Well-meaning education reformers are too often content to layer their new proposals atop outdated schools and systems. Unsurprisingly, school improvement efforts have repeatedly failed to deliver the results we had hoped for. Doing radically better will require state, civic, and system leaders to embrace a more coherent and comprehensive push to overhaul antiquated structures, regulations, policies, and practices.
Here, a group of leading educational thinkers, led by Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute and Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, sketches a bold set of interlocking strategies for dramatically improving the instruction, operations, governance, accountability, talent management, budgeting, and leadership of an entire educational ecosystem. The contributors use Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a city recognized for its pioneering school choice efforts, as a prism through which to examine what this overhaul will look like in practice.
The full report, “Pathway to Success for Milwaukee Public Schools”, which is truly like a book in terms of its length and comprehensiveness, includes the following sections by various, noted education experts :
- Blueprint for Improving Milwaukee Schools
- Roadmap for Education Reform by Frederick M. Hess and Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj
- New Schools and Innovative Delivery by Michael B. Horn and Meg Evans
- Quality Control in a Local Marketplace by Michael J. Petrilli
- The Recovery School District Model by Neerav Kingsland
- From “Professional Development” to “Practice”: Getting Better at Getting Better by Doug Lemov
- Building a Better Pipeline: Thinking Smarter About Talent Management by Ranjit Nair
- Spare Some Change: Smarter District Resource Use for Transformational Schools by Jonathan Travers, Genevieve Green and Karen Hawley Miles
- Harnessing Data and Analytics by Jon Fullerton
- Leading Systemic Reform by Heather Zavadsky
- An Overview of Milwaukee’s K-12 Education System by Michael Ford
- What Milwaukee Thinks About Its Schools: The Results of Polling and Focus Groups by William Howell
Following is an excerpt from the Final Word in the summary version of the report:
Surveys tell us that Milwaukee’s citizens are skeptical of most proposals to reform local schools. Who can blame them? Years of grand promises and disappointing results have soured many a community on overhyped visions of reform. What’s notable (and different) about this effort, we’d suggest, is that we are offering neither an airy vision or sugarplum promises. The recommendations here will not deliver miracle cures. Period. But they will help to create the kind of system in which great educators can thrive, can get the kind of support they need, and are held accountable in more sensible and appropriate ways. We believe this will create the circumstances where more conventional efforts will prove more likely to deliver.
A decade ago, Milwaukee was regarded as one of the nation’s iconic cities when it came to school reform. Today, that is not the case. But it can be. And, we are firmly convinced that embracing the blueprint sketched here can create the conditions that will enable a renaissance in local schooling.
For more information, please visit:
http://www.aei.org/paper/education/k-12/system-reform/the-roadmap-for-education-reform/
