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Education Funding Opinion

The Ed Sector’s Sara Mead Says “Small Ideas Only, Please”

By Alexander Russo — February 15, 2007 1 min read
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No big ideas for the Ed Sector’s Sara Mead, thank you very much. She says she prefers “small-bore ones” instead. And then she cryptically links to yet another DC schools article -- enough already -- without really making any point.

Mead’s knee-jerk disdain for “big, flashy ideas” like amending the Constitution to make education a Constitutional right might be understandable if it weren’t so obviously ill-considered, if we weren’t already so used to the Ed Sector’s tendency towards quick dismissals of any ideas that aren’t “theirs,” and if Mead’s boss Andy hadn’t just the day before highlighted a very similar provision as something that could “radically alter education accountability.”

Creating a new right of action for parents sounds pretty big -- and pretty similar -- to me. It probably won’t happen, either. Neither did opportunity to learn standards (remember those?) or national testing (so far). But that’s not really the point. Good and bad, viable or not in the current situation, big ideas give us a better sense of the far edges of the table we’re playing on, instead of always playing on the same two-inch square in the middle all day.

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