Advice to the next president: Do no harm and embrace educational innovation
By
Dear Madam or Mister President,
While responsibility for education lies squarely with the states, your role in advancing or rolling back progress in American education reform can be dramatic, depending on your approach. With that in mind, I offer a few thoughts for your consideration.
Simply put, do no harm.
To Hillary Clinton, “do no harm” might mean not appointing dyed-in-the-wool union representatives to high posts in the Department of Education, and not unravelling the need for vital tests and measurements that help expose where things are working or not working. It might mean ignoring the education establishment’s proclivity to want more money for programs regardless of their effectiveness.
To Donald Trump, “do no harm” might mean not appointing people who frown on any federal role whatsoever, who do not recognize that a limited federal role can be a stimulus for the deployment of innovation.
It might mean not waiving any requirement for states to comply with certain rules governing testing. Just because the Every Student Succeeds Act now requires testing (without mandated consequences for the results of that testing, as No Child Left Behind did) doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.
I would instead advise you to do well by the people of our country by following three simple concepts:
1.) Appoint a secretary of education who understands their first mission is to be an ambassador for all kinds of education, not just the kind prescribed by 150 years of the status quo. The states and the people employ hundreds of different approaches to educating students on all levels. There should be millions. Education is not about space or place — it’s about learning.
People everywhere, from our youngest Americans to our oldest, are in need of education. You should be agnostic about which methods states and communities use so long as the communities they serve willingly buy in with their feet and the states who create the varied approaches live with their decisions.
2.) Use the bully pulpit to highlight great ideas and exceptional new discoveries. Just three presidents ago, the Internet was in its infancy. We know more than we ever did about how learning takes place. We know now that the brain and the way it works is far more complicated than what a square classroom with 24 chairs can accommodate.
When Bill Bennett was secretary of education, he traveled the world and told about the contrasts between them and us. When Arne Duncan was secretary, he invited education innovators to help transform his department. Don’t be tied to your conception of schooling. Embrace education, however it can be done.
3.) Recognize that appointing people, assembling commissions and promoting legislation often have nothing to do with what is really occurring with rank-and-file families and learners. Too many appointees arrive at their posts in departments and agencies that have a hand in education, thinking it is their jobs that make things work.
To the contrary, education reform started from the ground up. Breaking up the education cartel; allowing freedom and flexibility in schools, among teachers and among families to engage in picking their educational venue of choice regardless of zip code; standards and teacher profession reforms that value success over tenure.
All these ideas started in collaborations of normal people and scrappy legislators who had the tenacity to drive such ideas to state halls and eventually into school halls.
Listen, watch and applaud no matter what the political party, no matter whether your constituency is in favor.
Our democracy depends on an educated citizenry. Encourage it, no matter how, or where, it occurs.
Jeanne Allen is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is CEO and founder of the Center for Education Reform.
