Alter Gets It
I was intrigued by this Newsweek piece posted on MSNBC.com. I’m convinced that unlike many in the media, Jonathan Alter actually understands something about education reform. All too frequently these education reform stories just regurgitate NEA propaganda and follow an expected formula of Bush bashing, NCLB hate, demands for funding increases and class-size reduction and the like.
This story is different. Jonathan doesn’t take sides. He just focuses on reality. My favorite media weenie Glenn Beck says frequently, “I’m not a [insert specialty here], but I’m a thinker.” In this case, it is true for Jonathan. He’s not an educator but he’s a thinker. He got my attention with:
The crazy thing about the education debate in the United States is that anyone with an ounce of brains knows what must be done. Each political party is about half right. Republicans are right about the need for strict performance standards and wrong in believing that enduring change is possible without lots more money from Washington. Democrats are right about the need to pay teachers more but wrong to kiss up to teachers unions bent on preventing accountability.
He recognizes some of the basic changes needed for successful reform including giving local principals more control and reforming teacher tenure.
In New York City—home to 1,400 schools, 80,000 teachers and 1.1 million students—Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg (a huge improvement over his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani) is showing what accountability means. First, he won mayoral control of the school system, a prerequisite for getting anything done in a big city. Now his tough-minded schools chancellor, Joel Klein (a Democrat), is moving forward on an important new plan to slash administrative layers and empower individual schools. The idea is to make each principal “the CEO of the school instead of an agent of the bureaucracy,” Klein says. More than 300 New York principals are signing performance contracts that give them more control in exchange for being accountable. Klein means business: “If your school gets a D or an F, I’m gonna fire your ass.”
A big accountability problem nationwide is teacher tenure, which is almost automatically awarded whether a teacher is good or not. If he’s not, he gets to commit educational malpractice for the next 40 years. In New York, Klein wants to toughen standards for receiving tenure, and he has already succeeded in ending union “bumping rights,” where lousy teachers with seniority can bump good, younger teachers and move into a school where a good principal doesn’t want them. Above all, a principal must have control of who teaches in his or her building. All other reforms depend on it.
I think teacher unions and many politicians are completely out of touch with how the average parent feels about school reform.
It’s time to move from identifying failing schools to identifying failing teachers. That sounds obvious, but until now it hasn’t happened in American education. “We need a management tool that can show whether Ms. Jones can teach long division,” says Margaret Spellings, Bush’s sensible secretary of Education. Too many educators are still caught in what Klein calls a “culture of excuses.” The excuse du jour is that NCLB is “punitive.” But Spellings has a point that basic assessment is both right and popular: “I don’t think parents see reliable data as punitive.”
Do Democratic presidential contenders? Education Week rated Iowa and New Hampshire as having the two least-accountable state education systems in the country. Uh-oh. Let’s hope the press and public are prepared to call candidates to account if they undertake a primary-season panderfest.
It is going to be interesting to watch what happens as the reauthorization of NCLB goes forward. Unfortunately, I suspect not much will happen until after the 2008 elections. I think the democrats are going to delay, expecting that they’ll have control of the White House soon.
The “Truth” About NCLB and Education Reform Someone Else Who Gets It
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