This is one of Gary Rubinstein’s best posts, wherein he challenges the new co-leader of Teach for America to give more thought to his facile reference to “the status quo.”
The post follows some tweets between Gary and Matt Kramer. Gary explains that those who disagree with TFA are not defending the status quo.
Gary writes:
“I could easily make a list of things that I’d like to change. I could bore you for hours about how I feel the math curriculum in this country and this world has evolved into something that leaves out the thing that makes math great — beauty. I could also very easily pick places where money is wasted on consultants and bad education software, and also places where not enough money is spent to do things right. But I’m called a status quo defender, still, just because I think that certain things should not be changed and that other things should not be changed, just for the sake of changing them, but until something that won’t make things worse is devised.
“So I am opposed to school closings. I can understand the allure of school closings — lighting a fire under the butts of the staff of a school (the ‘adults’ as reformers like to call them) to get their best work out of them. But I’m opposed to them because I feel they cause more harm than good. Is that why I’m a status quo defender? Because of all the things that I think should not be changed (just as ‘reformers have a host of things that should not be changed) this controversial practice is a new change that I do not embrace?
“I am opposed to using ‘value-added’ to judge teacher quality which, in turn, will get used to decide on pay increases and firings. I’m not convinced that a computer algorithm has been devised yet that can calculate what a group of thirty students ‘should’ get with an ‘average’ teacher on a poorly made state test. I’ve seen so many examples of a teacher getting wildly different results in consecutive years and even getting wildly different results in the same year when they teach two different grade levels to have any confidence in this golden calf of school reform.”
And he adds: “I don’t know of anyone in my camp who would say that we should do ‘nothing.’ And, yes, it is better to do nothing sometimes than to do something when that ‘something’ is likely to make matters worse.”
TFA, he points out, is deeply resistant to changing their own status quo.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
NCLB and its associated nincompoopery has been going on for at least a dozen years.
Wouldn’t that be the status quo?
Yup!
In many locations, this era of education “reform” began in the 80s, following the shock doctrine, manufactured crisis of the Reagan administration’s publication, “A Nation at Risk,” such as with passage of the Chicago School Reform Act of 1988, so “reform” has been the status quo for 25 years.
Brilliant piece. You are correct about this Rubenstein’s article. It’s so right on!
Greedy deformers like Duncan, Rhee, Gates, Broad, Klein, Bloomberg, and their cheerleaders are the status quo.
Well, I did not agree with everything Romney was promising when he campaigned for President, but one of his promises–not that he would have necessarily kept it– was to get rid of the Department of education. had he been elected and actually done so, that would NOT have been the status quo.
“Status quo” refers to the current state of affairs. So called reformers have been driving the current state of affairs in the education field for years. The current status quo is marked by school closings, teacher churn, the continued use of scientifically disproved VAM scores, teacher union bashing and the implementation of the untested Common Core.
The status quo has its champions including Rhee, Kopp, Duncan and Rahm.
http://studentslast.blogspot.com/2012/08/defender-of-status-quo-americas-newest.html The question becomes who among us is willing to stand up to these “champions?” Gary Rubinstein is one. Ravitch another. But our collective voice is not being adequately represented by our timid unions. What can we do to make our unions understand our discontent and dare we say, anger?
I am a graduate student at the University of Minnesota working on my PhD in literacy and I am deeply troubled by the university that I am attending partnering with an organization like TFA. The university claims to be dedicated to closing the achievement gap and to educating quality educators that are dedicated the profession, not just using it as a career stepping stone; however, at the same time the University of Minnesota then proposes to partners with TFA. Many people are opposed to this partnership and are trying to get the word out, as an educator TFA is an insult to my profession.