Friday, January 25, 2019

Charlie Baker is

never more paradoxically a conservative, than when he is eagerly expanding the state's power to reward and punish...public education.
Case in point, Lumpy has filed legislation that increases the Education Commissioners power and authority to withhold funds from districts that don't meet the entirely state mandated expectations.
What defines both "Expectations" and "Underperformance"?
Classroom Metrics mah frenz, aka "standardized testing", something that was once sold to us years ago as the legislatures "price" for making a bigger inve$tment in public education.
Now, here is the tricky part, normally conservatives decry expansions in the State's Sanctioning Power, but if at the end of the process they end up with a stronger case for more charter schools (movement conservatism's prized utopian delusion to privatize all education the USA) then they'll keep it on the down low.
And that...is what I think, our famously sneaky passive-aggressive Governor is after here, repositioning the charter school argument.
Frankly if it was left up to me, I'd argue we've "maxed out" all the benefit we can extract from classroom metrics and ought to start concentrating on teacher retention, turnover in public school settings is incredibly high.  Most teachers last about five years and then move on into the private sector.  We'd extract a vast cost and experience windfall just by concentrating on holding onto experienced cadres as well as improving the training of incoming teachers.  But of course, this is the age of metrics and legislatures that empower themselves as boards of pedagogy & Governor's that serve a malign utopian belief system, by comparison my poor notion is mere common sense and thus...a non starter.


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