StickWithANose

In a weird sort of way, it is comforting to know that I can always count of EdWeek to be a rock steady, consistent and reliably craptastic corporate tool used to pimp the ideological narratives being constructed by venture philanthropists and think tank trolls. Today, the digital rag presents us with a breathless article about the shocking lack of “innovation” in public schooling brought to you by the National Chamber of Commerce.

A report card issued Monday on state-level innovation in education found what a trio of ideologically varied groups sees as deeply disturbing results, with most states earning C’s, D’s, or even F’s in such key areas as technology, high school quality, and removal of ineffective teachers.

The report, “Leaders and Laggards,” uses state data and existing and original research to assign letter grades to states, based on seven indicators of innovation: school management, finance, hiring and evaluation of teachers, removal of ineffective teachers, data, “pipeline to postsecondary” (or high school quality), and technology.

The report card incorporates many factors into a state’s overall letter grade for each of the seven indicators.

To weigh innovation in teacher hiring and evaluation, for example, the researchers measured a state’s percentage of alternatively certified teachers (the higher the better), whether the state uses national programs (such as Teach For America) to recruit educators, and other factors.

Of course, basic questions as to what exactly we mean by educational “innovation” is defined in a rather counter-intuitive way. It skips right over the idea of “innovation” as a concept that refers to creating new approaches to teaching, learning and curriculum development to policy inputs such as labor and recruiting policies!

It’s a beautiful trick in an evil kind of way. These jackasses are quite effectively re-defining the concept of educational “innovation” in popular debates so as to serve a very specific political agenda toward the appropriation of public schooling by the private sphere.