“We don’t have time to really learn U.S. history because we’re preparing for the exam”
Valerie Strauss
The Washington Post
7/21/2011
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who strongly supports school reform that centers on standardized test-based accountability for students, schools and teachers, has decided to send his children to a private school that doesn’t obsess on standardized tests.
Emanuel, who served in the White House as President Obama’s chief of staff for a few years, and his wife have chosen, according to a local radio station CBS News 2 in Chicago, to send their three children to the prestigious University of Chicago Laboratory Schools in Hyde Park.
It’s the same school that President Obama’s daughters attended when they lived in Chicago. Sasha and Malia Obama now attend the private Sidwell Friends School.
The decision where to send your children to school is certainly a personal one, even for public officials. But it is worth publicly noting what public officials who support test-based school reform — including Obama’s main education initiative, Race to the Top — choose to do with their own children when given the chance.
Obama and now Emanuel opted for schools that do not require teachers to spend hours a week drilling kids to pass standardized tests, and they don’t evaluate teachers by how well their students do on those assessments…
The article continues at The Washington Post.
H/T Trevor Loudon on Facebook.
