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In response to our February interview with education experts Richard Murnane of Harvard and Greg Duncan of UC Irvine, listener Dick Atlee suggested we get additional commentary from Susan Ohanian.Click here for free audiobook download from Audible, and earn $15 for the PBC Podcast!
Ohanian is a veteran classroom teacher who’s written a number of books about education policy, and maintains a blog on related topics. Following our recent podcast with Murnane and Duncan, listener Dick Atlee at University of Maryland suggested we get some other views from Ohanian.
Her view is that as long as many public school students live in poverty, changes in education policy won’t improve outcomes. She offers critical views of No Child Left Behind, Common Core standards, and Race to the Top, the Obama program that links funding to adoption of Common Core. She notes the influence of billionaire Bill Gates and his foundation, partnering with Education secretary Arne Duncan to promote Common Core, and expresses her concern that data collection and “teaching to the test” might produce future workers for the tech industry at the expense of critical thinking, verbal skills, and other types of learning that are not easily quantified.