A couple of you have asked me about my opinions on education, Wisconsin, seniority reforms, etc. I've discussed it with Lisa a bit. I've even discussed it a little with my family. That's a big deal as they pretty much don't ask about school/education ever. Apparently being a partial educator means people want me to have some kind of opinion about education.
Opinion 1: Education is one of the issues everyone has an opinion about regardless of their expertise. That may seem obvious and non-unique but there are a lot of people who have "solutions" without any time spent in schools. This is both good and bad; from time to time, new ideas from outside a field can provide insights and create beneficial change. More often, the changes that hold sway are flawed in some basic way that could have been avoided with a little insider knowledge.
I want to eventually share some recent history and perspective on the dominant trend in education over the past decade: accountability. And as we'll see, accountability is pretty much the only option on the table for politicians and policy makers. There are no alternatives being considered in the halls of power. Toward that end, I'll link some interesting articles (that David and Laura probably already read. You should all follow us on Google Reader, btw). But before I go there...
Opinion 2: I don't believe the current efforts by Walker and other GOP governors are honest. Yes, they probably want to reduce the deficit but I feel like they care more about breaking the unions' power to organize a political base. There are genuine reforms needed in education unions but those reforms are not the goal of the forces arrayed against unions in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
Do not confuse my desire for reform with a position against unions or against teachers. I think unions have a valuable place in public and private sector. I'm in favor of collective bargaining for unions. Can they stifle growth? Sure. Do they protect workers? Yes. It's a trade-off I'm willing to make. I think unions are learning that they achieve better outcomes by negotiating and that they realize they need to take into account the health of the organization that employs their workers. The teacher's union in Wisconsin agreed to every major provision by Walker except loss of collective bargaining. Even though they were overridden, they exposed the GOP for the bunch of cynical, manipulative bullies they are. I think this is a significant victory in the long run even if the unions are wrecked in the short term.
We need a serious discussion about pension reform, union stubbornness, revamping teacher assessment, standardized testing, and poverty. The Republicans don't want to have that discussion. Until recently, unions didn't want to have that discussion. Processes like the one in the chart (above) or New York City's rubber rooms are absurd. I think a reasonable middle ground can be found between protecting teachers from arbitrary termination and never being able to remove teachers for any reason ever. Even though it is going to be hard for any change to come at the federal level with a divided government, I think having a national discussion about how we teach our kids is healthy.
James, you'll forgive me if I'm asking an irrelevant question, but why are you saying that there needs to be a federal change to education? I'm not much of a fan of Georgia's system, but I think that as a system that's governed by the state instead of the country does carry certain benefits that are really good for its students.
ReplyDeleteYou and I have both been through tough job searches for the past half a year, and one of the benefits of spending that much time looking is that we got to learn about a lot of different districts. I seriously looked all over the state, and one thing that I've found consistently implemented in the more rural districts is an Agriculture course of study that provides students the chance to learn about a profession that is extremely pertinent to them both socially and geographically. Students in rural areas usually come from farming families, and a lot of them will remain in their communities after they graduate. Wouldn't federal standardization put a damper on these kinds of programs that are designed to be specifically useful to localized populations of students?
Jason, I don't believe that local autonomy and national education reform are mutually exclusive. My position is merely that we haven't had much of a national discussion about education since NCLB and that we really should reform the extant federal framework. My digs at the GOP are, I think, fairly grounded. They're much more concerned about the budget and social issues than they are about education. Mostly you hear them criticize the unions on budgetary grounds and blame teachers for failing schools. They just don't seem interested in a genuine reform discussion.
ReplyDeleteI don't really know what those reforms should be and I don't think a series of national standards will schools change much. I bet that the standards look quite similar from state to state already. I would favor more local control over curriculum but I think some kind of standards are useful. Your school should still teach kids how to read and do math. Your school might have a great Agricultural program but it should also let kids study computer science if that's their thing.
My mention of the federal changes in the final paragraph is more of a reference to the current executive/legislative divide. No matter what the reforms look like, nothing is likely to be be passed.
I think my next two posts will be somewhat boring, though, because I'm trying to be dry and (mostly) objective in discussing the accountability movement. By all means keep commenting.