How to Make Teachers Content Managers

Is the solution to problems with K-12 education to socialize the whole thing through federal oversight? It is something that is floated around from time to time. Here is the latest:

"Therefore, I recommend that President-elect Barack Obama convene a meeting of our nation's governors and seek agreement to the following:

- Abolish all local school districts, save 70 (50 states; 20 largest cities). Some states may choose to leave some of the rest as community service organizations, but they would have no direct involvement in the critical task of establishing standards, selecting teachers, and developing curricula.

- Establish a set of national standards for a core curriculum. I would suggest we start with four subjects: reading, math, science and social studies.

- Establish a National Skills Day on which every third, sixth, ninth and 12th-grader would be tested against the national standards. Results would be published nationwide for every school in America.

- Establish national standards for teacher certification and require regular re-evaluations of teacher skills. Increase teacher compensation to permit the best teachers (as measured by advances in student learning) to earn well in excess of $100,000 per year, and allow school leaders to remove underperforming teachers.

- Extend the school day and the school year to effectively add 20 more days of schooling for all K-12 students."

How does one failed monopoly become better if it only becomes a bigger and more powerful monopoly? Apparently he did not read the news on the failure of the most recent experiment of nationalized testing: No Child Left Behind. It's simply stupid to insist on nationalizing something when there is no evidence that this would be successful other than at meeting the outcome of burdening taxpayers and reinforcing problems that already exist. The problem is that we are doing something with education that no other nation is trying to the same extent: move from massified education to universal education for all citizens that takes everyone right through college. The jury is still out not only that we can realize this goal, but the degree to which we can realize it. Nationalizing hardly seems like a feasible means to what might not even be a feasible end.

Schools need to compete with each other and increasing standards simply forces schools not to compete, but to teach to the standards to keep funding. Unions make it hard to fire poor teachers and also make it just as hard to reward those who are out-performing their peers. More tests for teachers' knowledge does nothing to improve the level of engagement they have with their students in order to meet learning outcomes.

This kind of rhetoric will only make the problem worse since the bureaucrats will have more control over what teachers do in the classroom and make the administration even more removed from the processes of education in the classroom because they are so uptight with serving their administrative masters and elected officials. the further the administration is from the classroom, the more irrelevant and out of touch they become.

Maybe Gerstner would do well to actually have discussions with public school teachers who are outperforming their peers. He will find many teachers who actually have to buck the systems he would like to see in place in order to do their jobs effectively. The best teachers engage their students more and in doing so challenge their students more effectively than others. It's beyond content management which is exactly what Gerstner's absurd proposals would elicit.

What is the outcome to Gerstner's proposal other than creating a society of people who are great at standardized tests? Is that what real teaching and learning will become?

UPDATE: Cato @ Liberty's Andrew Coulson posts similar remarks here. "This is not merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It is rearranging, repainting, and reupholstering those deck chairs…."

HT: Flypaper

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