GROUPTHINK In School Reform — Who Needs It?
Two leading American education analysts — Rick Hess and Robert Pondiscio — have experienced searing experiences around the issues of groupthink.
Hess, with the American Enterprise Institute, wrote (Jn 15’16) that the Ed Reform community is as loaded today with groupthink as the Teacher Ed Colleges have been for so long. The progressive orthodoxy rules: “Dissenters, whether students or faculty, were dismissed as troublemakers.” Outside the faculties, Ed Reformers critical of the dominant reform movements have no place to “look for refuge”.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2016/06/school_reform_is_the_new_ed_school.html
Hess, in an earlier article (Jn 1’16) figured that “90% of ‘school reform’ land” is progressive and that their “’by any means necessary’ ethos” is a method that does not square with conservatives. He figures that the general population outside schools is an even 50/50 split between conservatives and progressives.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2016/06/making_sense_of_left-right_school_reform_divide.html
Pondiscio, of the Thomas Fordham Institute, wrote (May 25’16) about “The Left's drive to push conservatives out of education reform”. The comments section to the article was suspended because they were “getting unnecessarily acrimonious and threatening. ” https://edexcellence.net/articles/the-lefts-drive-to-push-conservatives-out-of-education-reform
If critics in the education communities are complaining of being squeezed out in education discussions, where does that leave the “consumers” — general public, students, parents, taxpayers? This goes way beyond “producer capture” and “rent-seekers’ dominion”, doesn’t it? That’s one good reason that “uber” ideas are taking hold — education savings accounts, charter schools, online learning, home education, etc. Anything to avoid the nastiness!
[published in Filling The Pail https://gregashman.wordpress.com/2016/07/24/the-solution-to-educations-groupthink/ ]