How my time at a “failing” high school blew me away
Journalist Kristina Rizga spent 4 years at SF’s Mission High and learned there was more to success than test scores
Emily Wilson’s interview with Kristina Rizga about what she saw when spent time hearing from students, teachers, parents and witnessing multiple sources of evidence of student learning provides a resource that we can use when people outside of education start telling us what is wrong. Here’s a reality that we inside buildings know and now reported on by a non-educator who might have more credibility than we can enjoy.
Excerpt: One thing I want to get across is that because we rarely hear from students and teachers, there is such a disconnect between what the so-called experts talk about and what’s happening in schools. Politicians, economists, philanthropists and state officials – they dominate the public discourse about education reform and what’s best in teaching and learning, and very few teachers and students are part of that conversation. There was a Media Matters study that [showed that] on cable news, only 9 percent of the guests are teachers when they talk about education. It just leads to policies that are misguided and bad. If it were up to teachers, we would have invested in teachers learning on the job, getting better, and leading at their schools. I’m hoping we shift our priorities to school level and local level accountability.