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OPINIONS
Mark Bugher: West Virginia must embrace 21st-century education reform
I recently was invited to attend a presentation in Washington, D.C., by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce of its 2009 education "Leaders and Laggards" report to the U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
This report was a cooperative effort of the U.S. Chamber, the Center for American Progress and the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. The report is a state-by-state "report card" on education innovation. Education innovation is described by the report as "Discarding policies that no longer serve students while creating opportunities for smart, entrepreneurial problem-solvers to help children learn."
The report graded state schools on seven criteria: school management, finance, hiring and evaluation of staff, removing ineffective teachers, data collection, pipeline to post-secondary education, and technology. West Virginia received an overall grade of D+, however, ranked first in the nation on technology, measured by student per Internet-connected computer.
No state received an overall grade higher than a C+, and although West Virginia was ranked in the bottom quarter of states, there were 11 states ranked below us. Virginia, Oklahoma and Texas ranked overall the highest, and Kansas, Montana and Nebraska were at the bottom of the rankings.
More important than the rankings, however, are the findings of the report.
Some of the more important issues that were identified included the fact that: rigid educational bureaucracies impede quality schooling; state financing systems are opaque, inefficient and undermine innovation; the teacher pipeline fails to provide a diverse pool of high-quality teachers; teacher evaluations are not based on performance; major barriers exist to removing ineffective teachers; the outcome of technology spending is unknown and state data systems provide limited information on school operations and outcomes.
The report provides some general recommendations that states should consider.
The first recommendation is that states provide more flexibility to local schools, which could empower schools and principals, allow for rethinking the school day and calendar, develop student-based funding policies and reinvent education management.
The report also calls for holding individuals and organizations in education more accountable for performance, and reforming teacher pay, rewarding teachers whose performance improves student achievement.
Capacity building in the school system is also recommended by providing teachers with focused professional development on key topics such as the use of data and technology, researching and developing promising instructional practices and school models and supporting innovative schools and programs.
Another key component of the report recommends an end to the monopoly of the local school system, adopting charter school legislation and alternative certification of non-traditional teachers, such as those with a business background.
The business community, as well as parents, should be vitally interested in this report and its findings. The business community for the most part is buying the product our education system is delivering, and with a national high school graduation rate of only 73 percent and nearly 40 percent of high school graduates needing remedial training to do college-level work, something is obviously wrong with the system.
The report concludes that "even as businesses have revolutionized their practices, student achievement has remained stagnant, and our K-12 schools have stayed remarkably unchanged -- preserving, as if in amber, the routines, culture and operations of a 1930s manufacturing plant." As parents and business people, we must insist on literally reinventing our education system.
The entire report is available online at www.uschamber.org/reportcard.
Mark Bugher is president and chief executive office of the Huntington Regional Chamber of Commerce.
