Guest Commentary: Education Next's Michael Petrilli on 'One Size Fits Most'

Michael J. Petrilli is the executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and the executive editor of Education Next. Recently, he published a column on the Huffington Post which he challenged two competing views of education reform to join together and create a system in which "One Size Fits Most."

On one side, Petrilli says is "the Coherence Camp. Its argument, most recently made in David Cohen's 'Teaching and Its Predicaments,' is that America's teachers are being set up to fail by a system that is fragmented, divided and confused about its mission. Teachers are given little clear guidance about what's expected of them: Even when goals are clear, they lack the tools to succeed, pre-service training is completely disconnected from classroom expectations, and never-ending 'reform' pulls up the roots of promising efforts before they are given time to flower."

"Dynamism Devotees, " Petrilli continues, "on the other hand, look at America's private sector (and especially Silicon Valley) with envy. They envision an education marketplace full of can-do problem-solvers, myriad options for parents, and lots of customization for kids. They don't even want a 'system' per se but a raucous 'sector' that welcomes new entrepreneurs and washes away legacy operators if they don't keep up with the times. To them, the American higher education sector looks like a much stronger alternative to our K-12 system, what with its rise of new competitors (many of them online), flexible, student-centered funding, and responsiveness to consumer demand.

"So you hear Dynamism Devotees chanting the 'every school a charter school' mantra, and preaching the exciting potential of customized digital learning, the rise of upstart providers of teacher training and the imperative of 'backpack funding for schools," he adds.

Click here to read Petrilli's complete post.