NATIONAL THOUGHT LEADERS URGE OBAMA
ADMINISTRATION TO ADDRESS EDUCATION CRISIS
New report prescribes five-part cure
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today the Center for Education Reform is distributing to every federal and state lawmaker in the country a monograph of recommendations that the national group is confident can help guide government leaders to improve our nation's schools.
Such recommendations suggest a new role for the U.S. Department of Justice in policing school choice, a national imperative to have student level data on a daily basis for every child, a rejection of the appalling performance of too many teachers and a call for every school to abandon their central districts and to behave like charter schools.
While others propose that the global economic crisis and a matrix of threats to our national security must lead the Obama Administration's long list of priorities, this brief but commanding booklet argues that fixing public education is hands down the most leveraged domestic policy opportunity of our time.
Utterly refreshing in its approach, Mandate for Change does not spend a lot of time diagnosing the causes of our current afflictions. Instead, it moves immediately to prescribe a five-part cure made all the more compelling by the star power of its authors and their basic insights into the key issues at hand:
Juan Williams - Federal Accountability
Honorable John M. Engler - Transparency
Honorable Kevin P. Chavous - Charter Schools
Jeanne Allen - School Choice
Richard Whitmire - Teacher Quality
Each of these five themes is taken up in a separate essay that aims to simply and succinctly present uncommon solutions outlining what we need to do and what we need to avoid. As the editor writes in the introduction, "the challenge at hand - as we have accepted it in these pages - is to focus on what matters most and to provide actionable recommendations that leaders in government can move today to implement."
Download copies of the complete text and monitor the ongoing discussion at the Center for Education Reform's dedicated website, mandate.edreform.com**************************
E.C. :)
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4 comments:
By the way Erik, I am absolutely convinced that education is more about the teachers and the home environment from whence the kids come, than about money. I also believe that it is more about the intangible than the tangible. Part of the goal of my concept is to spread that enthusiasm as far and wide as possible through the power of the Internet. People need to start thinking again.
...and thinking creatively, mind you. A three-hour test doesn't provide an accurate measurement.
We've got to make people want "it." Everything in life is about "sufficient" motivation. Change comes about when people are sufficiently motivated to change.
There are two problems in education.
The first is the home. If education is not a priority there, then teachers need to understand that and pick up the slack if they intend to teach.
The second problem is with the teachers themselves. They don't know how to teach.
Reform needs to be done in the inane Education Departments in Colleges. Teachers in every grade level need to master content subjects--that should be their major. They need at least 50 credits in a subject area to teach it. Right now, a k-6 teacher teaches all subjects and knows little more about them than the student before her. She can then get an extension to teach MS and HS Math or English with just 12 graduate credits--4 classes.
Although I live in a supposedly good school district, I had to teach my kids how to read and how to memorize their times tables.
Here's some reform: have every teacher in the U.S. sit and take the SAT on the same day. I would bet 75% fail it.
Maureen
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