The Five Great Reforms

Inventing the education system our children deserve requires five great reforms:

Goals: The Common Core Standards Initiative is a big step forward toward consistently high expectations for America's young people.

Time: The short agricultural school year with groups of age-cohorts marching in lockstep through textbooks is giving way to personalized digital learning anywhere anytime at any speed.

Choice: District-defined attendance boundaries are giving way to a variety of quality options--not just school choice, but course choice and lesson choice.

Money: Funding adults is giving way to funding kids. There will be more choices and more time when money follows the student to the best possible learning experience.

Employment: The last great reform--the new performance-based employment bargain. Great starting salaries, performance-based pay, and multiple advancement opportunities will raise the level of talent in education and improve student outcomes.

On the last point, we saw a small but important step forward last week. With support from Gov Jindal, the Louisiana house education committee unanimously passed a thoughtful teacher evaluation bill that incorporates student performance data. The common sense bill still faces a floor battle. WaPo summarizes, "having thwarted efforts to revamp teacher evaluations in Florida, teachers unions are now aiming to block reform in Louisiana. An intense lobbying campaign is underway to defeat Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal's ambitious education reform agenda." WaPo lends their support to Gov. Jindal suggesting that "State lawmakers should follow his lead in standing up for student interests" and "Mr. Jindal is right to push for meaningful change."

While the feds can help accelerate progress, the Great Reforms will take gubernatorial leadership. Jindal stood up for kids this week. Let's hope he doesn't stand alone.

 

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Comments

[Elizabeth Bisbee Silber]

10:17 PM on 05/03/2010

What I think is often misleading about these "revamp education" is the underlying assumption that student performance on standardized tests directly correlates to teacher performance. It does in a way, to be sure. But if I teach 11th grade, and 60% of my students read at 8th grade level or lower, I'm not only teaching my content area, I'm also teaching reading. Contrast that with a teacher who has a majority of students who read at or above grade level. His/her job is dramatically different from mine, and the testing doesn't account for that. I had good test results, but I know that not all of that was due to my effectiveness. I taught AP courses, so I automatically had a more accomplished bunch. It's not an apples to apples comparison.

[been2there]

05:50 PM on 05/03/2010

No reform will work unless students are held accountable for their behaviors: they must go to class, on time, and every time; they must do all homework, whether preparatory, practice, or product; they must listen in class, refrain from disruption, participate in activities, and get help as needed. Teachers must be able to hand a quick and effective deterrent- in California, a parent must be given 24 hours notice and must consent to the detention. Guess how often that fails!

[jhNY]

01:16 PM on 05/03/2010

Jindal's approval for nearly any damn thing is the last thing you need to make your schools-can-be-profitable-to-folks like-me programs look palatable to the rest of us.