The 21st Century Education Scramble: Education, Business, Industry and Government, "skunk works," Student Agency, Technology, Creativity & Innovation, Transformation (Solution: Mix Ingredients Well, Stir AND remind oneself It'll be a little bit Messy)

A threat of misinformed school reform

NANCY KAFFER

   There’s a fight brewing over the heart and soul of public education.

   In one corner, we have Gov. Rick Snyder, who says he believes that the point of an education is to connect the student with a job. It’s not a crazy notion — it worked for Snyder, after all; the governor amassed a slew of degrees at an astonishingly young age, and rode his academic success to the top of three fields.

   And in the other, we have the traditional education system, fighting to hold on to a place for the humanities, for art, music, literature and philosophy, subjects whose value isn’t always measurable in dollars or job titles.

   (Full disclosure: I studied English literature and writing at a small Jesuit liberal arts college, which has nothing to do with political liberalism and a lot to do with the idea that a well-rounded, well-educated person who can think is a person who is equipped to be a productive member of society, whether in material or intellectual terms. So now you know which corner I’m in.)

   Objectively, there’s nothing wrong with the idea that an education, particularly a college education — for which the cost is increasing every year — should yield material success. And it’s also not wrong for the governor of a state with an 8.8% unemployment rate, more than a full percent above the national average, to think about how best to prepare his state’s residents for gainful employment.

   But here’s where it gets wacky.

   Snyder has tacitly approved of, or outright endorsed, some pretty significant efforts to reshape Michigan’s public education system. And it’s not at all clear that any of these reforms will improve educational outcomes for most kids in the state — which should really be the goal of any education reform.

   Rather, many of the reforms developed on Snyder’s watch seem to be driven by the ideological belief that applying free-market principles to the education system will result in better outcomes.

   Snyder has tied himself to Lansing attorney and voucher advocate Richard McLellan, whom he asked to develop a new funding system for public education; that work resulted in last year’s Michigan Public Finance Education Act. The sweeping overhaul of public school funding essentially created a statewide schools-of-choice system that would have eliminated the concept of district-based funding and placed a greater emphaisis on online learning. The bill package fizzled; critics said it didn’t have sufficient controls to maintain educational standards.

   The Detroit News reported two weeks ago that a group of state officials, software company employees, charter school operators and McLellan have formed a “skunk works” group that’s been meeting in secret, with the goal of creating a cheaper, technology-based public school, which students would pay for with a state-issued debit card — a kind of backdoor voucher system. (Vouchers that direct public funds to private schools are unconstitutional in Michigan.)

   After the group became public, Snyder distanced himself from it, and has asked state Superintendent of Education Mike Flanagan to retool it. Flanagan has said he won’t focus on vouchers, and that the group will be transparent. The state House is battling over whether to ease state graduation requirements, and just voted not to support Common Core curriculum requirements that are being adopted by states around the nation.

   All of this seems like signs that the educational ground is shifting in Michigan, that major change is headed our way — and that those changes may be driven by folks who we are not entirely sure have students’ best interest at heart.

   What Snyder talks about — has talked about for years — is calibrating public education to the needs of the marketplace. At the governor’s annual education summit, held last Monday and set against the backdrop of the skunk works revelation, Snyder’s remarks centered on preparing students for the workplace, on improving the links between educators and the business community.

   But folks like John Austin, president of the state Board of Education have ably debunked that idea. It’s important that students are employable , Austin says, but because of the ways technology is changing the workplace, narrow, job-specific training means workers are trained into obsolesence. Far better, says Austin, to teach students to learn, analyze and adapt.

   So these two viewpoints came to a head last week at the governor’s annual education summit.

   Flanagan waded into the fray with remarks he says were meant to ease the tension between business community members and educators present at the summit. Education for education’s sake is silly, said Flanagan, according to other event attendees — an outrageous statement from a man charged with overseeing the state’s K-12 system. Flanagan contends that his remark was intended to address, and ease, the tension between Snyder and educators — the superintendent says it’s essential that education both prepare students for work and imbue the intangible advantage an education conveys.

   That’s true. But here’s something else that’s true: The idea that the value of education can be measured in material success is kind of missing the point.