[P]erhaps the single greatest lever for raising expectations and achievement for all children in America would be the creation of national learning standards and assessments. With KIPP schools operating in 19 states, we have seen how the maze of state standards and tests keeps great teachers from sharing ideas, inhibits innovation, and prevents meaningful comparison of student, teacher and school performance. Rather than there being 50 different standards, Obama could unify the country around a common vision for the kind of teaching and learning we need to prepare our children for the future.

What with the NCLB anniversary hanging around, it seems to me that now’s the right time for a real discussion of national accountability standards. It’s plain that the state accountability standards mandated by NCLB don’t match up to the national benchmark–the National Assessment of Educational Progress. And by that fact alone, it seems that the fundamental goal of NCLB, to eliminate “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” isn’t being met.

Of course implementing national standards would require time, money, and a serious look at how we evaluate schools’ success. As Rotherham points out, national standards won’t mean much if they aren’t accompanied by “big changes” in the education profession. And Matt Miller is particularly good (here, here,  and here) on the issues surrounding inequality, local control, and school finance. In other words, this is a can of worms. But I’d agree with Feinberg and Levin that Obama’s in a unique position to open it.

Aristotle says that true monarchy, the rule of a virtuous man in the interest of the people, ought to be best, but that such rule is not truly best since even this man would be subject to occurrent passions in his soul (Politics III.10).  In other words, a monarch too often turns out to be a tyrant.

I recently caught a snippet of a C-SPAN panel at the National Education Summit held at the Aspen Institute and got to listen to DC schools’ chancellor Michelle Rhee, who was a leading candidate from the radical reform camp for Obama’s Secretary of Education (along with Joel I Klein, her counterpart in New York).  She made a rather striking claim: that collaboration, while sometimes useful, is overrated.  Or to put Rhee’s point more bluntly, if the teachers’ unions or the community groups don’t want to cooperate with my reform agenda, well, that’s their problem at the end of the day.  Rhee also mentioned with a note of pride that since the removal of the school board, she as the highest education official in the system has been answerable only to the mayor.

While I’m probably more in line with some of Rhee’s more radical measures than most people — shutting down failing schools, removing ineffective administrators and teachers, pegging pay to performance (to some extent, anyway) — these decisions affect the lives of a lot of people, especially students.  That’s of course Rhee’s point; the DC system is failing and she is setting out to rescue it.

But the other side of the coin is that the very public accountability standards that she wants to pin on schools, principals, and teachers don’t apply to her.  Mayor Fenty of course is free to fire Rhee, but the community she serves will have little input or recourse to air their grievances.  Perhaps giving Rhee as free a hand as possible is ultimately for the better, but we should be wary of arrangements like those in New York and Washington, D.C. public schools for the same reason we are wary of broad executive powers in our liberal society.

In general, open discussion makes policy-making better, because leaders are forced to justify their decisions.  The danger with a skilled leader unhindered by an opposition made toothless is that their success will make them bold beyond justification in pursuing their plans.  I’m hoping Michelle Rhee keeps listening.

Arne (/’ar.ni/) Duncan is being touted as a compromise pick:

In June, rival nationwide groups of educators circulated competing educational manifestos, with one group espousing a get-tough policy based on pushing teachers and administrators harder to raise achievement, and another arguing that schools alone could not close the racial achievement gap and urging new investments in school-based health clinics and other social programs to help poor students learn.

Mr. Duncan was the only big-city superintendent to sign both manifestos.

Unlike other possible candidates, Duncan is not an education insider and in his time in charge of Chicago schools, he seems not to have burned his bridges with either the union-dominated corner of the Democratic party nor with the  reform crowd.  Any Obama pick would have been likely to scrap the Spellings regime’s emphasis on high-stakes testing (NCLB and proposed higher ed analogues), but it’s heartening to think that Duncan will push accountability nevertheless.

I started thinking seriously about the challenges of public K-12 schools when I ended my own career in them with some bitterness.  As I attended what was by all accounts a superb public school, I was confused about the source of my dissatisfaction.  I also noticed how poorly served many other students around me were.  And all this despite the good intentions of just about everyone involved.  I eventually came to realize that my frustration about my own experience was in large part the result of systemic problems and not the failures of individuals or even particular schools or school districts with regard to me or anyone else.

My experiences as an undergraduate at the University of Texas in a time when the community was considering how to reform the undergraduate curriculum got me thinking about the purposes of higher education, especially the kind that is meant to be subsidized at public expense (this turns out to be most post-secondary education in the US on my view, given the non-profit status of virtually all public and private colleges and universities).  As a would-be educator, too, I want to work out what I think the institutions to which I hope to contribute should aim for and how I think they should relate to the communities of which they are a part.

But I expect I’ll talk about other issues that relate to the philosophy, politics, and practice of education, as well.