In chapter 9 of her book, Darling-Hammond starts off with a quote from John Dewey, which, in part reads: "What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children..." In an ideal world, we would all agree on these "wants," and even what it looks like to be "the best and wisest," but, we all know that agreement upon anything is a difficult achievement. Education is no different. In her third principle for creating quality and equality in education, Darling-Hammond pushes for equitable and adequate resources for schools and students. The difficulty with creating equity, which is seen in society as a whole, is that districts which have more (like basic-aid/community-funded districts) would not be willing to give up the funds and resources they have access to in order to help "level the playing field" for those in need. Although this aspect of her approach seems highly unlikely to come to fruition, there were a few other areas in which progress does seem to be occurring. For example, in terms of establishing meaningful learning goals, it does appear that Common Core is addressing this. Clearly, they don't go as far as the "international standards, curriculum, and assessments," that Darling-Hammonds is pushing for, but it's a start in the way that she discussed only a handful of topics being studied at length in high-achieving countries. Now, with Common Core, U.S. schools should be doing similarly.
4 Comments
Dina
11/22/2015 11:57:59 am
In the ideal world schools would have equal access to resources and support in order to provide a quality, equitable education for all students.
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Lori
11/22/2015 01:24:39 pm
I agree that Common Core standards can help students learn more deeply, while covering fewer topics. In the primary grades, though, we still need to ensure that we have time to teach basic skills like phonics, handwriting, number sense, addition, etc. Since most deeper topics require reading, writing, and basic math, it's important that young students develop mastery of those foundational skills, too.
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Roger
11/24/2015 11:24:29 am
You raise a very good point that Common Core and the NGSS are a step in the direction that the international community has gone with respect to fewer, deeply studied disciplinary core ideas. I agree the Darling-Hammond especially in science where the lists of content factoids could be virtually endless and a student that masters these might still not be able to apply or transfer them to a real situation.
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Andrew
11/24/2015 10:29:22 pm
You raise an interesting point about how those with the most resources will have to lose out in order for those at the bottom to be uplifted. It will be interesting to see the way this conversation continues to manifest.
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Kirstin
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