Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Reform Schools? Nope. Nuke 'Em!

So proposes the guy who used to be the CEO of IBM--who never had to worry about Constitutions or anything like that...

I believe the problem lies with the structure and corporate governance of our public schools. We have over 15,000 school districts in America; each of them, in its own way, is involved in standards, curriculum, teacher selection, classroom rules and so on. This unbelievably unwieldy structure is incapable of executing a program of fundamental change. While we have islands of excellence as a result of great reform programs, we continually fail to scale up systemic change.

Therefore, I recommend that President-elect Barack Obama convene a meeting of our nation's governors and seek agreement to the following:


- Abolish all local school districts, save 70 (50 states; 20 largest cities). Some states may choose to leave some of the rest as community service organizations, but they would have no direct involvement in the critical task of establishing standards, selecting teachers, and developing curricula.

Oh, yes, quite, dearie. We already have No Child Left Behind, another spectacular failure of GWB, which is built on the Department of Education, a spectacular failure of Carter (??) Johnson (??).....(who cares which idiot.....?) all in thrall and obeisance to the National Education Association...

Gerstner obviously doesn't recall that place called "Sidwell Friends School."

HT: Ace/Gabriel

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