Education Reform Follow Up

As a follow up to my post from a few days ago, I wanted to share Colorado's failure to attain any federal dollars from the Race to the Top program.  This is particularly disappointing given that some of the reform measures implemented this year were targeted as much at winning grant funding as they were actually making the state's education system better.

Denver Post: "Colorado finishes at back of pack in Race to the Top education grant competition"

Denver Post: Smartest Students Stranded at the Top

Denver Post: Smartest students stranded at the top, 8/15/2010

This story is an interesting read.  Though I have not been writing about it, education "reform" has been on my mind quite a bit in the last few months.  This is no doubt due in part to the fact that I am now a parent of two young children.  As their parent, I feel an obligation to be informed enough about the state of education, particularly public education, that I can advocate for my boys as they navigate their way through our educational system.  

The other part of my interest is less personal and more theoretical, at least at this point.  I think its fair to say that many policy decisions are held up on the basis of the fine print.  That's not to say that the devil isn't in the details or that the means in which a policy will be implemented are unimportant.  I do think, however, that the details often derail the train because the train isn't firmly on the tracks.  The very idea of a broad policy is to implement a top-down approach or solution to an issue.  Without that defining directive, the slightest swerve or tangent can wreck the process.

Thus, I've been thinking about the education policy that is developing in this country.  For a while, I felt like education might be one of those issues lacking a true policy direction.  Then I came across the linked Post article, and the author hit the nail squarely on the head.  Instead of building an educational system that encourages all students to reach their own potential, we've constructed a means by which we make sure all students reach a set minimum standard.  The real message is that everyone needs to be good enough, but no one needs to be great.  

Part of me was relieved - there is a method to the madness.  Part of me was (and remains) mortified and dejected that I will be subjecting at least two children to such a sad state of affairs.  Granted, there are an infinite number of variables - from individual school administrators, to teachers, to parent involvement and the individual student - that are significant in the education of each student.  Those variables, however, can only buck trends to a certain extent.  Neither can we throw issues of resource allocation and practicality out the window.  For instance, the State of Colorado, struggling to fund public education and competing for federal Race to the Top dollars, passed a new teacher tenure bill that ties teacher performance evaluation heavily to student performance on end-of-year testing.  The incentive this creates for classroom teachers seems obvious to me.  A teacher concerned about job security will most certainly devote time to making sure each student achieves satisfactory scores.  That incentive can apply at the various administrative levels through a given public school district.  Instead of spending time encouraging top students to achieve more, a teacher must spend more time with underachieving students in the interest of self preservation.  

Without data to support my opinion, I find it hard to believe that even teachers and administrators with the best of intentions for their top students will not inevitably and inescapably become locked in that cycle.  The result is that achieving students are essentially ignored by the system this policy has created.  Certainly everyone is "good enough," but at what point will we realize that "good enough" is pretty disappointing for many students?  If at any point my children sit me down and tell me that I performed well enough as a parent, I'll be heartbroken.  Yet that is the very level of achievement in education that we are currently promoting.