Reaction to Epilogue on April 20, 2009

I was relieved to read the epilogue of “Tinkering Toward Utopia” because it finally gave Tyack and Cuban opinion for education reform. As I was reading I began to understand that they shared in my belief that reform should come from teachers more often. I stated this in one of my previous blogs. I know that teachers have a lot of responsibilities and feel that they do not have time to contribute their time to reform. However, I feel that reform from teachers is really the only way to go. They know how activities in the classroom are structured every day and can offer the best advice on how to improve instruction. I sense that if teachers aren’t more proactive in reform efforts nothing will change. America has followed the same trend of top down reform for years and we continue to do so. Even President Obama has this strategy in his education policy. If this type of reform hasn’t worked so far it’s not going to work now or in the future. I hate to keep repeating myself but teachers need to make a concerted effort to become more involved in reform so that our schools can educate the children of America to the best of their ability. I was glad that Tyack & Cuban made the point that for years and years policy makers have been making the point that our children do not measure up to other children around the world. Policy makers say this because they are worried about America’s economy in the world market but they should be worried about students gaining as much knowledge as possible. This does not necessarily mean high test scores. This does not involve teahcers cramming as much information as possible into studnets heads. This means highly qualified teachers passionately sharing knowledge with students who are excited to learn.