Retreat Reflections

teske — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:41:26 GMT

by Paul Teske

There were a number of insightful comments at our retreat. Two have stuck out in my mind, as both seemed to be "show stoppers" when they were offered for consideration (that is, they were powerful and people needed a minute to reflect, I think, but we had to move on to other topics, too).

I think they are both worth some serious discussion, at least on the blog, perhaps in future meetings too. If we agree that the original comments are mostly correct, then they have profound implications for our work. If we challenge them, it will be well worth the effort to understand why/how they can be challenged.

The first statement was from David Greenberg. David basically said that, in the current system, there are no incentives, none, for adults running the systems to care about the success of students (our broad goal of individual success for the common good). This is a powerful statement (and the reason David himself has put his own efforts into charters, somewhat apart from the "larger system"). If this is true, then we should probably be thinking hard about creating some incentives (and, to our credit, we have done so already, thinking about "rewards" for districts or schools that produce graduates, but obviously we would have to go further, and this should be a foundational point of our work).

But, is it true? There would seem to be some political incentives for adults to care - e.g., elected state and school district board members, and the professional they hire and oversee - if they don't make acceptable progress, political accountability mechanisms should bring in new leadership, via elections. And, that "pressure" to achieve success should also be pushed down the hierarchies to principals, teachers, etc. But, does that really happen? - probably not much or not very directly.

Do SARs, NCLB or the new proposal for accountability in Colorado make any difference, in terms of real incentives for adults to care about students success?

And, what other kinds of real incentives or accountability structures to support student success are built-into today's system? What could be incorporated? Teacher or principal pay for performance is at least aligned with this idea, though our experiments in that domain are just starting, in a few districts. How much do we want to "bet" on an stronger incentives based approach?

The second statement was from Elaine Ganz Berman. Elaine said that merging K12 and higher ed may be impossible because one is a "system" (K12) and the other (higher ed) is not a system. First of all is this true? - is K12 in Colorado really a "system" and is higher ed truly not a system? And, in what sense is that important?

I believe that "discussing" these two issues on the blog will help our thought process, on several levels, relating to governance and finance.

Thanks to David and Elaine for those provocative statements.

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