The union head claims to be for educational reform, better teachers, better curriculum, better schools. Who isn’t? Yet immediately she stakes out the union position that serious educational reform must involve the union precisely in those ways that have stifled reform in the past. There is plenty of evidence, both rigorous and anecdotal, that what she calls “guided instruction” provides the best opportunity for poor student to learn to read, learn to write and learn to calculate. Yet that is a policy she disparages. “Teacher-proofing teaching” is just cheap sloganeering, not any thoughtful criticism of an educational policy. It deserves to be called “edu-cant”.

She want site-based decision making councils. DPS has had them for a number of years and, still, here she is in 2007 talking about them as though they had not been tried and found wanting.

She seems not to recognize the disparity between her announced goal and her job. She says she wants DPS to be “offering compensation that attracts the best and brightest in every teaching position.” Her job, as union head is to protect her members. Does she publicly commit to weeding out the ineffective teachers as the counterpart to attracting the best and brightest? No. When push comes to shove, whose side will she be on?

I give DPS credit for recognizing they need to change. And, in all fairness, the union has cooperated with the District in the past with the ProComp plan. And at least she recognizes that changes have to be made.

I applaud charter schools, school choice, and most policies that empower parents in their children’s education. In fact, this move by DPS validates some of the primary arguments that have been made for school choice. The establishment is being forced to respond by the pressure of children leaving. They are forced to compete in the arenas of convenience, programs and especially, educational excellence.

Personally, I think school choice is a great idea. Parents and students should be able to choose schools freely and schools should have more choice in the students they admit, the teachers they employ, and the policies they follow.

Steve

Regarding what you term “edu-cant,” it seems to me that most parents who select charter, private and school-of-choice alternatives do so for precisely the reasons listed in the “union head’s” description: schools with smaller class sizes, better and more motivated teachers, greater parent input and attractive ancillary programs. Both sides of the school choice debate are equally prone to “edu-cant” and puffed rhetoric. I’m from Michigan, an early leader in the charter schools movement, and have seen the best mission-driven charters succeed and the ones based on mere opposition to existing public schools fail quickly.

I give Denver Public Schools credit for responding to challenges by addressing the issue openly, and pledging to try new things to meet the needs of their clients. It’s a far better plan than fighting or subverting the competition.

This is precisely what school choice is supposed to do, isn’t it?–make everyone more aware of and working toward schools that meet student needs and parent desires? Good schools are built on optimism and a vision of good education, not cynicism.

In the end, school choice doesn’t mean as much as it might if there’s no philosophical choice across the board.

The excerpt does not make clear that the “more than 40,000″ includes children who attend a DPS school other than their default one.

Nearly half of Denver’s teachers have elected to leave the rigid step-and-lane salary schedule for a more flexible plan called ProComp that takes into account scarcity of skills and difficulty of assignment.

I should also note (as a Rocky editorial writer) the district’s extraordinary cooperation on the series “Leaving to Learn.”

Let’s work together for the sake of children

“It would be an interesting experiment to facilitate a discussion of school reform with two separate groups – one made up of district administrators, school board members, and education experts, and the other made up of classroom teachers and rank-and-file parents. We can tell from experience what those plans would look like.

One would be full of sweeping rhetoric about “state of the art” this and “world class” that and “21st century” the other to describe inherent contradictions, like unleashing the creativity of teachers by giving them the latest standardized model for guided instruction (i.e., teacher-proofing teaching) or encouraging the best performance of all by rewarding a few. It would be full of “right-sizing” and “sweeping away the status quo,” but, in the end, it would preserve one element of the status quo that is most harmful: the top-down decision making that has dominated schools for many years. It would likely include more standardized testing, more dire consequences for not meeting prescribed test scores, and remedies that look like exit strategies.

The reform plan of teachers and parents would be much more down to earth. It would include things like reducing class size, setting and maintaining high standards for all teachers and offering compensation that attracts the best and brightest in every teaching position. It would be child-centered, calling for more preschool programs and all-day kindergarten, more after-school programs and summer school for students who are struggling. It would include ongoing opportunities for teachers and parents to work together, informally as partners around the development of individual children and more formally through site-based decision-making councils for ongoing assessment and continual improvement at the school level.”

“Teacher-proofing teaching”? It’s going to be a bumpy ride for Bennett. I wish him well.

It is time for all public schools to be choice schools. We have known for years parents that choose the school their child attends are much more supportive of the program and seeing that the child is ready for school.

If educators are finally willing and ready to incorporate changes from outside of education — such as choice made by the consumer everyday, top quality leadership in every building and classroom, different pay for different skills and ability to help children learn, stopping tenure or sure as heck make it more difficult to get and much easier to fire ineffective teachers, etc. I say this can be done. It can be done in Denver and other districts, too.

I will be watching this closely. I hope my district will be moving this way too — at least there is talk of this — all schools choice schools, those that cannot draw a significant student body, figure out how to distinguish themself from another school to attract students will close, etc.

It is past time education enters the modern world.

Joanne — thanks for the heads up on what Denver is trying to do!