Will

Higher Ed is the Province of the High Achieving and the Wealthy

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 06:58:00 -0400

Let’s start with the numbers. 4.1: That’s the grade point average of a high school student entering the University of California, Irvine this year. 450,000: students on the waiting list for community colleges in California alone. 74%: the percentage of students from the richest quartile of households enrolled at the top 150 colleges in the US — even though high-income students make up only a third of high-achieving high school graduates. While the G.I. Bill and the Great Society were founded on the principle of higher education as the ladder to the middle class, in 2013 state schools are so starved of funds, and private ones so expensive, that higher education is becoming the province of the high achieving and the wealthy global 1%.

I don’t want a society that massively excludes so many students, nor one where you have to be better than perfect to gain admission to your state university. For 20 years now, anyone with access to the internet has been able to publish ideas to anyone else in the world with an internet connection. That’s an amazing opportunity and a formidable responsibility. Yet our antiquated educational system rewards a hierarchical form of silo’d, standardized teaching and learning that was designed for the Taylorized Industrial Age. Our over-emphasis on standardized testing undermines the intellectual skills of critical thinking and productive contribution needed to thrive in our interactive Do-It-Yourself era.

Education as a Public Good

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:16:41 -0400

Robert Reich:

If we had a strategy designed to increase jobs and wages, what would it look like? For starters, it would focus on raising the productivity of all Americans through better education — including early-childhood education and near-free higher education. That would require a revolution in how we finance public education. It’s insane that half of K-12 budgets still come from local property taxes, for example, especially given that we’re segregating geographically by income. And it makes no sense to pay for the higher education of young people from middle and lower-income families through student debt; that’s resulted in a mountain of debt that can’t or won’t be paid off, and it assumes that higher education is a private investment rather than a public good.
It would also require greater accountability by all schools and universities for better outcomes — but not just better test results. The only sure thing standardized tests measure is the ability to take standardized tests. Yet the new economy demands problem-solving and original thinking, not standardized answers.

Two Options for Being "You" on the Internet

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 14:46:35 -0400

Andrew Leonard:

If you want to be yourself on the Internet you basically have two options. The first is to assume that the government and the big Internet companies have the ability to watch every move you make. That’s life in cyberspace. The convenience of email, texting, Facebook, Twitter do not come free. The second is to put political pressure on your elected representatives to repeal the Patriot Act and return to a legal regime in which prosecutors and snoops must get a warrant to look for information on specific people suspected of crimes. A civilized society should not permit its government to collect unlimited amounts of data on innocent people. President Obama said something to that effect when campaigning for president in 2007, when he attacked Bush’s surveillance activities as “a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand.”

Now he’s changed his tune, and warned us that those liberties we cherish are an “inconvenience” necessary for the “security we demand.” As long as the occupant of the Oval Office maintains that mindset, we’re not going to be able to fend off the prying eyes of the NSA by changing our browser. We need to change the politics.

"Schools Are Designed to Teach to the Test"

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 11:27:31 -0400

Noam Chomsky:

And now it’s institutionalized with No Child Left Behind/Race to the Top; teach to the test - worst possible way of teaching. But it is a disciplinary technique. Schools are designed to teach the test. You don’t have to worry about students thinking for themselves, challenging, raising questions. And you see it down to the lowest level of detail. I give a lot of talks in communities and places where people are concerned about education and I’ve had teachers come up to me and say afterwards, you know, I teach sixth grade. A little girl came up after class and said she was interested in something that came up in class, and wanted to know how to look into it. And I tell her, you can’t do it; you got to study for the test. Your future depends on it; my salary depends on it.

And that’s happening all over. And it has the obvious technique of dumbing down the population, and also controlling them. And it’s bipartisan. The Obama administration is pushing it. Also, an effort to kill the schools - the charter school movement vouchers, all this kind of stuff is nothing but an effort to destroy the public education system. It claims that it gives the parents choices, but that’s ridiculous. For most people, they can’t make the choices; there are not any. It’s like saying everyone has a choice to become a millionaire. You do, in a way: there’s no law against it.

Who Knew That Learning Was a Problem to Be Solved?

Wed, 29 May 2013 09:21:06 -0400

Some PR Person at Amplify:

“This is more than just a tablet. It’s a complete learning solution organized around the school day,” said Stephen Smyth, president of Amplify’s Access division, which produces the tablet. “We believe it’s both more affordable and more impactful than just about any other product in the education technology market.”

The Amplify Tablet offers states, districts and schools a Wi-Fi enabled, 1-to-1, personalized learning solution that includes Amplify’s exclusive software designed for teaching and learning; preloaded third-party content and reference tools; customer care; professional development; and enterprise-level device management. In addition to the Wi-Fi model, which will be used by the Guilford County Schools, school districts can opt to provide teachers and students with the Amplify Tablet Plus, which includes 4G LTE connectivity from AT&T.

Hard to know where to start. It’s just stunning to me the way people think about “learning.” In this case, it’s obviously something we do to students. We organize it. We deliver it. We solve it.

Oh, yeah…and it’s cheap too.

This is just the beginning of the Joel Klein, Rupert Murdoch bid to take over the edu-world. Do the teachers in Guilford really want their “exclusive software designed for teaching and learning” in their practice? Do they feel so disempowered to think and act and work and learn with kids on their own that they’re ok with the district buying it for them? Is this what it’s come to?

God help our kids. And our teachers.

More to It

Thu, 23 May 2013 08:36:01 -0400

Michelle Rhee-Weise:

To complicate matters, however, the effects of this regimented kind of professional development are questionable. As Rick Hess argues: “We spend a lot on professional development…. Yet hardly any of this actually appears to make teachers better…only a tiny sliver of PD involving thirty to one hundred hours of teacher time showed any evidence of correlating with student achievement gains.” The effects of PD on student outcomes are unclear.

Two thoughts…

1. Could professional development possibly have positive effects in the classroom that don’t show up in student achievement as measured by test scores? I know a lot of the work we did in PLP made very positive impacts on teachers as learners and, subsequently, on students as learners. Much of that might be considered “immeasureable” however.

2. What if we don’t necessarily want teachers to get “better” in the traditional sense? What if, rather, the focus of PD is to help them evolve as learners? Or is that a silly question?

I don’t disagree that a lot of professional development monies are wasted. And truth be told, teachers should be responsible for their own PD now. Kids wouldn’t wait for a blogging workshop. Adults shouldn’t either.

But we’ve got to stop measuring everything by it’s impact on “student achievement” as defined by content based test results. There’s more to learning than that.

So nice of Teach for America to jump on the “schools are...

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:55:00 -0400

So nice of Teach for America to jump on the “schools are broken and we need non-educators to fix them” bandwagon. As seen on every tray in the TSA security line at the Detroit airport. #sigh

The End of Reform

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:10:29 -0400

Aaron Bady:

If I have one overarching takeaway point in this talk, it’s this: there’s almost nothing new about the kind of online education that the word MOOC now describes. It’s been given a great deal of hype and publicity, but that aura of “innovation” poorly describes a technology—or set of technological practices, to be more precise—that is not that distinct from the longer story of online education, and which is designed to reinforce and re-establish the status quo, to make tenable a structure that is falling apart.

Which is exactly the issue I have with how “flipped classrooms” are being marketed. They represent little that’s really new in terms of pedagogy and practice, and they “reinforce and re-establish the status quo.” In both cases, we’re turning small tweaks into transformation for the sake of being able to say “Look! Look! Things have really changed this time!”

This, of course, only resonates if what you want is a different way of schooling for modern times instead of a “better” way of schooling for old outcomes.

Who Owns the Future?

Mon, 13 May 2013 06:53:00 -0400

Jaron Lanier

Sharing information freely, without traditional rewards like royalties or paychecks, was supposed to create opportunities for brave, creative individuals. Instead, I have watched each successive generation of young journalists, artists, musicians, photographers, and writers face harsher and harsher odds. The perverse effect of opening up information has been that the status of a young person’s parents matters more and more, since it’s so hard to make one’s way…

…If we keep on doing things as we are, the answer is clear: The future will be narrowly owned by the people who run the biggest, best connected computers, which will usually be found in giant, remote cloud computing farms.

"Why School? The Movie" Update - Got video?

Sat, 11 May 2013 16:12:30 -0400

A few weeks ago we posed a big question: Could our little edu-network make a REAL full-length documentary feature that incorporates kids in every aspect of the production process? It appears we’re going to find out. Within days, hundreds of you volunteered to help make this admittedly ambitious undertaking become a reality. (If you haven’t signed on and still want to help, fill out our survey now!)

As a result, we have formed a core group of amazing people focused on marketing, fundraising and developing a comprehensive web presence. All of this structural support makes it possible for us to dig in deep and craft a compelling narrative for this film.

To reiterate, Doug, Josh and I decided right from the start that this film could and should be built by the people who are most affected by education policy—namely kids, parents, and teachers. Instead of just talking about the problems with school in its current form, we’d like to see “our” film driven by what the community is actually doing. So, we’re setting the bar as high as possible to show what happens when kids are given the opportunity to do meaningful work, and prove that we can transform the focus and function of school. The next step is to engage with everyone out there thinking, writing, creating, and putting their ideas into action for the benefit of kids.

We’d like to hear from you, get a glimpse of what you are doing, and potentially include footage of your kids doing meaningful things in and outside of your classrooms. Here’s how you can help:

Send us high quality HD video footage of kids, teachers and classrooms that we can use in a teaser trailer we are putting together to fundraise, promote, and build excitement for the movie. This footage will also help us better visualize what the final feature will look like, although at this point we are not specifically looking for footage or stories for that purpose (yet). Some ideas of what we’re looking for include:

Kids (and teachers) sharing ideas and creations publicly
Kids designing their own experience to learn through inquiry, research, collaboration, and creating
Kids (and teachers) collaborating with colleagues, classmates, and experts around the world
Kids creating works that have real value outside the classroom

Submitting your videos of powerful learning is simple. You may provide a link to videos hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, or anywhere else on the web. For this teaser trailer we will likely use only a few seconds of any clip so if there is a specific part of the video we should look closely at, please identify that. If we want to use part of your video in this trailer we will ask for you to send us a file in full HD (1080p) format and have everyone in the video, and their parents, sign release forms.

We’d love to get your submissions by June 1. You can e-mail Josh and Doug at whyschool@roughcutschools.com if you have any questions about the process.

Finally, we’re now also on Twitter and Facebook. Follow us and like us to keep up with our progress. Our new website will be up soon as well.

Thanks for all the support and enthusiasm you’ve already shown for this project. With your help we know it will be awesome!

"You Don't Need to be Taught in Order to Learn"

Thu, 09 May 2013 19:06:23 -0400

Seymour Papert:

The role that the computer can play most strongly has little to do with information. It is to give children a greater sense of empowerment, of being able to do more than they could do before. But too often, I see the computer being used to lead the child step by step through the learning process. Ivan Illich said the most important thing you learn at school is that learning only happens by being taught. This is the opposite of empowerment. What you ought to be learning at school is that you don’t need to be taught in order to learn. This is not to say that the teacher is not an important part of the learning process. That teacher is, of course, the most important person there. But recognizing the importance of the teacher is very different from reducing learning to the passive side of being taught. This is the fundamental cleavage between theories of education: empowerment of the individual versus instruction and being taught.

What Happens?

Wed, 08 May 2013 09:36:19 -0400

Audrey Watters:

What does it means to tell our students that we’re actually not going to read their papers, but we’re going to scan them and a computer will analyze them instead? What happens when we encourage students to express themselves in such a way that appeases the robot essay graders rather than a human audience? What happens when we discourage creative expression?

Robot graders raise all sorts of questions about thinking machines and thinking humans, about self-expression and creativity, about the purpose of writing, the purpose of writing assignments, the purpose of education, and the ethics of education technology and of robots in the classroom.

And what are the implications of automating the teaching and learning process? Why does efficiency matter so much? Why do we want the messy and open-ended process of inquiry standardized, scaled, or automated? What will all of this artificial intelligence drive us to do about human intelligence?

"Why School?" - The Movie (?)

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:48:00 -0400

(Note: If after reading this you want to help, please fill out this interest survey. Thanks.)

So here’s the question: You think our little edu-network could make a movie? Like, a REAL full-length documentary feature? As in the next (and better) “Waiting for Superman?” One that kids had a big role in producing?

If your interest is piqued, read on…

A couple of weeks ago, I got an e-mail from Josh Weisgrau and Doug Herman, co-founders of Rough Cut Media, asking if I’d be up for a conversation around making a feature length documentary of Why School?, the TED book I wrote last September. Floored and humbled, I wrote back something along the lines of “Really? Absolutely. Yes. Definitely. Totally. Anytime. Really?” Last weekend, we sat down at a Panera just north of Philadelphia and explored the idea in depth and started creating the requisite Google Docs. I think all three of us walked away feeling totally excited about the potential for a project like this, and also totally overwhelmed by what it might take to do it well.

The bottom line? Despite the hugenamity of this, we’re going for it.

But here’s the deal: We decided from the start that we want you, all you nodes in our networks out there who have been thinking and writing and creating and designing and pushing and working hard to deeply understand this profound moment of change in education, we want you to play an important role in making this happen if you choose to. We don’t want this just to be “our” project as in Doug, Josh and me. If we do this, we want it to be “our” project as in the global community of connected educators that care deeply about what schools must become for our kids to flourish in their futures. Those who believe in some semblance of that third narrative I wrote about recently and that we need desperately to bring to scale a new conversation about schools and classrooms and learning in the modern world.

In other words, we sincerely want and need your help.

Some details: First, this will be a “real” movie, a la “Waiting for Superman” or “Race to Nowhere.” The bar will be high for professional quality writing, filming, production, marketing…the whole deal. We’re building a budget that we hope to fund on Kickstarter later this spring. We want to enter it in film festivals, hold meet-up screenings around the world, get on PBS (Or NBC). And more.

In other words, we’re dreaming big.

(Note: All monies raised for this project will go either to production expenses or, if there’s anything left over, a scholarship fund for students wanting to pursue a career in video production. No one will reap any profits, in other words.)

Second…and this honestly may be the best part…kids will play a HUGE role in making this movie. In case you didn’t know, Doug and Josh’s Rough Cut Media was created to bring the skills of multimedia production into schools. The pilot program Doug directs at Science Leadership Academy has already shown that high school students can run a professional video production studio. Through consulting, professional development, and online classes, Rough Cut’s core mission is to spread the message that students can, and must, be able to communicate professionally using modern media. We’re thinking this is an opportunity to bring those ideas and practices to schools from all over the place who might choose to do some interviewing and filming at remote locations. As much as we hope this movie tells a new story about learning in schools, we also hope it serves as an amazing example of what our students can accomplish in the way of real, authentic work with technology and guided mentorships.

Third, this won’t just be a US or North American-centric story. The Web and technology in general are challenging us to learn and relearn schools and classrooms and learning itself all across the world. This truly is a global shift, and we want to try to capture the global story that goes along with that.

Finally, this won’t be a movie about “Why School?” the book per se as much as it will be about a narrative that we all (hopefully) craft together. No question, we’re thinking the ideas in the book can serve as a foundation for that narrative. But our goal is to produce something that represents the major themes around the profound changes that are required by these connected, constructivist technologies that up until now, at least, haven’t been clearly articulated at scale.

Call us crazy.

There’s more to tell, but for now, we’re interested in what you think. Seriously, you wanna make a movie? And maybe, in the process, start a movement? Would you be willing to contribute your ideas? Your time? Your skills to this?

If you said yes to any of that, or you’re thinking of something else you can contribute, please take a second to fill out this form to express your interest and start the brainstorming process. We’ll be back in touch with next steps.

Thanks for considering it. We think the potential is amazing. Really looking forward to seeing what happens with this.

gjmueller:

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:59:58 -0400

gjmueller:

Help Wanted: Two Awesome Teachers/Learning Coaches

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 06:33:00 -0400

For the past few months, I’ve had the good fortune of working with the folks at Houston A+ to develop an idea for a small, progressive, learner centered new school in the museum district in Houston. My role has been pretty minimal, mostly as a sounding board for the core working group of which Stephanie Sandifer, one of my network connections from way back, is a member. They’ve come up with what I think is a great vision for a school that really focuses on students as learners with technology, yet is grounded in the rich resources that only local community spaces can offer.

The plan is to open this fall as an independent school for 40 or so 6th graders and then move to a public charter next year. We’re targeting kids in and around the city who are currently wait-listed for high performing charters, trying to offer them a better option. Students will have a 1-1 environment to stay connected, collaborate, and create many of their own learning experiences, and they will travel to and learn from many of the professionals who work in the museums and the Houston Zoo. There’s much more to the plan, but suffice to say the emphasis is on developing students as truly self-directed, passionate learners who can solve problems, communicate effectively, and work with others in amazing ways.

What we’re looking for now are a couple of great candidates to fill the two teacher/learning coach positions. These are openings that will offer a great deal of autonomy and innovation to those who fill them, and they pay pretty well to boot. We’re looking for people who are “Innovative, creative, imaginative, entrepreneurial, and eager to own the creation of non-traditional and effective learning environments.”

I know that’s just a tease, but I really think this is a rare opportunity to be a part of something meaningful not just in terms of its service to kids but in helping stretch the thinking around what schools and an education could look like. If you’re interested, you can read through the complete description here. please contact Mukta Pandit as soon as possible for all the details and for information on the hiring process. Interviews will start in a couple of weeks.

Also, please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions that you think I can help with.

Playing Chopsticks With Technology

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 07:24:00 -0400

Alan Kay:

Q. Do our modern personal computing devices augment education? Have they lived up to what was foreseen in the past? Are they really helping teachers teach in the classroom?

A. The perspective on this is first to ask whether the current educational practices are even using books in a powerful and educative way. Or even to ask whether the classroom process without any special media at all is educative.

I would say, to a distressing extent, the answer is “no.”

The education establishment in the U.S. has generally treated the computer (a) first as undesirable and shunned it, (b) as sort of like a typewriter, (c) not as a cheap but less legible textbook with smaller pages, etc. (d) as something for AP testing, (e) has not ventured into what is special about computing with reference to modeling ideas and helping to think about them.

This in spite of pioneers such as Seymour Papert explaining both in general (and quite a bit specifically) just what it is and how it can revolutionize education.

I’ve used the analogy of what would happen if you put a piano in every classroom. If there is no other context, you will get a “chopsticks” culture, and maybe even a pop culture. And this is pretty much what is happening.

In other words, “the music is not in the piano”.

Which is exactly what Gary Stager and others have been saying repeatedly for a long while.

I would add, once again, that for the “revolutionary” aspects of computing to be realized in classrooms, it must first be realized, either in concept or practice, by the adults in the room. Certainly, many kids discover and develop “revolutionary” practice on their own. But the system’s unwillingness to truly celebrate and nurture that practice stems from the adults’ lack of context not just for technology in general but computing specifically. (I wonder how many teachers and administrators even know who Alan Kay is.)

I’m no poster child for computing in this sense either. My “preparation” as an educator was bereft of any of this context, and 95% of what I’ve learned about technology and computing came on my own, informally, pushed by my own interest to learn it.

Even so, I’m mostly playing chopsticks. And if we’re honest about it, most of the practices and tools we talk about in this network aren’t much more than a repackaging of old practice. It’s still about us owning the process and expectations. It’s not really about giving kids a freedom to learn and create with computers.

By the way, if you don’t think Kay is calling into question the whole enterprise, reread the first two paragraphs of his response.

For more on Kay’s work, see his Viewpoints Research Institute website where he writes:

We want to start with the teaching and learning of old and new “powerful ideas”; create much better human-computer environments that allow for authoring, sharing and representing the new ideas; create new user-interfaces that can help children and adults “learn and do” the new ideas; and, invent new, fundamental computing technologies to serve as the raw material for the next stage of the computer revolution.

Nice.

The Three Narratives

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 08:25:17 -0400

So, this is really thin, early-morning thinking, but I’m trying to describe what I think are the three competing narratives around schooling at the moment. To be honest, I think I’ve done a pretty bad job of it, but I thought I’d post it up anyway to see if some of you might help me flesh it out a bit more clearly.

Here they are:

1. Schools are broken. The way forward is to make schools better by doubling down on traditional outcomes, state-mandated standardized tests, school choice, and test-based accountability for teachers. The state decides what will be taught and when it will be taught, and, importantly, what will be assessed. Technology’s dual role in this is first to “personalize” delivery of the curriculum to each student using adaptive learning platforms and, second, to provide all students access to “the best teachers” and “best content” available via the Web as a way to increase efficiency. ”Student learning” is defined by comparison test scores year to year and is “managed” by the system. Policy makers and businessmen who are, for the most part, not educators, are chief drivers of reforms.

2. Schools are not broken, but can be improved. The way forward is to make schools better by reducing the emphasis on standardized tests, rethinking teacher training and assessment, and increasing local control over school decisions. Thinking about curriculum and classrooms is rooted in traditional systems and structures, and schools are still places where state-created outcomes are delivered to students. Technology’s role is to support instruction and student learning, which is measured primarily by teacher created assessments and summative evaluations. Traditional educators are the primary drivers of change thinking and reforms.

3. Schools as currently constructed are not broken but increasingly irrelevant. Abundant connections to content, knowledge and people created by the Web requires a fundamental rethinking of traditional structures and systems. The way forward is to change the emphasis on student learning from “what” to learn to, instead, “how” to learn. Technology’s role is to support both students and teachers as inquiry, discovery based learners with an emphasis on creating, connecting, collaborating, and sharing authentic, real-world work. Learning is assessed by performance, achievement of teacher-student negotiated outcomes, and contribution. Educators and connected learners are the chief drivers of these reforms.

My biggest struggle is with #2. I’m pretty clear what this group doesn’t want (see #1), but I’m not totally sure what they advocate for, especially in terms of the role of technology.

Anyway…be gentle. ;0)

What Personalized Learning Can't Do

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 07:45:00 -0400

Sarah Garland:

The personalized learning that ed-tech pioneers are talking about now involves using data points like test scores, attendance and, perhaps someday, information about students gathered from games or their internet searches, to home [sic] in what students need academically. Maybe more high-tech systems and detailed data would have helped teachers recognize how far behind many students were on the path to graduation.

But would it have helped teachers figure out how to help a student deal with her rage issues so she could get over her frustrations in science class? Or how to keep a young student who was mocked for being gay at school and at home from losing hope and help him stay focused on his strengths? Or how to salvage the academic career of a student whose prospects once looked promising and who suddenly stopped caring about his future?

I still think more and more this is the value that we have to begin to articulate first. I’m becoming convinced that adaptive learning systems will flourish in this “let’s do better on the tests” moment. And while there is a great deal that troubles me about that, I think they have a role to play in learning. But not at the expense of people and places that focus on the more important mindsets that students need to develop to be real lifelong learners, and the challenges that kids need help overcoming to be ready to learn in the first place.

It's Not an Audition

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 08:22:49 -0400

Seth Godin:

We have no idea in advance who the great contributors are going to be. We know that there’s a huge cohort of people struggling outside the boundaries of the curated, selected few, but we don’t know who they are.

That means that the old systems, the ones where just a few people were anointed to be the chosen authors, chosen contributors, chosen musicians—that system left a lot of people out in the cold. The new open systems embrace waste. They understand that most people won’t contribute and most contributions won’t be any good. But that’s fine, because this openness means that the previously unfound star now gets found.

The curated business, then, will ultimately fail because it keeps missing this shoulder, this untapped group of talented, eager, hard-working people shut out by their deliberately closed ecosystem. Over time, the open systems use their embrace of waste to winnow out the masses and end up with a new elite, a self-selected group who demonstrate their talent and hard work and genius over time, not in an audition.

Go ahead and minimize these open systems at your own peril. Point to their negative outliers, inconsistency and errors, sure, but you can only do that if you willfully ignore the real power: some people, some of the time, are going to do amazing and generous work… If we’ll just give them access to tools and get out of their way.

And this is especially true in closed systems that have hard and fast measures around “quality.” As Tony Baldasaro points out, there is great genius in our children that our systems don’t explicitly value or account for. Now that our kids can share that value and connect around it without us, our inability to embrace and honor the work that doesn’t fit neatly into our box of curriculum will decrease our value moving forward even more.

The Arrogance of $$$

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 08:34:50 -0400

Jack Schneider:

Whatever the wishes of scale-obsessed educational entrepreneurs, schools still appear to improve slowly. There are no easy solutions and no quick fixes. But this cohort of reformers, led by a posse of assertive billionaires and their allies, is united in its faith and unprecedented in its influence. As such, setbacks alone are hardly enough to challenge the way they approach school reform. And that’s a problem. Not just because they are so frequently wrong, but because each time they make the case for a new reform, they blast public school leaders, disrespect what teachers know about classrooms, disregard most of the research on school improvement, and frame our schools as failures. That isn’t common sense; that’s arrogance.