Written by Mark Fitzgerald
MAE 2011 Volume: 6 Issue: 4 (May)
In a policy speech last month at Princeton University, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called for a new approach to teaching that would raise the bar on education standards and spur competitiveness and achievement.
“If you look at education as a civil rights issue, as an economic imperative, as an issue of national security—I look at it through all three of those lenses—we have to get better faster than we ever have in education,” Duncan said in an auditorium packed with students, faculty and community members.
The U.S. has slipped from first to ninth in the world in college graduation rates, and there is a 25 percent dropout rate in high schools. Duncan’s plan to reform education calls for overhauling the No Child Left Behind law; increasing the accessibility and quality of early education; bringing school boards, management and unions to the table to collectively bargain for reform; recruiting the next generation of teachers; and embracing technology as a teaching and growth tool.
“We’re putting 4 billion dollars behind the bottom 5 percent of schools,” he said. “That is a radical investment, not in the status quo, but in transformation.” But what exactly will be the mechanism of this transformation? Whistles from above seldom translate into effective policy implementation and practice on the local level.
Viable targets and benchmarks are a good start, but there will likely be more than a few hiccups in the machinery. To push accountability to the front and center by eliminating laws that prohibit links from student achievement to teacher evaluations without regard for intangible aspects of trust, creativity and community—virtues so fundamental to learning—is short-sighted and misses the mark.
There is no question that there are visible cracks in the current model. Four billion dollars can buy plenty of solutions—but will they be sustainable? “We’re going to continue to push very hard,” promised Duncan, “bring in the best talent to turn schools around, and when we do that with a sense of urgency, our students can be extraordinarily successful.” Let’s hope the means of that success is judicious and tenable.
I welcome your comments.
 Mark Fitzgerald, Editor 301-670-5700 x118 markf@kmimediagroup.com |
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