions and reap significant profits. Districts have shifted from elected school boards to mayoral or gubernatorial control, business leaders have orchestrated the shuttering of public schools and their replacement by charter schools, and seasoned, unionized teachers have been pitted against the bright-eyed Teach for America corps members and “superman” charter school leaders."
Posted on: Thu, 12 Sep 2013 17:03:42 +0000
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