With the Michigan House of Representatives’ Education Committee passage of a bill that will uncap charter schools, we can conclude a couple things with great certainty.
The first is that Lansing political power is deeply invested in advancing the most prominent planks in the “education reform” movement. For those who have been paying attention to what’s happening in Lansing, this is a dog bites man story.
The second lesson is a message the “education establishment” had better heed. It’s time to compete.
This is largely the theme of my Moneyball entry a couple of weeks ago. We could go on and on with the debate as to whether charter schools, school choice, cyber schools, right to work, and emphasis on standardized testing serve as an inflection point for public education. The education establishment could continue to bemoan that these are largely unproven strategies that threaten the well-being of our children.
The fact is, at least in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana, these changes are all coming to pass – and rapidly so. Take a number, education establishment, the Earth has shifted beneath you. To your left is Amazon.com and to your right, Borders.
We can be sure of this as it relates to free market influence on public education. Parents will be the ultimate judge of what is best for their children. In order for them to make that judgement among the options presented, they must know first the value proposition of the competing institutions. They make their choice and then they will experience for themselves whether that value proposition was realized.
For a public school system like that which we have cultured in Grosse Pointe for decades, I’d say let’s get it on. Let’s compete. Let’s aggressively promote our value proposition to those people who choose to live in our community or who will evaluate living here based on the quality of the public schools.
Let’s treat the families and students who choose to attend Grosse Pointe Public Schools as the valued customers they are. Let’s make sure they know they are much, much more than a standardized test score. Let’s make sure they know we have the capacity, talent, resources, and passion to make available to them as good an educational experience – public or private – as anywhere in the world. And to the extent we are unsure of our ability to make that statement, let’s let that be our driver for continuous improvement.
It is the dawn of a new era for public education in this state. Those who choose to only look backwards will be left behind. Let’s gather those assets, practices and aptitudes that have delivered us this far and march forward with confidence that the Grosse Pointe Public School System can and will compete, guided by the best interests of our students, families, and community.
One response to “Uncapping charters is reality, it’s time to compete”
All school districts need to have a continuing improvement mentality in how they work toward the best innovations in curriculum and extra-curricular programs that enhance and promote the core curriculum. In Grosse Pointe this ought to include revamping our world languages curriculum which at this point continues to operate with out dated model. In the 60’s the Grosse Pointe Schools had a strong program in Russian –no doubt fueled by the emerging Sputnik Era. I know this, because my aunt taught Russian at the Middlebury College Summer Language school — a pioneering Masters Program in intensive language instruction and one of her students was a Grosse Pointre South Russian teacher. In an ideal world we would be partners with charter schools that have specialized instructional goals which serve students in targeted and focused ways to enhance public education a large. In and ideal world we would be less concerned about competition, and would focus our lobbying efforts to get rid of the outmoded model at the state level that counts heads to fund schools which means a district like Detroit looses significant funds at “count days” and are punished for absences at the schools driven by social and economic issues that are out of the control of the schools. Our mission should be driven by a philosophy that is focused on keeping up with the research on new ways to approach teaching students and on being accountable for providing the best instruction we can in an academically and socially enriching environment. Competition often takes schools into a superficial race to look better than the schools that are perceived as the competition.