Remorse Code (Or Comments From A Crib Strangler)
Those who publicly advocate for the kind of education policies put forth in "Waiting for Superman" are now seeing the equivalent of a letter-high fastball down the middle. They can wait on it and crank it out, using the buzz created by a major motion picture to advance the movie’s/campaign’s arguments at face value. I'm a little late on this (at least by blog standards), but over at Fordham’s Flypaper blog, Mike Petrilli saw this fastball, yet instead of unloading, he sacrifice bunted the runner into scoring position for the good of the team.
Responding to an interview in which Davis Guggenheim, the film’s director, claims that charter schools have "cracked the code" on how to educate even the poorest kids, Petrilli warns against the hubris of thinking that we are anywhere beyond first steps when it comes to fixing urban schools. He points out that charters like KIPP benefit from selection effects (more motivated and informed parents seek out the schools), and that the degree to which these schools have actually "closed the gap" between poor and affluent schools has been somewhat oversold. Petrilli also notes that while some of these schools seem to have "cracked the code," there is still little idea of how to expand them to serve more than a tiny minority of poor kids.
Thoughtful comments like these should remind those of us who care about expanding quality education that, although we may have canyon-sized differences between us on what needs to be done (Petrilli claims that those who disagree with him are trying to "strangle" reforms "in their crib"), there may be a few important respects in which we are closer than we may appear. Still (in addition to the crib-strangling allegations), I would take issue with one of Petrilli’s central points – that charters like KIPP may have "cracked the code," and the main problem now is how to scale them up. From my perspective, the "code" is specific policies and practices that produce results. And on this front, we’re practically still using decoder rings from cereal boxes.