Welcome
Last week, Republican gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory outlined his K-12 education platform. This week, I take a closer look at the plan.
Bulletin Board
- The John Locke Foundation and the Campbell Federalist Society cordially invite you to a luncheon forum with our special guests John O. McGinnis and William (Bill) Marshall. Their discussion, "Why Originalism Reaches Better Results than the Living Constitution," will be held on Thursday, April 5 at 12:00 pm at the Campbell Law School (Room 105) in Raleigh. The forum is free and open to the public.
- The North Carolina History Project would like educators and homeschool parents to submit lesson plans suitable for middle and high school courses in North Carolina history. Please provide links to NC History Project encyclopedia articles and other primary and secondary source material, if possible. Go to the NC History Project website for further information.
- I can’t make you love JLF’sresearch newsletter archive if you won’t.
CommenTerry
In his November 2010 remarks at the American Enterprise Institute, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan declared that "doing more with less" was the "new normal" for the nation’s public schools. He declared,
For the next several years, preschool, K-12, and postsecondary educators are likely to face the challenge of doing more with less. My message is that this challenge can, and should be, embraced as an opportunity to make dramatic improvements. I believe enormous opportunities for improving the productivity of our education system lie ahead if we are smart, innovative, and courageous in rethinking the status quo. It’s time to stop treating the problem of educational productivity as a grinding, eat-your-broccoli exercise. It’s time to start treating it as an opportunity for innovation and accelerating progress.
In response to Secretary Duncan’s remarks, Time.com columnist Andrew Rotherham was even more critical of the education establishment’s resistance to productivity concerns. According to Rotherham,
The more general problem with school funding is the lack of attention to productivity, i.e., thinking about outputs (student learning) in relation to inputs (spending). In education circles, productivity is a four-letter word. Cost and benefits? Never heard of ’em! Elementary and secondary education remains one of the last industries relatively untouched over the past few decades by productivity increases from new technologies. Schools still operate pretty much the same way they did when our parents were student. In fact, rather than becoming more productive, the opposite has happened in education: over the last 30 years, public schools have focused on strategies that decrease productivity.
A year and a half later, the public school machine and its many advocates have amplified demands for significant funding increases. Predictably, they remain silent on the issue of how those additional resources would be used to raise student achievement. Yesterday, for example, Governor Bev Perdue, state education officials, and superintendents from districts throughout North Carolina gathered in Raleigh to complain about reductions in state and federal education funding. Bellyaching about budgets is easy. It is much more difficult to propose reforms that take Secretary Duncan’s call for rethinking the status quo seriously.
Last week, Republican gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory unveiled an education plan that acknowledges a sober reality — economic conditions will continue to force North Carolina’s public schools to do more with less. As such, none of the components of the McCrory education plan require ridiculous tax increases or fantastical surges in education spending. Rather, it is the first step in using existing resources with one purpose in mind — to raise public school productivity. At this point in the campaign season, Pat McCrory is the only gubernatorial candidate to heed Secretary Duncan’s challenge to treat our current economic struggle as an "opportunity for innovation and accelerating progress" in public school productivity.
In his speech, Secretary Duncan refused to endorse a definitive course of action, but he outlined a number of ways that public schools could boost outputs by redesigning educational delivery and the deployment of resources. Duncan recommended that school leaders rethink seat-time requirements, relax class size policies, modify teacher compensation systems, use technology more effectively, and the like. In fact, McCrory adopted two of the specific reforms proposed by Secretary Duncan — expanding the use of online learning and adding a performance pay component to teacher compensation formulas.
Other components of McCrory’s education plan also promise to raise educational productivity. For example, proposals to end the social promotion of third-grade students and guarantee reading and math proficiency may reduce the rapidly growing cost of remedial education in North Carolina’s middle and high schools (and eventually in community colleges and universities). Parent-centered reforms, including assigning a letter grade to schools and improving access to high-quality charter schools, provide additional incentives for all public schools to raise academic achievement. That said, the McCrory plan does not go far enough in empowering families to choose the schools that best meet the needs of their children.
I laud the McCrory team for recognizing the importance of career and technical education by allowing students to choose from career-ready and college-ready diploma paths. Yet, I worry that some will perceive a career-ready diploma as a "second class" diploma, even if the rigor of the career-ready path rivals or exceeds the college-ready route. In addition, the design of a multiple diploma system would have to be flexible enough to allow high school students to switch diploma paths without difficulty. Both issues have the potential to undermine a well-intentioned reform. However, I do not think either challenge is insurmountable.
The bottom line for McCrory’s education plan: the status quo has been put on notice.
Random Thought
Does anyone really believe that a tow cable from a snowspeeder could topple an AT-AT Walker? Give me a break.
Facts and Stats
The four components of the McCrory education plan are as follows:
1) Give Families and Students Educational Choices
a) Two Paths to Success
b) Virtual Education Choice
c) Charter Schools Choice
2) Set High Expectations
a) End to Third Grade Social Promotions
b) High School Reading and Math Guarantee3) Reward Success
a) Better Pay for Better Teachers
4) Hold Schools Accountable
a) Grades for Our Schools
Mailbag
I would like to invite all readers to submit announcements, as well as their personal insights, anecdotes, concerns, and observations about the state of education in North Carolina. I will publish selected submissions in future editions of the newsletter. Anonymity will be honored. For additional information or to send a submission, email Terry at [email protected].
Education Acronym of the Week
ROI — return on investment
Quote of the Week
"I have a passion for education — we will never be satisfied until we transform our public schools into centers of excellence. We cannot achieve excellence by simply spending more money on a broken system; we must make major reforms. Our primary goal must be to empower students to grasp control of their adult lives by providing them the necessary skill set to get a job."
Pat McCrory, A Passion for Education: The McCrory Plan for North Carolina Schools, March 28, 2012
Click here for the Education Update archive.
