New Insider Survey – Elections, Fed Policy, And Testing

6 Replies to “New Insider Survey – Elections, Fed Policy, And Testing”

1. how was this survey conducted?

2. Hi – Check the first few slides for methodology, background, etc…

3. But you still can’t name names.
   Coward and hypocrite.

4. Education Insider conducts an anonymous survey of a small group of key education influentials (policymakers, thought leaders, and association heads)

   Of course, many of these Inciders missed the defeat of Tony Bennett in Indiana and resorted to yelling shit, shit, shit.

5. Very interesting document. It’s nice to get at least some sense of what is going on with the national view of reform.

   From a systems perspective, it looks like the reform effort is failing. Each part of the system is failing to find the support from enough vital stakeholders to remain viable. As is always true of these things, there are some places where reform is going the way it proponents desire. MIrroring the Romney campaign, certain insiders want to believe the outliers are representative of the whole.

   There are at least three key reasons for this slow motion death spiral. The first, hearts and minds. The reformers failed to win two key constituencies, parents and teachers. Most kids are doing well as are most schools so the effort to win parent-voters was undermined by success. The second key reason is leadership. If reform was to work, it would require leadership at many critical parts of the system but especially at the top, and neither the Bush or Obama Administrations could muster the leadership necessary to pose a credible challenge to key reason number one. The third key involves the evolving tension between local and federal control. Even with a Bush WH, it was a hard sell to political conservatives to place so much power for reform in federal hands.

   There IS a way for reform to work. First, don’t call it reform. I recently attended a state education leadership conference with Peter Senge as the featured speaker and workshop leader. While I’m not entirely onboard with all of his recommendations, he suggested getting rid of the word reform and replacing it with innovation. This seems sensible. The next move however is much more difficult to make–where and how does innovation happen? Do we try to constrain or simply monitor the new system? Yes, there is much more to this alternative vision.

6. “When the largest stakeholders in any endeavor are seen as the opposition, you will fail.”