FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Three University of Arkansas professors have written a paper offering advice to President-elect Obama on what education reform measures he should pursue during his administration.

“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” offers these five suggestions:

• Appoint a secretary of education who will not weaken the test-based accountability of No Child Left Behind. Reforms should focus on adding “value added” provisions to the law, to make it fairer and more data-driven.

 

• Propose programs funding new compensation models for teachers that take into account market conditions and teacher effectiveness. Combined with efforts to bring more mid-career professionals into teaching through scholarships and alternative certification programs, this reform could begin the hard work of recruiting and retaining a top quality teaching force, particularly for urban and rural schools.

 

• Increase support for charter schools that work and push states to close those that fail. The mantra of doing what works should also guide attempts to expand preschool.

 

• Resist programs that call for indirect pork barrel spending that helps adults rather than kids. For example, Obama should eschew mandating new sources of income for accreditation organizations, such as the proposed requirement that all schools of education be accredited, when there is no evidence that accreditation improves teacher preparation. He should also backtrack from campaign promises supporting transitional bilingual education and instead back more effective sheltered English immersion approaches.

 

• Approve the reauthorization of the Washington, D.C., opportunity scholarship program that gives school choice to low-income families.

Robert Maranto

Gary Ritter

Sandra Stotsky

The 12-page report was written by Robert Maranto, who holds the Twenty-First Century Chair in Leadership in the College of Education and Health Professions, Gary Ritter, who holds the Twenty-First Century Chair in Education Policy, and Sandra Stotsky, who holds the Twenty-First Century Chair in Teacher Quality. The paper was written for the Independence Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan Colorado think tank. It can be read at http://www.i2i.org/articles/IP_10_2008.pdf. The think tank’s home page is http://www.i2i.org/main/page.php?page_id=1.

Stating that public education must serve a variety of stakeholders, two of the most important being children and public employees, a major premise of the paper is that the goals of these two groups sometimes conflict.

“For instance, if policymakers adopt reforms that might lead to better outcomes for students, but might also lessen the job security of some adults,” the authors say, “tough decisions must be made.”

The authors, who say their partisan political views differ from one another, join in urging Obama to put children first.

“If President Obama shows the wisdom and courage to embrace the good, reject the bad and flee from the ugly, he has the potential to become America’s greatest education president,” the paper concludes. “That would be the change our schoolchildren need.”

Maranto previously taught political science at Villanova University. With others, he has produced seven books and more than 50 other scholarly publications on administrative reform generally and education reform in particular.

Ritter is the director and founder of the Office for Education Policy at the University of Arkansas and has served as a resource for education policymakers since 2003. His articles on issues such as teacher pay, school accountability, school finance and racial integration in schools have appeared in numerous national journals.

Stotsky served from 2006 to 2008 on the National Mathematics Advisory Panel and co-authored the panel’s final report. She formerly served as senior associate commissioner at the Massachusetts Department of Education, where she directed the complete revision of the state’s K-12 curriculum standards.

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