Jersey Jazzman parses the latest article by Joel Klein, who frankly admits that the real goal of reform is to open up the education system to entrepreneurs and investors. As more start-ups produce new products and innovations, schools are sure to benefit, he predicts.
Klein also thinks that the R&D cycle for schools is much too slow. Randomized trials in education take years, but Apps for cellphones can be improved in a matter of months without all that slow processing of information.
This appalls Jersey Jazzman. He writes:
It’s really amazing that Klein is comparing the education of a child with a smartphone app. If you buy an app, it costs you maybe 99 cents; if it doesn’t work, you trash it. When you’re a school district, however, you spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of public dollars on curricula that affect every student in your district. If you buy a piece of junk that doesn’t work, you’ve abused the trust of both the taxpayers and the children.
Don’t you think maybe it’s worth taking some time to get these things right?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
From JJ’s article, what Klein said: “At last there’s a common definition of what “good” looks like for students and teachers, at least in core subjects like math and English.”
OH, there is a common definition of what “good” is?? Really?? Maybe some believe that the CCSS are a “common definition” but there are many who disagree. And many of us believe, as jersey jazzman pointed out, that standardization is not a good thing, that divergent creative thinking outshines by far that standardization.
So, no, there is no “common definition of what ‘good’ looks like”.
Please, Joel Klein, go back to being Chief Consigliere for Rupert Murdoch, that’s what you do best and with a reputed compensation of $4 million a year.
The thing about kids is that they do, annoyingly, take years to develop. For example, the first kids in California who experienced class size reduction in the primary grades (which started in 1997) didn’t graduate from high school until 2010 and will not have graduated from college yet.
Test scores are meant to be a proxy for the true outcome of long term success; they are not the outcome.
As always, thanks for the shout out Dr. R!