Friday, February 04, 2011

I'll Be On The Radio Tonight

Details are currently here--although the time is 11pm Eastern, not 9pm.

Description:
The Great Education Reform Debate Part 2, Conservative vs Liberal. Participants: In the Right Hand corner, Larry Sand and Darren Miller. In the left hand corner, The Frustrated Teacher and Jason The Public School Guy. The Topics: Standardized testing, Charter Schools, Teacher Tenure, School Vouchers. Listeners can be part of the debate. Call 805-285-9736
Podcasts for previous shows are available, so I assume this one will be available, too. Or you might be able to stream it live on iTunes! Click on the iTunes button at the link above if you have nothing better to do on a Friday night....

Update: Just finished our 90 minute roundtable discussion of the topics above on Neil Haley's radio show. Neil's link is above, Larry (in addition to being the president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network) comments at RedCounty.com, The Frustrated Teacher blogs here, and I do not have a link for Jason the Public School Guy (but please send one if you have it!).

It was refreshing to learn how much we agreed upon; sometimes the differences in our views were just where we would draw the line. At one point I thought I was in Bizarro World, as conservative Larry was touting the education system of socialist Sweden while one of the liberals supported less federal control over education (federalism!) and seemed to have a problem with the fact that vouchers could disproportionately help poor inner-city minority kids! Neil did a great job as moderator herding us cats.

I did some "show prep" and was armed with a couple pages of notes, much of which didn't come in handy--but those points that I did get to make, I like to think I made them well and forcefully.

What a treat! I'm sure plenty of you readers had a more eventful Friday night than I had, and I'm glad you did, but I wonder if you had as much fun as I had! I truly enjoy mental gymnastics, which is partly why I jumped at the opportunity to take part in this show. I would enjoy a similar opportunity in the future.

Want to listen? Click here and then click on the arrow just above the "Fav" heart

or click the iTunes button to download the podcast.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Darren, you were are very well spoken. Good job! I would love for you to write more about what you observed at the Oakland charter school.

Darren said...

Thank you--I listened to the podcast and determined that I have plenty of room for improvement when making persuasive arguments, but I appreciate the compliment!

I wrote about OMI a couple years ago here. Please take a read!

maxutils said...

I don't rate a phone call?

Darren said...

It was in Pittsburgh, PA!