Why can’t we as a whole, a whole country, including all of us, our politicians in and out of office, our media pundits, why can’t we accept that people are not equal, that outcomes, lives, will always be unequal, that inequality, more or less flagrant and unabashed, is here to stay, a principal ingredient of [...]
Archive for the ‘Achievement Gap’ category
The only Gap that counts
January 26, 2011More on Chester Finn and school reform
January 16, 2010Chester Finn, no less than Arne Duncan and his “Race to the Top,” labors under the (mis-)conception that student achievement levels depend primarily on what the educators, – the teachers, administrators, and politicians — do, and that downward or flat, as at the present time, achievement levels call for additional reforms. Maybe, but so far [...]
Howard Gardner: Group Comparisons Don’t Help
April 29, 2009Everyone, and by all means everyone at all connected with public education including our President and his new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, ought to read this short statement by Howard Gardner, professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Gardner reminds us forcefully and correctly that “Group Comparisons Don’t Help,” [...]
