CP's Homework Assignment

After looking at the poll results back in June, RoguePundit saw some conceptual weakness in the Chalkboard Project. He's right on. CP polled citizens, parents, students, teachers and others to find out what they want from their schools. But polling is a diversion that CP took, and it suggests CP may not be a good learner who can focus on a problem to investigate and understand it. Can CP investigate and understand ed reform? Those of us impatient for serious ed reform and leadership don't think the problem lies with citizens and their involvement. We assign leadership to CP. CP is the one who is studying our ed system and proposing reforms. We will have to evaluate and grade CP on the basis of its research and leadership, not citizen involvement.

Polling is not research into the problems of public schools. It seems a bit of a diversion to the real task of doing some serious investigations and development of solutions for Oregon's education problems. CP's poll was a pretty serious effort but even so, I'd guess RoguePundit (Studying Our Schools) wouldn't give it better than a C grade. But even so, where does that leave us? At best, polling might find some levels of political support for various hopes that people wish the system would produce but polling is not a reform tool. At best, it might be used politically for pressuring legislators for one thing or another. But what exactly?

Do we tell the legislators they better make the schools better, lower the drop out rate, increase attendance, raise test scores, increase its efficiency, and all the rest of the things we want? How exactly is the legislature to do this? It doesn't own or run the schools. What strategy should the legislature adopt? To answer that, what we need is serious study into public education problems as CP suggests it is intent on doing as "information broker." So let's see how good a learner CP is, what kind of reports it can produce. The first step is some objective description of the condition of public schooling.

Of course honesty about the objective state of public schooling will necessarily sound pretty negative. After all the glaring inequity of the achievement gap, the inefficiency compared to private and charter schooling, the drop out and attendance rates, the failure to get 3/4 of the kids to 10th grade standards by graduation, etc. all do paint a dismal picture of massive failure by the mainline system. Being honest about this context is politically risky. Already we hear charges that CP is too negative.

But even if CP does manage to produce an objective study of public school performance, descriptions are not causes. CP will still need to get to the causes, the design of the means of production, so it can understand and explain exactly why the current arrangement for delivering public education fails so miserably. (Hint to CP, the current arrangement for delivery is a district system of schooling operating with protections within geographic boundaries to be the sole provider of public education that almost exclusively uses government schools and a monopolized, heavily unionized labor pool.) Your assignment, CP, is to explain why the design of this system delivers such dismal performance and efficiency. And most importantly, if you do get to this far in your assignment, then give us the causes for why change and improvement of this system is so difficult. This defines the "information" we need.

Please be very clear that we haven't asked for solutions yet. We want to know you understand the problem and its causes first before you rush to solutions. So the research comes first, then the development process of solutions. So your homework, CP, is to answer two questions. First, "Why after decades of reform have things not gotten significantly better while costs have risen?" That question is the easy one. The second question is the hard one. "Once you understand how the system must be redesigned, how exactly can the powerful political opposition to redesign be overcome?"

In our grading, we will have to hold CP to high standards since it is putting itself front and center in solving Oregon’s education problem and announcing rather arrogantly, that it will solve Oregon's education problems by "bringing together" Oregonians who are "polarized, paralyzed, and apathetic about what it takes to make sure every child receives the kind of education that will lead to success…" Such self-centered condescension and blame will lower its grade, and make it difficult for CP to get the help it needs in developing its understanding of its assignment.