The last few weeks and months have certainly been crazy, what with all the issues surrounding the funding problems and trying to address a state budget has gone haywire. Last week’s gathering at the Capital for SOS! – Save Our Students, Save Our Schools and Save Our State, the release of the winners in the state’s Project Re-imagine contest, the need to pass legislation so that Michigan can qualify for the Federal Race to the Top Grants, and certainly the continuing bad financial news for Michigan and the School Aid Fund were just some of the issues we faced.
I rarely have the time to listen to Sunday morning political news shows, but I did happen to catch a portion of Meet the Press with David Gregory this week. An unlikely trio, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and one-time Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton have been touring the nation's schools and were on the show to challenge conventional thinking. It was an interesting discussion and a few quotes rang true to me as I think about the way our leaders could break the current budget logjam and address the many issues facing Michigan.
I would like to share some quotes that resonated with me.
Rep. Gingrich said, “…in a time when we have a liberal, Democratic president who has the courage to take on the establishment in education and who's prepared to say every state should adopt dramatic, bold reforms, I think as, as--if politics are the art of the possible, our children deserve a chance to see us come together, to put their future above partisanship and to find a way to take on the establishment in both parties and try to get this solved.”
Rev. Sharpton said, “I think that both parties have failed, but I think others have failed; I think unions have failed, I think parents have failed, I think communities have failed. …I agree with him (Gingrich) that we've got to find the common ground. And what President Obama said to us in the meeting in the Oval Office in May is if we agree on 70 percent, can't we achieve that? We've got to move forward. The problem is that we've all stayed within our battle lines, and the kids have suffered.”
Sec. Duncan said, “Teacher evaluation in this country is basically broken. Great teachers don't get recognized. They don't get rewarded. We don't shine a spotlight on them, we don't learn from them. Teachers in the middle don't get support that they need. And teachers on the bottom, who frankly need to find another profession, that doesn't happen, either. When a system is broken for every adult--high performing, those in the middle, at the bottom--if it's broken for every adult, it does not work for children. So we all have to change. This thing doesn't work. We all have to do some things very, very differently. At the heart has to be results for children.”
Rep. Gingrich said, “The three of us are making a positive gamble. We're each risking, to some extent, our reputation and our future, saying, "What if we come together and what if we actually achieve a breakthrough?" …But I think this--the country is tired of politicians finding a reason not to try to work together and not to try to gamble on the future. On this topic, the President has said publicly in speeches, said it when he was a candidate and it didn't help him to get the Democratic nomination, that he favored fundamental change in education, even if it made the unions uncomfortable. And I just think we have a chance here to break through in very practical ways, but it does require a gamble on our part of good faith.”
Sec. Duncan said, “…We all have to step up. … When that doesn't happen, when the adults fight, when there's adult dysfunction, guess what, children lose.”
These are sobering comments on the state of solving the education problems this country and our state face.
In Michigan, as we listen to the rhetoric coming from state government, business leaders, labor unions and even our own associations - and you know there has been no shortage of it - we can only wonder what would happen if our leaders had the courage to move away from their own comfort zones of the “party line” and take the risk to truly put the children of Michigan ahead of our egos and future aspirations to come together to fix Michigan’s schools.
It will take courage to fix our K-12 financial problems. It will not be easy for anyone.
Our first step in the direction of reform should include:
- Tying teacher performance to student performance, reward high performing teachers, provide help to the middle performing teachers and guide low performing teachers to other professions
- Funding of public schools, provide a tax structure that adequately funds schools now and funding that grows as the inflationary costs of schools rise
- Examining ways to conserve precious resources to maximize the school funding that gets to the classroom and find ways to provide instruction in a more cost effective way
As Secretary Duncan said, “When the adults fight, when there's adult dysfunction, guess what, children lose.”
It’s time for all of us to find the courage to put children first, to get out of our comfort zones, and to face these challenges.