If you are in education, these are turbulent times. Teachers fear pay cuts as a result of a testing regime that includes students’ performance on standardized test scores. Parents are concerned that afterschool programming will no longer be available after the end of Supplemental Educational Services, or they worry about having their child returned to an underperforming neighborhood school without the School Choice program. District officials are scrambling to process and implement the requirements of the waiver: teacher evaluation, Common Core State Standards curricular and assessment alignment, school turnaround processes, and professional development and training for staff…just to name a few. As we are in the pre-implementation stage, we cannot know whether the reforms undertaken will be truly meaningful or simply a rebranding of the status quo.
What is even more remarkable is that all of these reforms have been driven directly by the US Department of Education, first through Race to the Top and then through the ESEA waiver process. The Department of Education has enticed over 80% of the states to adopt its initiatives by competing for funds, and then by application for greater control over funds through waiving parts of No Child Left Behind. Most states find $10 Million for education enough incentive to restructure. Only one state(California) publicly considered that implementation of the waiver would cost more than continued implementation of No Child Left Behind.
As a complement to the empowered role of the federal cabinet, Congress has been impotent in terms of educational policy. The national education law in this country is still No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. That means that Congress has not had any input into education policy in eleven years! The reason that the Department of Education has been so effective at instituting structural reform is because it understands how to motivate SEAs and LEAs. Education agencies have an instinctual need to seek additional available funds. Agencies survive on annual budgets. If the agency can add to its coiffeurs, it gains legitimacy and security. Further, SEAs and LEAs have learned from No Child Left Behind. Despite its many critics, everyone agrees that the law has given an undeniable amount of dismal data about the nation’s low-income communities. SEAs and LEAs have been waiting to adjust their practice in an attempt to fix the “problem” of failing schools. Therefore, the Department of Education’s message flowed downstream. It was met with little criticism and resistance in the educational system and community.
Turbulence suggests an absence of stability, and the goal is to overcome the turbulence. We cannot allow the current turbulence to be simply a temporary instability. In order to begin to overcome the immense discrepancies in educational attainment between rich and poor students, the current “turbulence” must be lasting. It must propel us to act differently: to innovate, develop, and implement reform strategies that positively impact students’ achievement. The Improvement Plans that LEAs must submit to SEAs or their proxies need be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Reasonable, and Time-based). The plans should include specific and targeted strategies to address intractable issues in the classrooms. Educational stakeholders can no longer wait by the sidelines. In order to ensure that we positively impact the educational process, we must all bear the responsibilities of all students’ success and failure.