Which strands of education reform do YOU support?
Autonomous and accountable schools: Adherents hold that schools—and especially their principals—are the key units of change, but that they need the right incentives and autonomy to succeed. Those incentives come mainly in the form of external accountability but also via competition. This approach is best illustrated by the charter schools movement as well as charter-like schools, via portfolio management and the like. It pulls in standards-based reformers (most of them supporters of the Common Core) and “Reinventing Government” types. In the real world, this group has arguably been much more successful at introducing accountability than meaningful autonomy, especially for schools in the district sector.
Capacity building comes in many forms, but its fans generally argue that schools are doing about as well as can be expected, given what they have to work with. To be more effective, they need more know-how, resources, training, talent, and help. Popular remedies include investments in professional development, stronger teacher preparation, data-based decision making, and curricular reform.
Personalized learning focuses on customizing education for every student. The “unit of change” is the individual child. Key policies include Course Access, Education Savings Accounts, and the larger push for choice in education. Proponents of this reform tend to trust parents to make good decisions, though some are willing to concede the need for external accountability, too (at least transparency around outcomes so parents have good consumer information). Teachers don’t play a big role in the “theory of action” of this reform, other than as providers of educational services. Even “schools” are seen, by some in this camp, as anachronistic creatures of an earlier era. Students might get some of their personalized learning at a school, but they will also get it online, at community colleges, on the job, etc.
Teacher effectiveness stresses the role of the classroom instructor, who is the key unit of change. It sees schools as mere bundles of teachers; to the extent that principals matter, it’s because of their role in recruiting and retaining great teachers and removing bad ones. Key policies include tenure reform, alternate routes to licensure, rigorous teacher evaluations, and differential pay systems. These folks may or may not support school choice or school accountability regimes, but they tend to be impatient with calls to merely hold principals accountable and let them handle the rest.
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