Is education a commodity or a public good? Steele says a double standard is at work.
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If you are reading this during daylight hours in March, chances are
that millions of our children are now engaged in what's called "test
prep." Just yesterday someone showed me the March calendar for a
high-achieving public elementary school: two solid weeks of the month
were blocked off for "TEST PREP," probably in caps lest any classroom
teacher forget and do some real teaching.
The banality of "TEST PREP" clashes violently with the ideas I was
exposed to last week. Last Thursday and Friday, I spent quality time
with syndicated columnist Mark Shields, GE Chairman and CEO Jeffery Immelt, Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO), libertarian activist Giséle Huff, Stanford's Claude Steele, Assistant Secretary of Education Carmel Martin, and Roberto Rodriguez (President Obama's education adviser).
These seven separate meetings (in Washington, D.C. and northern
California) had only one thing in common: big ideas about life and
learning. While their politics are different, all celebrated the human
spirit. Oh, and no one talked about TEST PREP or about what is happening
in real classrooms in many schools.
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