ABSTRACT
In spite of a call for evidence-based practices, current educational reform, as Martin Carnoy suggests above, has little empirical warrant in research. Instead, it is grounded in large part in a new global free-market ideology, the business model du jour, a shift in emphasis from inputs to outcomes, high-stakes accountability measures, older notions of top-down social engineering, and a defi cit view of educators. Th is is a hybrid approach to reform which no longer has any claim to being new. It already has its own track record, and it is not a good one. It is becoming increasingly apparent, for instance, that a high-stakes accountability approach has resulted in massive unintended consequences, perverse incentives, and little real progress in raising student achievement or closing the achievement gap (Abernathy, 2007; Nichols & Berliner, 2007; Rothstein, 2004). Appropriating a civil rights era concern for social and racial equality, current reforms call on educators to raise test scores, absent a call to advocate for the social policies that an authentic concern for low-income students and students of color would require.
