Chalkbeat Ideas: Education reform, research, reading, politics

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.Earlier this month, I wrote about efforts to revive the bipartisan school reform coalition that dominated Washington circa 1996 to 2015. It was this coalition that ushered in No Child Left Behind, test-based teacher evaluations, the growth of charter schools, and the Common Core standards.According to education historian Diane Ravitch, these efforts decisively failed. “The reformers look back to their glory days with nostalgia. Parents and students don’t,” she wrote in response to my piece. Mike Petrilli, of the Fordham Institute, offers a different gloss on the same history: “Reform did work, until we stopped doing it.”Interpretations of the past can shape how people proceed in the future. That’s why this mini-debate matters. So, who’s right?Click here to continue reading.