Dive Brief:
- In a personal blog post, Arthur H. Camins, the director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education, explores the push for "innovation" in education and school reform.
- Camins starts his post by pointing out the questionable results of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development's recent report on world-wide innovation. For the United States, standardized testing was its greatest innovation. "Are these innovations better?" Camins asks.
- Camins says the question of innovation comes down to moral high ground: It's not about the evidence supporting whether or not a system is good or bad, bur rather who has the moral high ground when arguing their opinion. "Public acceptance of policy prescriptions turns not on technical determinations, but on values identification and moral judgments," Camins writes.
Dive Insight:
Camins points out some of today's most popular school reform innovations: "high-stakes testing, charter schools, merit pay and diminishment of teachers due process and collective bargaining rights" and argues that these marketplace solutions are bad from an evidentiary and moral perspective. However, in order to sway public opinion, understanding the moral implications of such programs is key in order to changing the course of the reform efforts.
Camins looks at these various innovations and points out their flaws, saying many may feel like reformers are "lying" or spinning the evidence to support these efforts. "How can they ignore evidence that high-stakes testing narrows the curriculum, restricts classroom creativity, and undermines motivational authentic learning," he writes before going over potential issues with all of the reform efforts. Ultimately, however, he contends reformers are not lying when they push some of these backwards innovations. Rather, they are unable to separate the reality from their moral biases.
