Flight From Education Accountability
Teacher unions are the “protection racket” grown up to shield the public school trade from judgment.
Politicians and governments fail to use their powers for reform in favor of retaining the “status quo” — continued political funding from unions, “labor peace”, etc
The media does stories — it’s not their habit in modern times to expose glaring incongruities.
There is no other human service — medical, pharmaceutical, police, fire fighting, etc. — that is so evasive of accountability or “best practices”. Bad outcomes are not tolerated as they are in schooling. It is only education that is such a “Swiss cheese”, attracting experiments, fads and ideological programs.
Why, even the supreme chief for international education standards, Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skill for PISA (Program for International Assessment) seems to have been cornered into a state of obvious appeasement to the anti-testing, anti- accountability crowd. See — “Schooling Redesigned”, OECD, Oct 22, 2015, where he argues that those who seek “robust scientific evidence” for new proposed directions will not be favored with any examples of “’proven’ or ‘best’ practices” (pg 5).
The best hope is not to expect any of the culprits above to change but for consumers to themselves flee the system. Either home educate, where parents overwhelmingly use proven phonics reading programs, or choose a private school.
Hopefully, in your child’s lifetime a new funding program called Education Savings Accounts (ESA) will arrive wherein parents get an account set up by the Education Ministry by which to choose services. Look up Nevada ESA.
[ http://www.city-journal.org/2015/25_4_new-york-schools.html —What I Saw in the Schools, Sol Stern, 2 Oct 2015 ]