In what is easily one of the most significant developments for Massachusetts youth in over a decade, Governor Deval Patrick just released an ambitious plan to overhaul the way Massachusetts educates its residents. There is a lot in the report to discuss, most of which cannot be addressed in a single blog post.
With a plan that looks over a decade into the future, this report is obviously just the beginning of a conversation on how best to educate Massachusetts residents in the new millenium. Those looking to educate themselves should start by reading the report. The Readiness Project Action Agenda can be found here.
Several questions have already come up, and there will certainly be more to come. As Patrick geared up for the release of the report, one of the first questions that was raised had to do with how the state was going to pay for this. One estimate put's the cost of Patrick's plan at "over $1 billion".
With the increasing cost of Massachusetts' health care reforms and a shaky economy, that's a hefty price tag. The Boston Globe has suggested Patrick's controversial casino proposal could be brought forward again to help pay for this. In my opinion, speculating about the cost of Patrick's plan is premature. This statement by Patrick sums it up best:
We're building a house. You design it first and then cost it out.
When your dealing with something as important as education, cost is secondary. Finding the money to implement these reforms will matter as Patrick tries to implement them, but right now it's about laying out a vision for the future of Massachusetts.
Other concerns have come up as well. The most important among them involves the contentious debate over charter schools. While the charter school debate is too complicated to address in this post, it looks as if Patrick has tried to find a middle ground with "Readiness Schools" which are highlighted in the report:
Readiness Schools will challenge our mainstream schools and district leaders to embrace the flexibility and independence typically found in the charter sector. These would be high-autonomy public schools in which students, faculty, parents and the community share responsibility and ownership for results. Readiness Schools would:
- Be contract schools, launched or managed by a team authorized by and accountable to the local schoool committee. School committees would award contracts under procedures set by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
- Operate under performance contracts that hold them accountable for improving student learning.
- Be funded by the school district, using a weighted student formula, with more funds allocated for students who are more expensive to educate.
- Typically be staffed by union members who bargain collectively only for wages, benefits and due process dismissal procedures.
Mark Bail at Granby 01033 has called Readiness Schools, "Patrick's poison pill" (See his post debated at Blue Mass. Group), in which he calls them "a frontal attack on public schools by the charter school movement". Others, like John Macek III, a Brighton, Masschusetts resident who wrote a letter to the Boston Globe, feels that Readiness Schools don't go far enough.
There are other contentions, and more issues will come up as Governor Patrick pushes his vision forward. In the meantime, I encourage readers to educate themselves on an issue as important as this. Read the report. Formulate your own opinion.