Friday, May 22, 2009
Duncan outlines school reform agenda
Fri, May 22, 2009
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Duncan outlines school reform agenda
Better use of data, transforming high schools among ED's key priorities
By Meris Stansbury, Associate Editor
 
Primary Topic Channel:  Federal Policy , Administration

 

Rewarding effective teaching, expanding the learning time, collecting
meaningful data, and transforming underperforming high schools are the four key
areas the U.S. Department of Education (ED) plans to target in the next year,
Education Secretary Arne Duncan told school stakeholders at the Center for
American Progress's "Resource, Allocation, Reinvestment, and Education
Reform" conference May 18.
School administrators and education policy leaders packed into the Grand
Hyatt ballroom in Washington, D.C., to hear Duncan's plan and learn from
experts who are ahead of the curve.
"Our flawed public education system fails to prepare all of America's
students to meet the world's demanding educational benchmarks," said John
Podesta, president and CEO of the Center. "Our high school students consistently
fare poorly on international comparisons of student achievement, while our
domestic achievement gaps remain wide. We have inadequate human capital
policies, we fund schools inequitably, and we do not have the rigorous standards,
assessments, and accountability systems that we need to ensure a high-quality
education for all of our students."
Podesta said he believes the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)
can help spur needed changes. Duncan agreed, noting the stimulus provides
$100 billion in new money for education--and even though money alone won't
solve every problem, unprecedented resources do, he said, "call for
unprecedented reforms."
"This is a time when we need progressive action," said Duncan. "There is a
sense of urgency to improve education. And it's not just in the numbers--the
poor international test scores and the number of failing schools. I've seen
firsthand what failing education can do to a community. We can't afford to
be passive any longer."
Duncan said there are a lot of areas in education that need improvement,
but four areas specifically need to be targeted:
1. Data-driven decision making. Duncan explained that without numbers and
data, school leaders and ED officials are just "shooting in the dark." Every
state and district needs real data, he said, including student tracking from
preschool through higher education, teacher tracking from schools of
education throughout their career, and better tracking of individual school
progress.
2. Raising state and national standards. Duncan said most states are not
preparing students adequately for the 21st-century workforce.
3. Rewarding excellence. Duncan believes in offering incentives for the
best teachers and principals to serve in problem or underserved schools and
districts. He also believes that math and science teachers should be paid more
and given rewards for staying in that subject for a long period of time.
4. Reforming low-performing schools. Within the next two years, Duncan
would like to see the 2,000 lowest-performing high schools that account for 50
percent of the country's high school dropouts change. Some of the reforms
he'd like to see include prolonging the school day, week, and year; providing
more after-school opportunities for students; and replacing ineffective
teachers with teachers who have high expectations for their students.
Before states and school systems can undergo these extensive
transformations, conference speakers warned, it will take much more than surface fixes to
ensure sustainable progress.
"There is a disconnect between the all-too-common industrial-based
foundation of our schools and the technological age we are living in today," said
Raegen Miller, associate director for education research at the Center.
To help schools take basic steps towards change, Karen Hawley Miles,
executive director of Education Resource Strategies, suggested that a shift needs
to occur in how resources are used to change the underlying system.
"Here's an example of how most schools work today," said Miles. "There is a
girl named Tameka. She is in sixth grade and loves school, but she has low
scores in math and a basic reading level. She now has to change schools to
go to seventh grade. Two out of her five teachers are new. No one knows
Tameka, her scores, or how she learns as a student, because there [are] no data
for Tameka and there's no system in place to track, or even assess, Tameka
properly. Now Tameka is failing math and can't progress to a better reading
level. Tameka doesn't like school anymore."
Miles went on to describe how it's not a teacher's fault, either: "You have
these new teachers, they have no way to track their students; they have too
many students; there's no way to talk to the resident teachers because your
schedules don't align; and any free time you have is caught up in
paperwork. You wish there was a school forum, but there are none. You are stressed
and overworked."
Miles' point was clear: Schools and districts "can't throw new money on top
of old structures that don't work."
In her newly published paper, "Using Stimulus Funds to Build a Bridge to
Better Practice," Miles said she outlines seven steps to help schools redesign
their systems--steps that Miles said are based on the scalable practices of
high-performing schools:
1. Clarify high-level priorities in the improvement agenda;
2. Map current spending and, if possible, compare spending with similar
districts;
3. Quantify large opportunities for reallocation consistent with this
vision;
4. Focus leadership discussion on high-return actions;
5. Weigh political concerns in the context of potential impact and complete
vision for actions;
6. Conduct line-item reviews by department to determine both cuts and
investments; and
7. Ensure that new investments (including new stimulus funds in Title I and
the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) are managed by staff
members who can advance the strategic priorities.
Other helpful tips for schools that Miles encouraged were to limit class
sizes to no more than 17 students, move from remediation to early prevention,
move from autonomy to collaboration, move from teachers as the sole
authority to using outside resources and experts, build enhanced student information
systems, revamp human resources to help place teachers in the best
positions possible for them, establish sturdy teacher evaluation systems, and
renegotiate bad bargains.
Two districts that credit their current success to Miles and her leadership
are Maryland's Baltimore County Public Schools and North Carolina's
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
"One of the hardest things to do is going to be to scrap the bad teachers,
the bad schools, [and] to figure out what to cut and what to keep," said
Miles.
(Editor's note: For more information on how ARRA funds can help spur
education reform, see our Educator Resource Center on "Stimulating Achievement.")

Links:
U.S. Department of Education
Center for American Progress
Education Resource Strategies