Monday, February 18, 2013

Better than utter silence

More than anything, what mystifies me about our school board is how unbothered they seem by what high-stakes testing has done to our schools—probably the biggest change in K-12 education in our lifetimes.

What’s stopping them from passing a resolution like this one? Full text here.
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2 comments:

Matt Townsley said...

Do you think this perceived lack of action is unique to your school district? urban school districts in general?

Chris said...

Matt -- Good question; I just don't know. I don't know if there's any pattern in terms of urban v. non-urban. (I don't actually think of Iowa City as an urban school district.) I wonder if local districts are just too deep in the trees to spend much time thinking about the forest. So much of what school boards do has to do with budgeting scarce dollars, and maybe it's easy to focus on the immediate fiscal issues to the exclusion of others.

Of course, there's also the fact that the standardized testing industry is a big presence in Iowa City . . .