Tennessee Education Reform Ignores Models of Success

The obvious flaws in "education reform" pushed in Tennessee and other states by Michelle Rhee and her ex-husband, TN Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman, are to heap blame on teacher unions, ignoring the real improvements which focus instead on education itself.

A scathing takedown of Rhee reminds readers:

"Only a tiny percentage of American children attend the kind of expensive, non-sectarian private schools where many of the elite send their children. It is worth noting that these schools generally avoid giving their students the standardized achievement tests that state education departments require, making the results public, and paying teachers on the basis of the scores, and that they almost never claim to be creating hyper-competitive, commercial-skills-purveying environments for their students. Sidwell Friends, of presidential-daughter fame, says it offers “a rich and rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum designed to stimulate creative inquiry, intellectual achievement and independent thinking in a world increasingly without borders.” That doesn’t sound like it would cut much ice with Michelle Rhee."

More background on Huffman here.