That was one of John Wooden’s credos — Be quick, but don’t hurry.
It seems to me that Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, a former former Harvard basketball player, would do well to remember. Sec. Duncan was quoted heavily in an April 17th editorial in the Chicago Tribune that suggested that unless Illinois quickly changes to his ideas on education reform, they will get none of the $5 Billion "Race to the Top" Department of Education money.
I question those folks who would say that there is one way to fix education — or that we know what we need to know. I worry a great deal that in our hurry to change education, we are pushing "reforms" through that may not do what we want them. And I worry about a Secretary of Education who would use language such as this:
"But if things don’t change in a very meaningful way, Illinois won’t be among those eight or 10 or 15 states" that receive a share of the $5 billion.
One, what is the data that suggests all of Illinois is at a mediocre level? Two, the innovations that Duncan proposes — according to the rest of the article — are more charter schools and merit pay based on test scores. The recent RAND study that included Philadelphia charter schools suggests that we still have a lot to learn about the efficacy of charter schools. That’s not to say they shouldn’t be funded, but rather that we shouldn’t only look at the latest educational fads as the path to improvement.
And that’s happening a lot lately. It’s easy to forget, but NCLB is only eight years old. We have seen an almost complete upheaval of public education in those eight years. We are racing toward… what? What is the specific vision of those who would reauthorize NCLB, who would push for merit pay, who would push for both more charter schools and more standardized curriculum for the public schools?
There is no question that we must continue to work to fix our schools. There’s no question that there is work to do. But let us be deliberate and thoughtful about the way we do it. Let us dial down the rhetoric and recognize the hard work and successes that so many educators — and so many schools — have achieved. Let us make choices (and spend money) in ways that help students as best we can, as opposed to changing as much as we can as fast as we can, just to say we did something.
In other words, let us be quick… but let us never hurry.
