01.09.07
Tough choices
Radical changes in education. Maine is presently analyzing Governor Baldacci’s education proposal Local Schools, Regional Support. A report that was released on December 14th recommends more than just regions.
The Skills of the American Workforce (http://www.skillscommission.org/) unveiled a complete change of the American educational system. They didn’t waste any words in how and why this should be done:
Without these changes, the Commission said, the American standard of living will be in serious jeopardy.
And they are not saying to “fix” the K-12 system, but to replace it!
You must purchase the book, but can read the executive summary – http://www.skillscommission.org/pdf/exec_sum/ToughChoices_EXECSUM.pdf
Do you agree?
sharon_betts education paradigmsMaine
January 10, 2007 at 10:43 am
I just read the summary Sharon listed – Tough Choices.
New Skills of the American Workforce lays out a system in which Parents have vouchers, good schools will thrive and poor schools will die. Teachers are paid on a basis of the quality of their operation, not the numbers of years they have served.
I have been advocating this for 10 years. Nothing ever improves or changes unless driven by consumers. If we don’t change the system so the consumers (parents) are driving this market we will never see change.
January 10, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Vouchers sound good, paying simply on length of service seems
unreasonable. But I think you oversimplify the problems.
I think finding ways to improve poor schools is vital, but simply
offering vouchers is not the solution. What happens to those students
whose parents/guardians cannot or will not send their child beyond their local area? At what point would good schools decide enough? What vouchers will do in this regard is make it even easier for parents to stay uninvolved…”If I don’t like my child’s school I can just quit and take them somewhere else”.
Parents can “drive this market”, they *_should_* be driving this “market”; all they have to do is get involved and stay involved. If
you have the motivation to complain about your child’s education and
drive them to a different area for school, then you are equally as able to fight for local change. Attend school board meetings, stay in touch with teachers, make sure the Board and the school stays accountable. Like the real term limiter, the ballot box and the political process should be used.
Having only read the Summary it is difficult to assume what exactly is in it. What I did read sounds very promising; but, one of the
recommendations was to create excellent schools* everywhere*, and
vouchers don’t address that. The summary was exciting to read but I saw nothing to suggest they were recommending a voucher system of education, it sounded more like a radical rebuilding of our educational system.
Roy
you have the motivation to complain about your child’s education and
drive them to a different area for school, then you are equally as able to fight for local change. Attend school board meetings, stay in touch with teachers, make sure the Board and the school stays accountable. Like the real term limiter, the ballot box and the political process should be used.
Having only read the Summary it is difficult to assume what exactly is in it. What I did read sounds very promising; but, one of the
recommendations was to create excellent schools* everywhere*, and
vouchers don’t address that. The summary was exciting to read but I saw nothing to suggest they were recommending a voucher system of education, it sounded more like a radical rebuilding of our educational system.
Roy
January 10, 2007 at 12:28 pm
While I believe that changes are needed the idea that parents have not had the opportunity to be involved in the educational process is not accurate.
We have school board meetings where the public can be involved, we have the opportunity to voice directly to teachers and administrators, we have
PTas, we vote at the ballot box for people to represent us……..
historically poll after poll shows the majority is happy with their local schools……….it’s other peoples schools that is the problem.
The recognition for change must be across our society. To simply expect the consumer model to bring us the results is to set ourselves up.
The consumer model brings us fat kids who’s parents continue to eat at Mcdonalds ………great model for improving our schools.
I’m a bit tired of the parents as victims theme. In the past state elections one party painted the people of the state as victims of the democratic strangle hold on state government for the past
30 years. So the voters (consumers) voted im more democrats not fewer. Hardly the changes that the consumer model should bring about. But its is the results of the people who participated in the process and met their
democratic responsibilities.
Now I’m not making a political preference statement just pointing out that consumer influence may not bring what you would call desirable results.
The point is we need to stop telling people that they are victims of the process and tell them to take charge of the process.
Whack…ball is going across the net!
January 10, 2007 at 2:20 pm
I agree that vouchers is a small part of what Tough Choices lays out for changes but at the same time the “core” of what motivates the change to happen. You send your child to college because it has a reputation and standards that meet a students needs. In K-12 it’s based on where you live, not on what services or needs the school provides or meets. If you are wealthy you will pay out of pocket to send your child to a school that is doing a good job. Believe me, I know, I live in a town full of them.
You don’t get involved to change a college….you don’t go there….they loose students, so they change and improve themselves so they can recover that lost population. Why can’t K-12 education operate under the same standards? Why should parents have to fight to change a poor school district?
What is wrong with demanding excellence? We expect the same of our students!
January 10, 2007 at 2:21 pm
The issue of vouchers is a minor part of what this report lays out for our consideration. If you have not read the whole summary, do so!!
More important than vouchers, to me, is the idea that teachers are no longer employed by local districts but are state employees instead. Wow!
And no more local school boards. Hooray!!
Baldacci’s recent recommendations take the first step in this direction, and as far as I am concerned it cant happen fast enough.
January 10, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Vouchers will create more of the “haves” and “have nots” and chase many good teachers out of the teaching profession as they bounce from school to school. Everyone will be pointing fingers at everyone else. Who will decide if a school is good or not? Will we use the non-valid and non-reliable high stakes assessments to make these decisions? Will we take into account academically strong groups of students and academically weak groups of students cycling through our schools?
From what I am hearing, my biggest concern right now with the new plan is that class size will be set higher than research recommended levels (12-16 for grades K-5; 17-21 for grades 6-12). In my opinion, class size is the single most important factor in education. If a school system wants to bite the bullet for smaller classes to benefit its community, should the state mandate a less effective method?
Just a few thoughts that came to mind at this juncture!
January 11, 2007 at 9:09 am
Today’s K-12 schools are very different from Universities in many ways… related to this dialog it would seem that
1) universities kick you out if you can’t cut the demands and expectations or if you are disruptive to those trying to learn in class (You won’t see politicians migrating No Child Left Behind into our university systems.
2) The role parents play in young kids lives, including their school lives, is critical to the success of this type of educational environment, even more so since parents (speaking collectively) are less of a behavioral influence on their children now than in the past. Schools have increasingly been asked to “raise” and instill the capacity for discipline that thinking minds need; as parents have been less able to because of longer work hours, one parent families, etc. I don’t recall there being a “Social Skills” curriculum in schools back in the day… character training hung on the wall in the principal’s office and my father backed it up with one of those sayings like… “You had better hope the school never calls our house”. I’m not advocating going back in time, but we must understand that the factory model of school requires behavioral discipline as a foundation of its success. This is one foundation both Chinese and Indian culture maintains more in both their schools and their
family units.
It would seem to me that schools that are successful likely have a parent population that is more engaged in their children’s schools or more supportive of school boards, administrators and teachers that have higher
expectations and standards. Parents who would rather blame their existing schools for the lack of success by their children and that up and move because of this would likely take with them this character trait of failure; blaming others and instilling the same habit in the minds of their children. But all of this relates to the idea that if we just do a better job of fixing or improving a broke system we will be ok….
This is not the main issue of the report that was pointed to… which does pose a challenge to create new educational systems in America. We ought to stop calling for “School Improvement” and create a system of education that empowers teachers to work together at “reinventing” education. My favorite part of the report is the call for “schools owned and operated by independent contractors, many of them limited-liability corporations owned and run by teachers.” I have spent the last decade working to support the empowerment of teachers and their capacity to work collaboratively together.
I have sought to encourage state educational agencies and groups like ACTEM to support and help build the capacity for teachers to work together to shape change in our educational system. The article I submitted in November for the ACTEM Newsletter “Maine Academic Coalition” was about using technology to help empower teachers and enable a system where teachers worked together to define change and begin to build a repository of tools and resources here in Maine that would better enable those empowered professional educators to help reinvent our educational systems.
I’m looking forward to the workshop in Bangor on January 20th. A Saturday professional development with a waiting-list of over 200, to help Maine educators become familiar with the ideas and tools that can sustain Professional Learning Communities. I hope as these educators return into their schools they will seek to lead empowerment of their peers and also reach out beyond the walls of their school to work with others and rise to the challenge of reinventing education together.
January 11, 2007 at 9:10 am
There is nothing wrong with demanding excellence ……the problem is we” don’t.
January 11, 2007 at 9:25 am
from Joe: Jerry – That says it all……..
from Ed: and in my experience… woe be to those who do
January 15, 2007 at 1:20 pm
I am looking for innovation in these proposals, and the role of technology, and they both seem to me to harken back to not very interesting ideas. The Skill Commission report seeks a voucher system, which would be a change, but it hopes to use a national testing system to validate students. That’s not a change, and as Johnothan Kozol said in his recent PBS speech, it is cruel to the most creative students, the ones who always have a unique answer. It also looks like the European system, which devides the society socially after the test. Maine’s proposal is very pedestrian. It merely seeks to take away small rural school units and give them to big regional districts. Local autonomy is blitzed for good, and it doesn’t even solve the teacher pay issue. I was looking for innovation in the classroom structure, a new role for technology, a new autonomy for local schools. It looks like Maine thinks “shock and awe” is a substitute for innovation. I am a student of organizational change, with a special interest in the role of technology in changing instructional models. I was looking for more excitement.