Education Failure - Shoot the messenger?
The Detroit Free Press reports:
The Detroit News editorial included the following:Gov. Jennifer Granholm on Tuesday said state Superintendent of Schools Tom Watkins should resign, calling him an ineffective education leader.
In a Free Press interview, a miffed Granholm said Watkins reneged on an agreement last May to leave at the end of 2004. She said on Jan. 7 that she asked him again to resign, through her education adviser.
Instead, Watkins has dug in his heels, she said, hoping to muster support from the state Board of Education. The board has sole power to hire and fire the superintendent, who heads the Department of Education and is charged with carrying out policies set by the eight-member elected board.
"He needs to resign for the good of the state board, for the good of public education," Granholm said, in a reversal of her public comment last week that Watkins was a "valued member" of her cabinet.
"The simple reason is he is not providing effective leadership in one of the most critical departments in state government."
The board last week tabled action to extend his contract. Six months ago, the board gave Watkins a glowing evaluation.
Some of Watkins' ideas are better than others. But he's absolutely right in suggesting that the state's public education industry is whistling past the graveyard by refusing to open itself to radical reform in the face of dwindling resources.
Watkins ruffled feathers last month with a nine-page report, "Structural Issues Surrounding Michigan School Funding in the 21st Century."
Here are a few of his thoughts:
• Build common-sense solutions to education problems that taxpayers are willing to pay for.
• "We must ask ourselves what we are willing to do to redirect our finite resources and optimize support for our core mission of teaching and learning."
• "We need to right-size our public education system to optimize resources..."
• "A nonpartisan effort must result in development of a shared vision and common agenda that puts the needs of children and schools above all else."
• "A new approach will require everyone to let go of deeply entrenched constraints and the 'we've always done it this way' mentality."
• "Action is preferable to appointing committees and task forces and holding meetings" though input from concerned parties will be required.
That last item no doubt miffs aides to Granholm, who has been criticized for appointing study panels and holding stakeholder meetings in lieu of action on a variety of festering state problems, including budget deficits. Last week, the governor did little to dampen stories that her administration had asked Watkins to step aside.
What is effective leadership? Michigan has problems that do not appear to be changing:
- Failing schools are not improving
- Budgets are being cut
- Districts like Detroit are out of control
- There is little or no evidence that charter schools are doing a better job, academically, than nearby counterparts (let's not compare the best of the charter with the worst of the public)
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