Two points to be made based on this article, says Diane Ravitch: "Why does anyone expect politicians to know how to fix schools that struggle? Does anyone still believe that charters and vouchers and high-stakes testing will improve education for the nation's poorest children?" David Kirp, a professor of public policy at the U. of Ca. at Berkeley, compared the failure of corporate reform in Newark and the success of incremental, collaborative reform in Union City, NJ. Newark is a paradigm of all the bad reform ideas: Schools closed against the will of parents and students. so that every school could be turned into a charter school. Zuckerberg, put $100 million into the reformer dream. Union City opted for homegrown gradualism, saw its graduation rate soar to 81 percent, exceeding the national average. UC made real progress, without the help of Zuckerberg's millions.
At www.nytimes.com
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