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9486 in the collection
Lessons From 40 Years of Education 'Reform'
Ohanian Comment: As I
noted in One Size Fits Few: The Folly of
Educational Standards, then-IBM CE0 and
Arkansas governor Bill Clinton held hands to
pass America 2000, which morphed into Goals
2000 (and later became NCLB). A major goal,
which the Republicans blocked, was national
standards. Clinton has moved on but now
Gerstner is back, whistling the same old tune
for national standards. And now he's upped the
ante. Put Washington D. C. in charge of the
whole national school district. Well, sure,
they've proved themselves so capable at doing
Reading First.
Note how he starts out with a financial term--
leverage. Leveraging has brought us to
economic freefall. Now Gerstner wants to do the
same to schools. Something must be in the air:
read the January Substance and you will
see that NCTE is writing ugly lessons that
advocate 4th graders leveraging their
classmates.
Marion Brady letter to
Wall Street Journal: Mr. Gerstner's
interest in improving American education, and
his
tenaciousness, are commendable. Unfortunately,
like most outside the field,
his understanding doesn't extend very far
beyond the conventional wisdom. He
runs down the list of "silver bullets"-small
schools, state standards,
high-stakes tests, imposition of market forces,
and so on, decides nothing
has worked well, concludes that further screw
tightening is necessary, and
says the feds must do it.
Mr. Gerstner, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee and
others who share his views are
beating a nearly dead horse. What really ails
American education isn't a
lack of standards, inadequate rigor, "the soft
bigotry of low expectations,"
or other frequently-cited ills. The primary
problem is a curriculum adopted
in 1892 that was poor when it was put in place,
reached its performance peak
about mid-20th century, and now grows more
dysfunctional with each passing
year. It fails to model reality, is at odds
with the nature of knowledge and
the brain's approach to organizing, storing,
and integrating information,
doesn't address societal needs, and ignores the
trends of the era. But so
deeply imbedded is it in bureaucracy and
tradition, it's simply taken for
granted.
This is the curriculum Mr. Gerstner would have
Congress freeze in rigid,
permanent place with national standards and
tests. That's a can't-miss
recipe for institutional and societal
suicide.
By Louis V. Gerstner Jr.
While the economic news has most Americans in a
state of near depression, hope abounds today
that the country may use the current economic
crisis as leverage to address some longstanding
problems. Nowhere is that prospect for progress
more worthy than the crisis in our public
education system.
So, from someone who realized rather glumly
last week that he has been working at school
reform for 40 years, here is a prescription for
leadership from the Obama administration.
We must start with the recognition that,
despite decade after decade of reform efforts,
our public K-12 schools have not improved. We
can point to individual schools and some entire
districts that have advanced, but the system as
a whole is still failing. High school and
college graduation rates, test scores, the
number of graduates majoring in science and
engineering all are flat or down over the past
two decades. Disappointingly, the relative
performance of our students has suffered
compared to those of other nations. As a former
CEO, I am worried about what this will mean for
our future workforce.
It is most crucial for our political leaders to
ask why we are at this point -- why after
millions of pages, in thousands of reports,
from hundreds of commissions and task forces,
financed by billions of dollars, have we failed
to achieve any significant progress?
Answering this question correctly is the key to
finally remaking our public schools.
This is a complex problem, but countless
experiments and analyses have clearly indicated
we need to do four straightforward things to
bring fundamental changes to K-12 education:
1) Set high academic standards for all of our
kids, supported by a rigorous curriculum.
2) Greatly improve the quality of teaching in
our classrooms, supported by substantially
higher compensation for our best teachers.
3) Measure student and teacher performance on a
systematic basis, supported by tests and
assessments.
4) Increase "time on task" for all students;
this means more time in school each day, and a
longer school year.
Everything else either does not matter (e.g.,
smaller class sizes) or is supportive of these
four steps (e.g., vastly improve schools of
education).
Lack of effort is not the cause of our 30-year
inability to solve our education problem. Not
only have we had all those thousands of studies
and task forces, but we have seen many
courageous and talented individuals pushing
hard to move the system. Leaders such as Joel
Klein (New York City), Michelle Rhee
(Washington, D.C.) and Paul Vallas (New
Orleans) have challenged the system, and
elected officials from both sides of the
political spectrum have also fought valiantly
for change.
So where does that leave us? If the problem
isn't "what to do," nor is it a failure of
commitment, what is stopping us?
I believe the problem lies with the structure
and corporate governance of our public schools.
We have over 15,000 school districts in
America; each of them, in its own way, is
involved in standards, curriculum, teacher
selection, classroom rules and so on. This
unbelievably unwieldy structure is incapable of
executing a program of fundamental change.
While we have islands of excellence as a result
of great reform programs, we continually fail
to scale up systemic change.
Therefore, I recommend that President-elect
Barack Obama convene a meeting of our nation's
governors and seek agreement to the following:
- Abolish all local school districts, save 70
(50 states; 20 largest cities). Some states may
choose to leave some of the rest as community
service organizations, but they would have no
direct involvement in the critical task of
establishing standards, selecting teachers, and
developing curricula.
- Establish a set of national standards for a
core curriculum. I would suggest we start with
four subjects: reading, math, science and
social studies.
- Establish a National Skills Day on which
every third, sixth, ninth and 12th-grader would
be tested against the national standards.
Results would be published nationwide for every
school in America.
- Establish national standards for teacher
certification and require regular re-
evaluations of teacher skills. Increase teacher
compensation to permit the best teachers (as
measured by advances in student learning) to
earn well in excess of $100,000 per year, and
allow school leaders to remove underperforming
teachers.
- Extend the school day and the school year to
effectively add 20 more days of schooling for
all K-12 students.
I can predict that three questions will be
raised about these measures:
First, how can we set national standards when
we have a strong tradition of local school
autonomy? The answer is that the American
people are way ahead of our politicians here:
Poll after poll shows they support national
standards.
Second, won't this take many years to
implement? No, if we follow a focused,
pragmatic approach. While ideally we want all
50 states to participate, we can get started
with 30. The rest will be driven to abandon
their "see no evil" blinders by their citizens
as the original group achieves momentum and
success. Moreover, we do not have to start from
scratch on the national standards. Experts can
quickly develop an initial set just by drawing
on existing domestic and foreign programs.
Third, how do we pay for all of this? In three
ways: We will save billions by consolidating
the operations of 15,000 school districts. The
U.S. Department of Education can direct all of
its discretionary funds to this effort. And we
need to drive into the consciousness of every
American politician that education is not an
expense. It is, rather, the most important
investment we can make as a country.
H.G. Wells remarked that "history is a race
between education and catastrophe." For the
first time in America's history, we may be
losing that race. We can win, but we have to
act quickly and decisively.
Mr. Gerstner, a former CEO of IBM, was
chairman of the Teaching Commission (2003-
2006), which reported on ways to improve the
quality of public school teaching.
— Louis V. Gerstner Jr
Wall Street Journal
2008-12-01
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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