An empty chair sits next to Ivan Liška as he scribbles choreography onto paper. Staging a ballet once choreographed by the great Marius Petipa, Liška imagines the Petipa sitting right next to him, giving him a kick in the shin when the choreography veers too much from what the master would have done.
Next week, Boston Ballet will give the North American premiere of Liška's Le Corsaire, a ballet that Petipa staged four times during his lifetime, in 1863, 1868, 1880 and 1899, after its 1856 world premiere in Paris. As with many ballets, multiple versions exist, staged by various choreographers. Liška chose to revisit Petipa's notation for his version, returning to a very classical style.
Who doesn't want accountability in education? That was the selling point for No Child Left Behind (NCLB). It was the selling point for the Massachusetts Education Reform Act (MERA) of 1993. It was even a selling point for Finnish reforms in teacher education in 1970.
But how did Congress and most of our education researchers and policy makers get frozen into thinking that test-based accountability is the only kind of accountability?
