Comments on my last email

Another friend shared these comments on my last email:

I could not agree more with your commentary on small schools -- it's also my issue with mandatory class size public policy (the safe and politically correct catch all for any politician who wants to act like they care about radical school reform).  It is much more about teacher quality AND school leadership...you can't say one without the other.  Ultimately, it is also about district leadership, guidance counselors, literacy coaches -- human capital overall with school leaders and teacher as a critical cornerstone.

 

The other concern about the Gates program is their limited contribution to evaluation, most importantly how to measure and track the quality of high schools.  We have virtually no effective measures of school quality, student competency, or job/life readiness for high schools.  If this is not addressed, we will create many more schools without the ability to know if they are helping to dramatically change the opportunity equation.