EdReform 10.0
A collective commitment and agenda for the next decade to ensure freedom, flexibility, and innovation in U.S. schools

Introduction

In his dramatic biography No Struggle, No Progress, self-described black power advocate Howard Fuller wrote of Frederick Douglass’ famous admonition that, “Power concedes nothing without a demand”. Fuller says it was the relationship between struggle and progress that propelled him down dark alleys and dirt roads in the 1960’s to defend the civil liberties of his community, and what drives him to continue to fight for educational equality and parental choice.

“Education reform is one of the most crucial social justice issues of our time,” writes Fuller, “and I will spend the rest of my days fighting for my people, most especially those without the power or the resources to fight for themselves.”

Dedicated commitment from education reform activists such as Howard Fuller is the reason why laws have been enacted to provide educational opportunities across school districts nationwide from the low-income areas in Milwaukee, marginalized communities of Washington, D.C., as well as provide statewide school choice options in Florida, Minnesota and Nevada.

In 1980, when Ted Kolderie first wrote about the critical nature of breaking the exclusive franchise of the traditional school district which held parents captive based on zoned attendance, few imagined his dual track prescription for creating new, responsive schools in the spirit of choice and diversity would evolve into to a charter school movement that has enabled charter school laws to be enacted in 90 percent of our nation’s states.

The promise of laws that empowered educators and parents to create new neighborhood schools was too big and too bold to be stopped.

Despite the promising strides made over the breadth of 25 years of charter education, the inadequacy of charter laws in many states leaves most students and families without sufficient educational options. State imposed caps, underfunded charters, and a culture of political expediency by advocates has resulted in lost opportunities, and apathy by new legislators who are content to give reformers only what is requested.

The old school argument that America should “just fix the system” rather than create new opportunities for students have resurfaced, and have many people believing that the idea of improving traditional schools is new. In reality, decades of unsuccessful efforts to “fix the system” motivated the founders of today’s reforms, people like Howard Fuller. Ted Kolderie, the visionary, argued we must divest the “exclusive franchise” held by districts and ensure that both diversity of learning opportunities and participants and choice by parents were the critical elements for widespread educational improvements to occur. Yet today, the significant work of these education reformers often seems like a distant memory as Governors, lawmakers, and philanthropists create “new” systems to take over the old; systems distinguished only by different actors, not fundamentally different power structures.

In his newest book The Split Screen Strategy: Improvement + Innovation, Kolderie argues “Successful systems combine ‘improvement’ and ‘innovation’, working to make the existing model better while opening to the introduction of new and different models”. The chartered sector is essential for the improvement of public education, functioning as the seedbed for new models of school, and new approaches to teaching and learning, that will gradually migrate over to the district sector. This combination of ‘improving-the-existing’ and ‘opening-to-innovation’ is the “split screen” approach, easing the transition in the system and not allowing politics to dictate a ‘one best way’ for learning.

In the most influential book on school choice of all time, Politics, Markets and America’s Schools, the late John Chubb and Terry Moe argued that, “Choice is a self-contained reform with its own rationale and justification. It has the capacity all by itself to bring about the kind of transformation that, for years, reformers have been seeking to engineer in a myriad of other ways.”

The most successful reformers, those who turned principle into practice over the past two and half decades, agree, and must unite to see it happen. Again.

From Reform to Results: The EdReform 10.0 Empowerment Principles

“We are appalled that more than 30 years since A Nation at Risk, the nation’s overall academic proficiency rating is less than 40 percent (often less than 20 percent among at-risk students), that high school graduation is not a measure of a well-rounded, rigorous education and, among other things that students are able to leave high school lacking college and career readiness.

“While we respect and recognize that many exceptional and well-intentioned lawmakers, leaders, and educators may disagree, we believe the single most impactful and important gift we can give to our communities, our families, our children and grandchildren is the power that comes with the opportunity to choose one’s school and make their lives better.

“We refuse to accept that in such a great and bountiful country, and despite 25 years of experience, we can offer only a few million students in need tenuous choice opportunities at a better education.

“To do so, advocates must unite anew.

“We will set a foundation for what we require of both policy and politics to ensure the next generation of education reform is built on innovation and the flexibility to create, iterate, test and implement the next wave of education policy in the United States.

“We believe it’s time to achieve the new “split screen” approach to innovation, broaden the charter schooling movement, and expand all forms of school choice to those who need it the most.

“First, we will aggressively advocate for new laws that allow a wide variety of providers and organizations to create, manage, approve, and work at charter schools and educational enterprises. Favoring only those individuals or institutions that have already proven that their system works ignores the fact that such entities were once a new idea with no established track record. Discriminating against organizations willing to create, manage, and fund charter schools based on tax status or tenure impedes the rights of students and families.

“Second, we must create laws that encourage the creation of new schools — in public, private and charter communities — to create and restructure existing traditional schools. Laws that over-regulate private schools while at the same time permitting parents to make choices inadvertently discourages private schools from entering such programs or expanding.

“Third, we commit to ensuring that policies and laws created with our involvement ensure flexibility. Only schools free from most rules and conventional regulations can best explore the potential to deploy digital technologies, teach an entirely experiential curriculum, or support project-centered learning as part of competency-based education.

“Fourth, we believe in accountability that is student centered, not system centered. We renew our commitment to holding to high standards any person or institution with the privilege of serving our children. However, we commit to focusing this decade’s version of assessment and measurement on individual students, and will call on researchers and measurement experts to produce real time, longitudinal evaluations which provide a long view of progress.

“Fifth and finally, we commit to extending ourselves and our work beyond true-believers, to non-believers, to engage in discussions, civil debate and argument, and failing to turn hearts and minds, to fighting with every resource at our disposal to accomplish our shared goals.

“Hence, we the undersigned join hands and commit ourselves to the birth of EdReform 10.0: a vision of innovation, flexibility and freedom in our shared quest to improve all schools, and to the understanding that a young movement can disappear if its founders, participants, and beneficiaries fail to keep it alive and ignore the importance of struggle in making real progress.”

Click here to sign your commitment to the EdReform 10.0 Empowerment Principles.

EdReform 10.0 – What We Must Do

Invite Education Reform People and Organizations to Engage in EdReform 10.0

To effect true and lasting change, we must to do more than wait for people to come to our offices, join our staffs, or run for office. We must start a revolution with new advocates! If we want to change the conversation of education reform to focus on the vision of flexibility, innovation, and freedom, we must partner with like-minded organizations to expand the breadth of our reach. It is our mission to reinforce the importance of a unified vision of urgency around action-oriented education reform policy and legislation.

Convene and Communicate Often

We will unite EdReform 10.0 signers and potential participants around weekly conversations online and at on the ground events that support our mission and collectively help participants advance policy efforts. We intend to leverage the media to build momentum, attract new advocates, and work with our partners to solve problems together.

Prepare our Next Generation of Education Reformers

The necessity for true historical perspective has been made clear repeatedly in the space of education reform. The largest impediment to lasting, structural educational improvement beyond knowing the opponents of rigorous standards, quality school choice options, and educational accountability is the lack of knowledge of the people, ideas, and progress, that have created the momentum to improve educational legislation for our children. We commit to educating our next generation of reformers and arming them with the historical knowledge necessary to actively support positive change.

To that end, CER is making available its unique EdReform University platform to engage leaders and provide collaborative training and education programs. Our technology has helped us to enable thousands of “students” to enroll and participate in courses synchronously and asynchronously and gain access to a repository reflecting years of history. These lessons about the people and actions that have made reform possible are critical in helping us to advance shared reform agendas.

Call on Funders to Support our Vision

We call on influential and active supporters of our collective efforts and on new contributors, to share and join our commitment. Our vision requires funders willing to take risks, to understand that reform is often organic, and that our collective efforts cannot succeed without your involvement and well-founded trust.