If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make any noise? If the nation's governors talk about education reform yet it has no effect on what they do, do the words matter? That's the question that arises from the just-concluded summer meeting of the National Governors Association.
NGA is one of the nation's most respected public policy outfits; since it purportedly represents the views of the highest state officials in the land, everyone assumes that what it says matters. But the NGA is compromised by the necessity of representing a wide range of opinions-from conservatives like Bill Owens of Colorado and Jeb Bush of Florida to liberals like Jim McGreevey of New Jersey and Rod Blagojevich of Illinois. Further, it has a new leader every year-and the two parties take turns. As a result, its position papers sometimes tend toward the oracular: weighty yet abstract, lofty and nebulous enough to lend themselves to wide interpretation. Simply put, in the interest of forging the appearance of consensus, the NGA often fudges a great many details and differences.
That doesn't mean its meetings aren't sometimes knife fights. Every governor always has his or her eye on the voters back home, as well as the special interests that can mobilize them. This means staff members-and occasionally living, breathing governors-spend hours in fierce negotiations over punctuation and turns of phrase.
This year's process was no different. What was different, and noteworthy, was the product; what the NGA ended up saying on a number of important issues. For all the caterwauling over NCLB and suchlike, we may be seeing a critical mass of governors lining up more decisively behind important education reforms. This hasn't happened since the mid 1980s. Consider:
Head Start. The NGA's revised policy on Head Start is a big improvement, though it still has some distance to go. The governors stopped short of block-granting the program, as the Bush administration proposed, but called for increased state oversight of how funds are spent and for giving states the ability to "coordinate" Head Start with their own child development programs. Better yet, the policy drops its support of "a well-developed staff training program" in favor of "quality staff." That may sound esoteric-or trivial-but the shift means something: recognition that Head Start can't simply remain a jobs program and needs to focus on improving the lamentable quality of too many Head Start employees.
Most important, the governors for the first time recognize "school readiness" as an important goal of Head Start. Obviously, that's one of those classic NGA phrases, which can mean different things to different people. But it creates space for reformers to make the argument that "school readiness" requires an explicit focus on academic basics, those vital pre-K cognitive tools such as shapes and sounds and colors. Let's hope that argument gets made. And heeded.
Civics and History. No surprise, we adore policies that start by recognizing, as this one does, the valuable contributions of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in highlighting the woeful state of history and civics instruction in America's schools (click here for recent reports on the topic). But our admiration for this new NGA policy is not just about ego massage. This solid statement calls for "rigorous and well-developed standards" in civics, history, geography, and economics; "thorough content" and "consistent assessment" under the tutelage of teachers who are "highly qualified" as measured by "accredited coursework." We couldn't have said it better ourselves. Even better, this statement nowhere mentions "social studies," but rather gives each individual discipline comprising that tortured field its own moment in the spotlight. Eradicating that locution-and the philosophical mistakes it reflects-has been a longstanding goal of ours, concerning which we now declare victory.
Standards. The old NGA statement on standards was an embarrassment. The new one is much improved, calling for clear, concise, explicit, and accessible standards that are aligned to tests and operate within a system of accountability. Better, the NGA document embraces the findings of the American Diploma Project, which urges that high school curricula and exit standards be revised to reflect the knowledge and skills needed for modern jobs and higher education. Better yet, the new statement explicitly recognizes the achievement gap and the need for schools to graduate students who are all "academically prepared to take advantage of postsecondary opportunities." (That NGA for the first time mentions the achievement gap gives you a sense of how bad its previous statements on standards were.)
It's heartening to learn that this statement emerged from a collaborative effort between New Jersey and Florida, states lead by governors from opposite ends of the political spectrum-a good sign that a wide swath of governors is lining up behind the standards agenda.
Charter Schools. Huzzah. The new policy replaces a weak paragraph that was buried in a longer document and clearly meant to be overlooked by everyone. This new one puts the governors, for the first time, squarely in support of charter schools, concluding that "families should have options within the public school system that will most effectively meet their children's needs" and calling for strong charter laws, adequate funding, and strict accountability for performance. It recognizes charters as one tool to narrow the achievement gap and even comes out in favor of funding charter facilities. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's team led the charge for this statement, with assists from Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, and California. It's a strong statement of support for charters that we hope gets heard.
Will the new verbiage make any difference? That's the crucial question and one we cannot yet answer. Any governor can ignore NGA position statements issued in his or her name. But these statements serve as a useful baseline, a common denominator of policy thinking among the nation's chief state executives. It's encouraging to realize that this week, America's governors-caveats, ambiguities, and concerns notwithstanding-put themselves on record for high standards, rigorous assessments, serious accountability, and public school choice. Now can we hold them to it?
Justin Torres is research director of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.