Presidential Commisson on Educational Ethics

This week, I've been highlighting a variety of ethical dilemmas that bedevil educators, school leaders, educational policy makers, parents, and informed citizens. I've touched on ethical questions about classroom discipline, promotion and retention practices, civic and moral education in ideologically fraught times, and school closure debates. For better or worse, I haven't provided "answers" to any of these dilemmas. Rather, I've been trying to sound two consistent themes.

First, everyday decisions in education policy and practice are laden with multiple, often competing values and principles that admit no easy answers. It is important for us to recognize and talk about this. Good education is not just a data-driven, "best practices" oriented, technocratic enterprise. It is also a values-driven enterprise. Education both is shaped by, and helps to shape, moral and political principles that are highly contested and also unavoidable.

Second, and relatedly, if we want to take ethical action in education, we shouldn't try to go it alone. We need to talk with people who occupy different roles and have different perspectives from those we're used to hearing. Teachers, parents, school leaders, state policy makers, researchers, and yes, even philosophers, are likely to develop far more nuanced and insightful, empirically justified, and pragmatically effective responses to dilemmas of educational ethics if they explore these issues together....

Read more at Education Week.