Lou Gerstner (IBM) is making some radical proposals.
Here’s the short version:
- Abolish all local school districts, save 70 (50 states; 20 largest cities).
- Establish a set of national standards for a core curriculum.
- Establish a National Skills Day on which every third, sixth, ninth and 12th-grader would be tested against the national standards.
- Establish national standards for teacher certification and require regular re-evaluations of teacher skills.
- Extend the school day and the school year to effectively add 20 more days of schooling for all K-12 students
Read the whole piece here.
He arrives at this point (as “someone who realized rather glumly last week that he has been working at school reform for 40 years”) from an acknowledgment of the failure of reform.
We must start with the recognition that, despite decade after decade of reform efforts, our public K-12 schools have not improved.
Many of us bring to the discussion a different set of concerns, concerns about creeping centralization (or nationalization).
Yet isn’t it perhaps time to abandon “local control” in the the schools as an illusion. What really do the locals control anymore?