Publication date:
18 December 2013Length of book:
192 pagesPublisher
R&L EducationISBN-13: 9781610489225
The systems that make up the accountability package in education: standards, assessments, and the quality determination for a school, have each entered the educational field under the explicit assumption by their creators that they would drive educator behavior in a positive way. But what if that isn’t actually the case? What if each of the components was actually designed for another purpose entirely and now is tasked with a role that was never considered in its design?
If that is the case those who put the systems in place risk expecting a result that the system was never designed to produce. That is exactly where we find ourselves today.
In education the misalignment between what the systems were designed to do and the intent of those who selected them is masked in the sheer complexity of the educational exercise. What this book does so marvelously is unravel that complexity and present the contradictions in a clear, coherent manner. Understanding these contradictions is the first step towards actual improvement.
Tanner takes on education reformers in this excellent treatise about why K-12 reform mostly fails and what to do about it. Tanner skewers most of what passes for reform, including the establishment of rigid standards in core subjects followed by teaching focused on test content followed by, ideally, improved test scores. The author turns to a discussion of the major constraints impeding meaningful reform in schools. Those constraints include issue of time, school readiness, attitudes toward teachers, and others. Tanner employs an approach popularized by the business writer Eliyahu Goldratt to organize schools around the constraints. For example, time is universally considered to be a major problem in schools due to the fact that the time devoted to learning is essentially the same from school to school and student to student. To organize schools around this constraint might mean permitting schools to add time for learning in innovative ways. This may take the form of extending calendars, rejecting the notion that most students graduate in 12 years, etc. The author's use of the Goldratt strategy provides interesting paths to improve schools. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.