Technical Education

The framework for education reform that could alter the learning landscape statewide is in place but is lacking critical details.

Over the next several weeks, legislators and state education leaders will be filling in the blanks for an education agenda that will set up a Statehouse debate after the General Assembly convenes next month.

Key leaders on Wednesday got a good look at State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett’s much-anticipated reforms, backed by Gov. Mitch Daniels.

The plan is Indiana’s first comprehensive education reform since the 1970s, leading Bennett to characterize it as “bold” and Daniels to predict that Indiana could become a national leader in education ingenuity.

But as more than one official who attended Bennett’s presentation to the Indiana Education Roundtable pointed out, “the devil is in the details” as education leaders and legislators cobble together a series of bills over the next several weeks.

Bennett and Daniels, both Republicans, acknowledge there still is much work to be done and the current agenda is more of a framework that will be molded in the upcoming legislative process.

“Change is coming,” Daniels said after the bipartisan roundtable, appointed by the governor and instrumental in influencing statewide academic policies, voted unanimously to endorse the agenda. Read the full post…

Now that the Obama administration has invited the states to compete for $5 billion in stimulus funds, the winners will not be those that come up with the best reform ideas, but those that agree to do what the administration wants: create privately managed charter schools, evaluate teachers by their students’ test scores, and close low-performing schools. Since so much power and money are arrayed on one side of the issue, it is useful to consider some dissenting views. These three books have the power to change the national discussion of what now passes for “school reform.”

1 Linda Darling-Hammond’s “The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future” (Teachers College, $21.95) contains a valuable lode of practical and research-based advice about how to improve our schools. Darling-Hammond does something that the Obama administration has failed to do: She reviews what the top-performing school systems around the world do to get great results.

Read the full post…