Arne Duncan
likes to lay it down, doesn't he? His recent spate of pronouncements--national
standards as goalposts, more time needed to achieve an internationally
competitive education, an assertion that mayors have the right stuff to improve
city schools--have been fodder for a number of hot discussions at the Teacher
Leaders Network. And now we learn that $16 billion dollars of newly
manufactured stimulus money will be used to fix our critically ill public schools
by...(timpani roll) generating and analyzing more test data.

So--does
Arne Duncan have even one or two innovative ideas?

TLN members
keep trying to get a bead on a coherent picture of New Directions in ed policy.
After a long, convoluted discussion about why policymakers seem to keep heading
down familiar paths, David Cohen, an English teacher in Palo Alto, California,
wrote this (below). I think it's brilliant, and captures, in 175 words, what's
wrong with the current state of policy-making. David is my nominee for
Unrecognized Person Who Should Be Running Things. He said:

Let me know
if I'm wrong, but I don't think I am.

Compare our
top-performing schools and our weakest performing schools by looking at test
scores, graduation rates, whatever measure you want.

Do you find
that most top-performing schools are running many more hours per day, or more
days per year?

Do you find
that the top-performing schools have that much more, or better data?

Do you find
that they are more likely to have linked student data to teachers?

Do you find
that the top-performing schools have a maniacal focus on test preparation?

No, no, no,
no.

Do you find
that they are disproportionately in affluent communities?

Do you find
that they have greater parent and community involvement, including supplemental
funding?

Do you find
that they have a better trained, higher paid, and more stable teaching staff?

Do you find
that they tend to have an enriched and varied curriculum, including arts and
various other electives?

Yes, yes,
yes, yes.

Then, if
you're a politician, the solution is clear: national standards, longer school
day, focus on basics, more data!

Hey,
David--thanks for letting me swipe your quote, and sorry about the picture. I looked
through 35 pages of Google images. There are more guys named David Cohen than
you'd think.