Archive for April, 2011
Reading the Report Card
It’s become increasingly acceptable in some circles to say that the problem with California’s education system is the kids and their parents. Our District Report Card confronts that “conventional wisdom” of the status quo directly. It reveals districts that have made remarkable gains for their Latino, African-American and low-income students. It highlights three school systems where demographics are not defined as destiny because of leadership from all levels.
The power of school districts to change the lives of children is often underestimated. There’s a tendency to focus at the school level – on the heroic teacher or principal – defying the odds and bucking the system to do the right thing for their students.
Our dependence on this idealized vision of school improvement has serious flaws. It de-emphasizes the importance of the larger organizational change process of school districts. It ignores the difficult work necessary to use human and financial resources effectively and promote sustainable change at scale. This process requires vision, goal development, planning, implementation, monitoring and accountability. Most of all, it requires leadership.
We know that this is another challenging year for our education system and its leaders. We stand with our entire education community in calling for the funding vital to our students’ future. At the same time, we know that the results of our system have been highly variable in good times and bad. And we also know that some districts have done more with their resources to improve student outcomes than others. At ETW, we hope that district and community leaders will proactively use the information in our Report Card to benchmark their performance and set targets for improvement. The grades in the report and rankings are more than just letters and numbers. They represent countless missed and lost opportunities for millions of students. While applauding progress where it occurs, it is vital to continue to focus attention on where our education system continues to fail and hold it accountable for its results for our children. They are – our most precious resource.
It’s Already Doomsday
The amount of ink that will be spilled over the next few weeks on the “Doomsday Scenario” for the Education budget will be enough to swamp just about any other story. Given that this is the fourth such scenario we will have faced in CA over the last four years, you can imagine why some folks might shrug it off. We’ve been pretty good at raising the stakes to apocalyptic proportions in CA whenever we confront another budget crisis. Now, we hear that the CTA and others will be leading Wisconsin style actions in Sacramento in a couple of weeks – occupying the Capitol and picketing the homes of Republican legislators. This will raise the temperature and should get them a lot of ink. But will produce any results? Seems to me the only ones that Republicans listen to are other Republicans. Or folks with a lot of money. Course the same could be said for some Democrats…
