The Atlantic -- First Draft of History: Klein and Bennet: "Teachers Are the Solution"

News Article

by Rachael Brown

Just two days after being named to fill the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee, Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) spoke passionately to NPR's Michele Norris about the need to "change the politics" around the issue of education reform. Bennet, the former superintendent of the Denver Public Schools (and brother to Atlantic editor in chief James Bennet) was interviewed alongside Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City Public Schools, and in many ways the conversation was one of almost complete agreement between the two education leaders. On subjects ranging from teacher accountability and compensation to the achievement gap and global competitiveness, Klein and Bennet praised the vision laid out by President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and offered policy solutions drawn from their experience as leaders of urban school districts.

A recurring theme was the necessity of building a workforce of high quality teachers. Studies repeatedly show that teachers are the single most significant factor influencing student achievement, yet the ways in which teachers are recruited, supported, and paid don't reflect that, argued Bennet and Klein. "We have a crisis," Klein bluntly put it, referring to the difficulty of getting quality teachers into the classrooms of America's lowest performing schools, many with high concentrations of minority and low-income students. In order to address it, he said America needs, "a system that rewards success, not just length of service, and the unions will have to be part of solution too." Although, he cautioned, "that doesn't mean at times [the teachers unions] don't have a different agenda."

Tackling these issues poses a number of political problems, particularly for Democrats who have long relied on the support of powerful teachers unions. Klein argued for the need to put in place accountability systems, and praised the efforts of D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee to implement a new union contract that ties teacher salaries in part to student achievement.

Of course, Rhee has faced harsh criticism from teachers in D.C. for her approach, but Klein defended the need to remove ineffective teachers from the classroom. Citing a recent New Yorker article that detailed the challenges of firing teachers in New York City, Klein acknowledged that there was a desperate need for "a reasonable due process system."

When Norris asked whether the teachers unions are an obstacle to reform, Bennet replied that such a perception was too small a distinction. "We as a country have been too resistant to change," said Bennet. "It's time for the burden of proof to shift from the people who want to change the system to the people who want to keep it the same," he added later. "It's not a partisan issue."

Putting the discussion into a larger context, both men were quick to tie the education of America's students to the nation's greater role in the global economy. Citing the U.S.'s below average math and science rankings in comparison with other OECD nations, particularly China and India, they emphasized that America's future economic competitiveness is intrinsically linked to the education of all of it's youth, including those in inner-city schools.

Regarding the controversial No Child Left Behind legislation, a frequent target of Democrats, Bennet defended the inherent value in the law in that it brought to light that schools are doing "a horrible job" across the U.S. However, he called NCLB an "enormously crude system of accountability," and offered hope that its revision would measure student growth over time, offering a snapshot of student achievement. Right now, he said, there are too many standards being tested at every grade level, an approach he later characterized as being "a mile wide and an inch deep."

In what was perhaps a nod to the panel's elite Washington audience, Bennet spoke of the need for the conversation around education reform to be understood by leaders and policy makers as if their own children were at stake.

Klein agreed. "Politics is a crucible in which great ideas get lost on the cutting room floor," he added, pointing out that for the political obstacles for reform to be mounted, influential people, including those in the media and business community, must be stakeholders as well. "They can no longer say, 'Well my kid's ok, why should I worry about it?'"

Source