This week, a few major themes surfaced in #edpolicy and #edreform tweets: debate on the purpose of education, discussion of how we fund and evaluate our education system, its teachers and its students, and argument over who’s voice is most important in those debates.

Many of the links posted and events covered in this weeks feed focused on No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, and the ideals and programming that these two federal programs entail.  These discussions included topics such as high stakes standardized testing, evaluating school success, raising teacher professionalism, the use of value added teacher data evaluations, and the effectiveness of common core standards.

This led to a broader discussion of who is responsible for education, with commentaries on youth voice, parent power, the influence of foundations and private funding and the role of teacher’s unions and larger education agencies in the creation of education policy.

Debates over these responsibilities seemed to reflect back on conflicting ideas of what the purpose of schooling is. Some articles discussed education’s economic necessity, creating workers and successful economies. Others pointed out the value of education as a tool for social mobility and personal gain, and that the denial of that education results in social/economic “stagnation”. Some said, “just teach the basics”, while others focused on the need for civic education and computer literacy in an increasingly technological and interconnected world. Still others focused on specific groups of students with policies concerning English Language Learners and the definition of Special Education.

Special events this week included “School Choice Week” with a focus on charter schools and vouchers (mostly by parents and teachers), as well as “No name-calling week” an anti-bullying movement aimed to keep schools a place of safety and growth (mostly teachers). The final piece of news was Apple’s announcement of digital textbooks available through iBooks and their viability in the school system, which had both positive and negative responses.

NEAToday: Next week is No Name Calling Week. Tweet us your ideas for stopping #bullying in our schools neatoday.org/2012/01/19/no-…

educationweek Textbook publishers are cheering #Apple’s new dive into the e-textbook market, not dreading it: bit.ly/zz1X5i

One of the most interesting anomalies of the week came from Diane Ravitch:

DianeRavitch RT: Read it and gasp: plunderbund.com/2011/07/15/vid…

This link spotlighted a controversial graduation ceremony in Ohio where the event speaker used the podium to give a religious speech, with great confusion from the audience, but little public response otherwise.

After reading the twitter feed, it’s obvious to me that many different definitions of “education reform” and “education policy” exist, and that those divided opinions can get very passionate about their point of view (even engaging in personal attack tweets, such as those aimed at Michelle Rhee and Diane Ravitch). Overall, I was frustrated with the number of complaints and the lack of solutions proposed. In order to create a better school system, we do need to identify problems, but it is more important that we discuss solutions to those problems and the specific changes we need to make.

To start such a discussion in our own class, I’d like to offer up a report from the Data Quality Campaign that was discussed this week at the national data summit in DC. Data-driven school systems are a popular solution in some policy circles today, but I think the subject needs a little more research and exploration and would be a great topic for discussion. This paper discusses some of the justifications for the system, as well as a clearer definition of what “data” means and how states can be using that data to help improve their schools. To learn more, read the report here and read Education Week’s review of the report here.