Steve Jobs was in town speaking to a group of education reformers.
Essentially the guru of Apple said schools would never improve as long as teachers couldn't be fired by principals. This statement made me wonder what Jobs knows about public schools, the power of principals, and the actual problems present in today's Texas classrooms. Jobs decried the teachers' unions in a state where unions barely exist, and teacher unions wield almost no power. What's interesting is that Jobs' message was probably more threatening to school book publishers and the textbook adoption process over which Texas exerts tremendous influence. I agree with what Jobs was proposing regarding using online textbooks instead of paper ones. However, I believe that the previous post on relearning learning and creating communities of learners via the internet is a much more powerful paradigm.
Now I have to find this group so powerful that they can get Steve Jobs and Michael Dell in the same room. It sounds like this group was created to support the development of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, known to most Texans as the TAKS.
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