Input or output? Republicans can't seem to decide which end they want to control on the education front.
It seems to me -- and it made a great deal of sense at the time when I heard an eon ago -- that the philosophy of this generation of Republican leadership in Texas was to tell schools what they expected to see in results and leave it to the schools to determine the best way to meet those goals.
A hundred years or so ago in Texas in the Age of Meno ... or so it seems... we were talking about outcome-based education. What should all students know? What standards should they meet? That's the state's job. How do we get there? What expectations and curriculum do we need to meet that goal? That's the district's job. Or so I thought. Maybe I don't have it straight in my mind.
Because it seems to me that the Legislature and the Texas Education Agency just can't keep their hands off local school districts.You set an expectation for fiscal responsibility for school districts and even a rating system; then you have to go in and muck around with that half-baked 65 percent proposal. You set standards for math and science achievement, but then that's not enough, and you have to require 4 years of math and science on a diploma... and tell kids with a "basic" diploma they can't get into college. Where does it end?
The latest is The Commissioner's proposal for tailored diploma plan. I think the research is truly there for a getting a child on a particular path towards a goal as early as possible in high school. I remember sitting down with my parents and my counselor in ninth grade and mapping out a path... that would eventually be replaced about three more times once I took my first journalism class. I'm sure it's good that children start to see where they need to go at the age of 14.... so you're not paying for four different majors in college.
Maybe my own high school experience gets in the way. Unlike The Commissioner -- who has spoken openly about his unhappy high school experience being pigeonholed into vocational education -- I had a great time in high school. Okay, I wasn't the prom queen. But I took second-year science and dabbled in the debate team and served as a band officer and ... yeah... even quit my job as editor of my high school newspaper my senior year when my work with Key Club got to be more than I could handle.
Somehow the whole "this way to your diploma" just smacks of tracking to me. Like being pigeonholed into DECA, told your future is best-served stacking boxes or something. But I recognize that's just my personal feelings getting involved.The bigger picture on this -- the policy picture on this -- is whose responsibility should this be?
Under the outcomes-based education framework, I would assume that this diploma path should be driven at the local level. And maybe it would be the state's job to give districts a strong nudge towards the research, create a diploma label and provide a good marketing campaign for schools to use.
Instead, we have the state in our classrooms again. And if that's going to be the case, let's just say it. The Republicans .... acting just like Democrats... can't keep their hands off education because they don't trust schools to do their job. And instead of setting out expectations and achievement levels for schools and school districts to reach, they're going to reach in and do the counselors' job for them.
