On molding consensus
The big news in the education world yesterday was of course the long awaited announcement of the winners of President Obama’s “Race to the Top” competition. Only two states won federal money – Delaware and Tennessee – and the edu-blogosphere has spent the last 24 hours furious debating whether US DOE is ingenious or completely incompetent. Personally, I found this piece of analysis from Andy Smarick most insightful:
The story here is just how important “stakeholder support” turned out to be. Florida, Louisiana, and Rhode Island had very good plans, but their unions didn’t buy in, especially in RI and FL. So those states lost.
Two other finalists, North Carolina and Kentucky, had weak plans but high stakeholder support. They lost too.
Tennessee and Delaware distinguished themselves with good plans and nearly unanimous union and LEA support. They won.
So both a strong, reform-oriented proposal and broad stakeholder support are necessary conditions. But neither on its own is sufficient.
Most of the commentary I’ve read is pretty upset about this, and feel that states like Florida and Louisana are being unfairly punished for being “too bold.” I actually think this is a smart choice. We here at the Parent Revolution are not believers in incremental change, and we denounce those who would sit around waiting for consensus amongst all stakeholders while children suffer in terrible schools. The parents we work for and represent only get one chance to give their children a great education, and they aren’t interested in watered down reform that sells out their children in the name of compromise.
That all being said, to truly transform public education, we are all going to have to walk together at the end of the day – parents, teachers, unions, and everyone else. We know all too well that many stakeholders in public education are constant defenders of the status quo they created, and have no interest in reform right now. But if I’m Arne Duncan, and I can reward just a two or three states for impressive leadership efforts, I think it’s a great idea to reward the states who have managed to build consensus around real reform proposals. As Smarick notes, Delaware and Tennessee may not have been the most radical, but they were good, strong, reform-oriented proposals, and still managed to find unanimous support from their LEAs and unions.
As Martin Luther King once said, “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” In education reform, we desperately need more leaders capable of molding consensus around kids-first reform. If Tennessee and Delaware have managed to do so in a way that isn’t 100% perfect but is truly about kids, more power to them, and congrats on their impressive victory.
