Every four years, it seems, enterprising campaign staff put out talking points about how their candidate wants to "help" failing schools improve, not just batter them for their poor performance. And this year's rhetoric is no different. But are these campaign aides aware that the federal government already supports a fairly elaborate system meant to "build the capacity" of state departments of education, so they can help to improve failing schools and districts?
I'll admit that I was barely aware of this myself until I was invited to serve on the "technical working group" for a national evaluation of the Department of Education's "Comprehensive Centers ." I am not at liberty to disclose the early results of said study (I'm sorry, Good Morning America , you'll just have to wait), but the campaigns should at least become familiar with the Centers' work. In a nutshell, there are 16 regional centers (each serving a handful of states) and five "content" centers (one each for high school reform , innovation & improvement , instruction , testing & accountability , and teacher quality ). And a big focus for almost all of them is helping states develop strategies to turn around failing schools.
Here's another question for the campaigns' policy staffs to puzzle over: is this sort of system more effective than just giving states and/or districts some money with which they could purchase help directly? (Yes, a "voucher.") How about the approach used by Reading First--which entailed a massive investment in technical assistance and monitoring to ensure fidelity to a specific reform model (in this case, scientifically-based reading instruction). And speaking of which, campaigns, would you save Reading First from its enemies in Congress ? And if not, how can you say that you are committed to helping low-performing schools improve, when Reading First is doing exactly that?
