Where are the results?

The ed report that all 'reformers' should read  -- http://diigo.com/0fuc3

I think this article raises questions about the quality of the leadership driving present day education reform policy.  These leaders tend to operate with a missionary zeal and righteousness about being focused on results for kids.   But where are their results?  What does this say about the quality of their leadership?

This article highlights the many challenges with Michelle Rhee's policy initiatives once they began to be implemented.  As an ideologue at "war" for students, she frames the debate as being either for kids or not.  But where are her results?  Why do her failures in Washington DC not give her and similar reformers pause about their policy agenda?

The common response of present day education reformers to such criticism is to frame career educators as weak and lacking the moral fortitude to "do the right thing for kids."  Indeed they are superior to criticism.  For example, Rhee's resignation as D.C. Chancellor has been reframed as simply a failure to communicate effectively with the community about the reform agenda.  Hence, the large community outreach initiative happening in Newark, NJ funded by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckenberg.  The possibility Rhee's superior management approach was actually ineffective and oppressive is not contemplated as an option.  For example, she was quoted often as referring to collaboration and consensus building as overrated virtues of school leadership.  Rather, her resignation is seen by "reformers" as cause to "double-down" efforts in support of Rhee's policies.  Again, what about the results? Where is the pause?

We can all agree the status quo is unacceptable for many schools serving our neediest communities.  Instead, we should be asking more difficult questions about what we value in our schools.   These answers may not lead to easily quantifiable outcomes, but that does not make these answers any less important or mean the vision they suggest is unattainable.  Rather, these answers will be unattractive to venture capitalists attempting to leverage the educational marketplace to create investment opportunities.  Results, however, suggest these policies will not best for all students and families.  We must be willing to disappoint the venture capitalists and in doing so the true courageous reformers will be uncovered.  The true leaders.

Indeed the change theory advanced by Kurt Lewin would likely serve present day school reformers well, rather than top-down reform initiatives imposed on students and teachers.  In the end, I am convinced this righteousness, regardless of intention, will be oppressive to those it aims to serve.  Stan Karp predicts, "But its Achilles' heel -- which is in fact the Achilles' heel of the whole society -- is acute racial and class inequality.  And although this inequality once spurred a clarion call to expand government and public sector programs to address it, today a massively well-financed set of campaigns, groups, and projects is driving an agenda that flies the banner of reform but promotes proposals that are likely to do for education what market reform has done for healthcare, housing, and employment: produce fabulous profits for a few and unequal access for the many.  Waiting for Superman is not only blind to this agenda, it also presents some of its key architects as heros (Karp 2010)."