RE: Question 1: Quality Education

Marge Piercy once wrote, "if what we change does not change us, we are playing with blocks." (Not to put down playing with blocks -- my wife teaches kindergarten, I once taught pre-K-2 and led a 15-child playgroup, and I know that play is vital learning.) Students and teachers should both be learning from and with each other. Learning is more than receiving a body of knowledge (though it may include that). A quality education is an education that enables learners to perceive and function in reality, that challenges us to grow and engage with the world and each other. I am very uncomfortable with norm-referenced tests because I believe they make education --or at least assessment and accountability -- inherently competitive. Student learning is not being measure against the objective standard of skills and facts, or the subjective standard of growth and development, but against other students; 50% of all students will always be "below normal" or "below average" or "below standard" under such measurement schemes. Student learning is about human liberation -- freedom from fear and want, freedom of speech and thought -- and about human solidarity -- ability to cooperate, collaborate, share across cultures, generations and other dividing lines. That is what we should be promoting and measuring in our schools.