Rose vs Black

It is hard to compare the writing of Mike Rose and the video commentary of Lewis Black.  Although they both speak of the educational system and the changes that they feel should be made, the written peace was serious and the video clip was comical.  It was hard to take it seriously, even though it did have some good points if you looked past the comedy.

Rose states the we need “To stop looking for the structural or technological magic bullet – whether it’s charter schools or value-added analysis – that will improve education. Just when you think the lesson is learned – that the failure of last year’s miracle cure is acknowledged and lamented – our attention is absorbed by a new quick fix.”  In the video commentary, Black he says that “charter schools are great but most kids are in public schools.  What ideas do we have for fixing them?”  They both talk about charter schools, but it is not the best answer when it comes to education.

Rose also adds to the list, “To stop making the standardized test score the gold-standard of student achievement and teacher effectiveness. In what other profession do we use a single metric to judge goodness? Imagine judging competence of a cardiologist by the average of her patients’ cardiograms.”  In Black’s commentary, he talks about how America is falling behind other countries when it comes to subjects like math and science.  Almost every other category we have fallen behind, except one.  Kids from the USA ranked number one in confidence.”  How is confidence supposed to help if we lack the basic other skills to get ahead in the world?”