The first candidate with a comprehensive education plan is John Edwards. No surprise there, and no surprise that the proposals are excellent. The details were released last Friday and highlighted in a speech at an Iowa middle school; apologies for not getting to it until today. The basics:
- Universal pre-school for 4-year olds, with tuition on a sliding-scale based on family income.
- "Smart Start" services for kids younger than 5, including screenings for health problems and learning disabilities and home visits to new parents.
- A new focus on good teaching. Edwards walks a fine line between supporting reform in the way teachers are paid and aligning himself with the teachers' unions. He wants to give teachers in high-poverty schools between $5,000 and $15,000 in annual bonuses, but only if their overall school is high-achieving, if they take on extra mentoring responsibilities, or if they achieve advanced certification. He does not support rewarding individual teachers for the performance of their specific set of students.
- Create a national teachers' university modeled on West Point.
- Reform No Child Left Behind by creating better assessments of student learning that include essays, oral presentations, and long-term projects. Yes! Assessing high standards doesn't have to mean multiple choice. Edwards seems to understand that we have to get the testing industry out of the policy-making process. Some other NCLB changes are similar in scope to what's offered in the Miller-McKeon discussion draft currently in committee.
- Build 1,000 new high-quality schools, including magnet schools in urban areas and schools affiliated with colleges and built on their campuses. Focus on integrating schools by providing incentives for suburban schools that admit high-poverty students.
- Create a federal fund to turn around failing schools.
- Support community service among high school students.
There's been very little media coverage of the plan, but predictably, the few articles written about it were too focused on the estimated costs -- $7 billion in the first year. The bottom line here, as policy-makers debate reforms to NCLB, is that Edwards manages to be critical of the bill's real faults without using it as an easy punching bag. He articulates an intelligent alternative model for state assessments and pays attention to some problems Congress has all but ignored, such as promoting socioeconomic integration within school buildings. Now we'll see if other candidates rise to the occasion and present their own visions for our schools. --Dana Goldstein
