school reform

I was so impressed with the Politics of Blocking outlined in Chubb and Moe's book - Liberating Learning that Heartland asked me to do a book review. You can find it here.

Jay Greene does it again with a great link to Sandra Stotsky's review of the latest in the 21st Century Skills push. From Jay's Blog:

Sandra Stotsky has an excellent review in the current issue of The Weekly Standard of Tony Wagner’s book, The Global Achievement Gap.

Here’s the money quote:

It was pretty nice of iNACOL (the online learning group) to give out copies of Liberating Learning by Terry Moe and John Chubb at the ALEC Conference last week. It is a pretty easy read that I finished on the plane to Mississippi yesterday.

I wish I had read it five years ago.

Moe and Chubb give you a primer on the political strategy of the teacher’s union. They call it the politics of blocking. The key points they make are dead on:

1. Teacher’s unions are very powerful at the state and local level