SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

An Unexpected Ally

We embarked on reading the latest addition to our lending library, The Flat World and Education: How America's commitment to equity will determine our future, by Linda Darling-Hammond, with some trepidation. Because the author has been identified by Newsweek Magazine as the "favorite of the unions", we were afraid that her book would be the usual diatribe against such things as standardized testing and merit pay. Now it's quite possible that we missed the woods for the trees, since there are an awful lot of words in this book, but we think that Dr. Darling-Hammond is calling for the introduction of measures that will bring about the success of every child in school - exactly what SQE wants too! Here is an excerpt from the conclusion to her book.

"Creating schools that enable all children to learn requires the development of systems that enable all educators and schools to learn. At heart, this is a capacity-building enterprise leveraged by clear, meaningful learning goals and intelligent, reciprocal accountability systems that guarantee skillful teaching in well-designed, adequately resourced schools for all learners. It is not only possible but imperative that America close the achievement gap among its children by addressing the yawning opportunity gap that denies these fundamental rights." (p. 326)

We could have said it better ourselves!