Contributor
Deborah W. Meier, Forum for Education and Democracy, Coalition of Essential Schools, NYU
Related Link:
http://www.deborahmeier.com
Biography provided by participant
Kindergarten Teacher, 40 years of work in NYC and Boston public schools; founder of a network of small schools; author of The Power of Their Ideas, and other books, currently senior scholar at NY.
Recent Responses
November 16, 2009 02:56 PM
We need to get some thinking about the purposes of it all--or as Mike Rose's recent book puts it: Why Schooling. If we agreed with the late Ted Sizer--it's to help young people learn to use their minds well--that we have to "align practice to such an end. Horace's Compromise is precisely, as Sizer reminded us 25 years ago, to abandon such a goal for those with the least power and resources to get there on their own. What we now call "achievement" hardly gets us even a quick gimpse into how students use their minds well--as they learn to…
Read moreOctober 21, 2009 06:38 PM
Normal 0 0 1 260 1326 18 1 1820 11.0 0 0 0 How to assess teachers? I’m not sure—but here’s an idea. Let each community choose its approach. With one caveat: the existence of a review process on a District or State level that can pass judgments regarding the reasonableness of each plan. Such a more “distanced” panel of judges representing a broader constituency can negotiate with a local community over paricular provisions in their idiosyncratic plans. At Mission Hill—a public K-8 “pilot” schools in Boston—we designed such a plan, which met the approval of both…
Read moreSeptember 22, 2009 09:43 AM
It’s a curious question that keeps getting curioser. If you don’t know where you want to go, any road will get you there—as we were reminded in Alice in Wonderland. The more important question is why kids have dropped out, and what they might be dropping into—if we offered it. We avoid the question of “why schooling” by pointing to the monetary value that different certificates bring us. It used to be 4th grade, the 8th, then 12th, than an AA and finally a BA. Finally? Of course, not, then come MAs and Phds. But the correlation between ach certificate and paycheck may have…
Read moreAugust 31, 2009 04:14 PM
Normal 0 0 1 624 3061 47 3 4372 11.0 0 0 0 by Deborah Meier Turning around 5,000 schools—with stimulus money as the bribe? It's a question that is ound to lead us into a deadend. If the only goal is creating “employees” (vs citizens) of the future I may also be both short-sighted--just plain wrongheaded. If we see them as counter-objectives we may be forgetting that it is “the people” who create the future. It will take more than “school reform” to “turn around” the working lives of tomorrow’s adults. It may depend also on…
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