When stakeholders -- from parents and business leaders to elected officials -- understand that standards vary dramatically across states and many high-school graduates are unprepared for college or work, they will demand change. In fact, dozens of states are already independently working toward higher standards in education. Union leaders have also signed on.
When parents recognize which schools are failing to educate their children, they will demand more effective options for their kids. They won't care whether they are charters, non-charters or some other model. As President Barack Obama has called for, states should eliminate restrictions that limit the growth of excellent charter schools, move forward in improving or restructuring chronically failing schools, and hold all schools accountable for results.
When educators fully understand which of their colleagues are pulling their weight through a rigorous and fair evaluation system, they will hold each other more accountable. Teachers above all want a professional learning environment that supports them and recognizes and rewards excellence.
When community leaders understand that teacher and principal quality varies dramatically as the best educators gravitate toward higher performing schools, they will push for incentives that bring our most talented educators to schools in need. That requires being open-minded to policies like differential pay.
And when we can link student outcomes to teacher quality and teachers to their colleges of education, we can challenge these institutions to do the best possible job in preparing a new generation of outstanding educators. Without the data, we cannot even have the conversation, let alone discuss solutions.
I suppose it is possible that all these people are clueless about the state of the education system but it seems unlikely. Any parent who has atteneded one of those beginning of the year open houses at the local school knows that some portion of their child's teachers are either indifferent or obviously incompetent. Any good teacher knows which other teachers are incompetent. They don't need a better evaluation system to figure it out. The problem is not that we don't know what the problems are. The problem is that the teacher's unions and the politicians they fund are not willing to relinquish their stranglehold on the public teat that is the school system.
Not once in this editorial does Arne Duncan mention vouchers. He mentions charter schools repeatedly as if it were some kind of mantra, but nary a peep about vouchers. They've worked everywhere they've been tried, but we won't have any of that. They're being used in countries like Norway and Denmark and other countries that are much more socialist than the US, but no, not here. The message to the states is pretty clear; reform is only what we in Washington DC say it is. You'll do it our way or we'll cut off your funds:
Through the guidance we have published on our Web site, we explicitly told governors, state education chiefs, mayors and district superintendents that the application for competitive grants will begin by asking how noncompetitive grant funds are being spent. If they used the funding to invest in more of the same ineffective programs, they will not receive grant money.
Moreover, a significant share of the Recovery Act's State Fiscal Stabilization Fund will be used to hold states and districts accountable for meeting the reform requirements of the law. If they divert money intended for education to noneducational purposes, we may deny future funding or even seek to recover misspent funds.
Who decides what programs are "ineffective"? Anyone want to take a bet on whether using the funds for a voucher program would be considered effective? Money from DC comes with union strings attached. Any program which is not union approved need not apply.
This administration's approach to education is the same as its approach to everything else. The central planners of the Obama administration have it all worked out for us whether its the automobile business or energy or education. Just get on board with the smart liberals who know what's best for us. It didn't work in the Soviet Union but that's because they weren't as smart as the Obama administration. Or at least we better hope so.
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