In today’s New York Times, Jim Manly, principal of Eva Moscowitz’s Success Academy Charter School, weighs in on a topic that preoccupies many of those concerned about the best way to improve public education. Is change best achieved incrementally – through slow, deliberate steps that marshal buy-in from all stakeholders – or is change best achieved more radically, fueled by a sense of urgency that kids currently trapped in chronically failing schools can’t wait anymore?
The most dramatic example of this dispute between incrementalism and aggressive movement is the falling out of colleagues Chester Finn and Diane Ravitch over the acceptable pace of school reform. Finn has been quoted as saying, “Diane says ‘let’s return to the old school system’ and I say, ‘Let’s blow it up.’”
Here’s Principal Manly. (His references include Eva Moscowitz and Wendy Kopp, who created Teach for America.)
I see a lot of similarities in Eva and Wendy’s drive and determination. There are so many people willing to say you’re going too fast or you’re being too bold or too aggressive and these things are incremental. For me there’s a real urgency to this work. Both Eva and Wendy have been very helpful in making me understand that if you continue to listen to everybody’s take-it-slow approach, we won’t be there at the end of the day. They’ve been big influences on me in terms of how I want our teachers to view their work with their scholars, that there isn’t always tomorrow. That this is day we’ve been given. Some people say, give the public schools more time. We’ve been hearing this for generations. These kids don’t have more time. They don’t get to say I’ll wait five or six more years for this school to get fixed. By then they’ll be in eighth grade, reading at a third grade level.
This is a statement by Paula White, Executive Director of JerseyCAN, on the New Jersey…
This is a press release. Earlier today, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill to eliminate…
Today Gov. Phil Murphy signed Senate Bill 896, which prohibits the New Jersey Department of…
The 74 conducted a study of the relative learning loss in Democratic (Blue) and Republican (Red) states and…
In October 2020 Newark Superintendent Roger Leon announced with great fanfare the opening of district’s…
This is a press release from the Governor's Office. In related news, one in five…
View Comments
You're missing the point: change is best achieved via replicable breakthroughs in educational practice.
Proven, successful methodologies from charter and private schools should be adopted by public school systems. We don't need to create a parallel system of charter schools---under the various strained arguments put forward by their advocates---to do this.
This is the 'learning lab' approach to charters advocated by Dr. Ravitch and others.