Education Commissioner Challenges OSSE Report Assumptions

October 7 Quality Schools, Healthy Neighborhoods, and the Future of DC Event

Panel moderator Alice Rivlin called his comments provocative and audience members protested their implications, yet Institute for Education Science commissioner Mark Schneider asserted his academic prerogative to question assumptions and recommendations of the newly released report, Quality Schools, Healthy Neighborhoods, and the Future of DC. Challenging the report’s central premise that more families are inherently good for DC, Schneider suggested that the District could be healthy without more school children, or for that matter, more children.  Furthermore, the report, he said, attributed unrealistic powers to government to ensure people settled in specific neighborhoods and possibly one recommendation – to link communities and schools — would slow down school improvement.  More . . .