I’m still chewing through the details of the CMS Task Force report, but reading the reaction of others to the report a notion has already hit me between the eyes.
I frequently turn to the Library of America’s two volume set on the Debate on the Constitution for both perspective and inspiration. The tomes brim with the insights and wisdom of the Founding Fathers, both famous and obscure. One striking element of that debate was the conviction that a new Constitution had to be forged. Anarchy or tyranny were the only other options.
The task force report seems to be placing the community in Charlotte in the same frame of mind — or is at least starting to. The CMS status quo is unsustainable and leads one place — a failed public school system, a rapidly fleeing tax base, and Charlotte as another hollowed-out, basket case municipality. There also seems to be a growing understanding that org-chart reform will not cut it. Real, structural reform is required; reform every bit as wrenching and contentious as the Constitution was in 1788.
The task force suggestions for reform essentially encapsulate 20, perhaps 30 years, worth of structural school reform that CMS missed, for whatever reason. Contracting out services, devolving power outward and downward, creating at least the possibility of real entrepreneurial schools — all would make for a huge change in the ossified CMS structure and in educational outcomes.
Further, the suggested change in the make-up of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board should not be analyzed in the heat of its current and chronic dysfunction, but as part of a move to a more business-like, results oriented approach. The suggested board would function more as an oversight board or board of directors, with a stronger CEO-like superintendent in day-to-day command. The CEO, in turn, would hand-off to, in effect, business unit SVPs who would be charged with executing and delivering. The current CMS structure does not execute, so everything gets kicked back up the board. That can’t work.
And neither can throwing more money into the system, which the report seems to endorse at different points. It remains unclear what, exactly, “money following students” means. But there is also a call to make how CMS spends its money much more transparent and clear to the community, a huge step forward in any event.
Is the report perfect? No, not by a long shot, but neither was the Constitution. Time and time again in those stirring debates of 1788, some farmer or merchant stood in a state capital to tick off their concerns with the document — which usually involved taxes and the federal courts — before ending with a call for ratification. They were pursuing “a more perfect Union,” not a perfect one. The Founders were not utopians, but schooled in the common-sense wisdom of the age and utterly fearless in following wherever the dictates of reason and evidence might lead.
That is now Charlotte’s charge — to be fearless. To try to make something better without worrying if it is going to be perfect. For ourselves and our posterity.