Parent Revolution

The other reform: Making college a reality for millions

The following is a guest post from Fernando Espuelas, host of Cafe Espuelas on Univision radio. You can follow his blog daily at www.espuelas.com.

It's no secret that some of our fiercest international competitors have spent that better part of the last decade beefing up their education systems.

Both China and India, for example, graduate thousands more engineers than the United States.

The state of America's public education, once the crown jewel of democratic capitalism, is now a patchwork of successful and failed systems - with many failing to educate our kids with even basic skills such as reading and writing.

If the United States is to maintain and expand its global leadership, our education system must also be world class. Sadly, we're far from that standard.

Obama's Race for the Top, a stimulus bill program meant to spur reform of the nation's public education, was a good down payment in dragging our creaky education apparatus into the 21st century.

And now, with the signature of the Health Care bill, which had a companion reform of the Federal student loan program attached, we take another leap.

The education reform inside the health care reform - ok, weird, right?- will make more funds available to college students, will create an expanded Pell Grant program, and will soften the repayment terms so that education debt does not crush the graduate.

By dramatically expanding access to college, we walk in the foot steps of the American geniuses who crafted the original GI Bill that opened the doors to higher education to the returning heroes of World War II - and positively changed the trajectory of the middle class in America.

Whole-cloth reform of America's education system is an imperative for every family and for the very future of our country.

Today only marked the beginning of what will be an arduous, painful and yet very necessary recreation of American education.

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.

In case you missed it…

Just wanted to say congrats to Ben, who was appointed to the State Board of Education yesterday!

Union run charter schools

Among the fascinating reforms taking place back in New York City is the fact that the local teachers union, United Federation of Teachers (UFT), actually operates their own charter school. For those of us accustomed to never ending attacks on charter schools by our local teachers union, this alone is a little head turning. Personally, I think UFT should be heartily applauded for taking on the task of actually running a school, and I wish more teachers unions would do so. More innovative models are desperately needed for our public schools, and if teachers unions are willing to truly free themselves from the bureaucracy and actually run schools, more power to them.

For what it’s worth, the UFT-run charter appears to have mixed yet relatively positive academic results. Interestingly, it enrolls a below average percentage of English Language Learners and special education students, which should encourage UFT’s affiliates and others to stop with the nonsense that some sort of malicious intent or purposeful “skimming” accounts for the tendency for charters to often slightly under enroll those two populations.

There is an odd yet predictable dynamic in education reform where the bureaucracy point fingers at the union contract to explain failing schools, the teachers unions point fingers at the bureaucracy, and those of us outside the system point to both (among many other things). What UFT has done is put their money where their mouth is – trying to prove they can run just as successful a school as the best charters in NYC even with something resembling their traditional contract. UTLA has taken on a similar challenge through our Public School Choice Resolution process, where they won control of over 20 schools where they are now going to be held accountable for those schools’ performance. The great thing about this is that either way, kids win. If these models work, great! If not, it almost necessarily quickens the day where both sides sit down and agree that we need to re-imagine these contracts in a way that finally puts kids first.

Op-ed from Rep Barlett

I wanted to share an op-ed that ran on Sunday from Connecticut state Representative Jason Bartlett, a true leader in the fight to empower parents in Connecticut.  You can read the whole thing here.  An excerpt:

As part of the Black and Puerto Rican caucus, I have proposed some innovative and systematic changes in order to close this gap.

(...)

The one thing that I heard time and again was that we need more parental involvement and empowerment in our schools.

This is why I have introduced the concept of a "parent trigger" for failing schools. Under this policy, parents at a systemically failing school could circulate a petition calling for a change in school management as outlined by President Obama's "Race to the Top" federal guidelines.