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There's definitely a tension between the way teaching is talked about and understood at the political level and how everyday average Americans think about teachers.
Dana Goldstein -
I don't think school reform should be motivated by missionary zeal. I think it should be motivated by evidence of what works.
Dana Goldstein
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What happens from about 1954 to the late 1980s, is that we see a huge wave of optimism that school desegregation is going to be the way to improve educational outcomes for poor children of color. And we see a consensus build on the left and in the center that this is going to be a transformative education movement like none other we've seen in American history.
Dana Goldstein -
I feel that people have asked me my age I don't actually think that thirty is particularly young for a first book to come out. And I sometimes wonder if a male author would have been asked this question so frequently.
Dana Goldstein -
Just to deliver one high-quality 45 minute lesson requires many hours of planning in advance.
Dana Goldstein -
I don't think school reform should be motivated by missionary zeal. I think it should be motivated by evidence of what works. I have been critical of Teach For America in the past but I think one of the things about their model that's interesting is that they're constantly looking at it and whether what they're doing works and reassessing their model, and making changes. So to the extent that I believe everyone in the education sector should be looking at evidence, reassessing, making tweaks to figure out what works, I think it's a positive model.
Dana Goldstein -
The first generation of school reformers I talk about - nineteenth century education reformer Horace Mann, Catharine Beecher - they are true believers in their vision for public education. They have a missionary zeal. And this to me connects them a lot to folks today, whether it's education activist Campbell Brown or former D.C. public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. It's a righteous sense, a reform push that's driven by a strong belief in a particular set of solutions.
Dana Goldstein -
Coming to the civil rights movement in the twentieth century, we begin to have this idea that's still with us today, which is that the main purpose of public education is closing achievement gaps.
Dana Goldstein