March 02, 2011 08:43 PM UTC

Bennet, White House Unveil New Education Reforms

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• by: Colorado Pols

An ambitious proposal from most of the Senate’s top leaders on education policy and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, as McClatchy reports today:

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and a group of Democratic senators this morning embraced a slate of education reforms that move away from rigid testing and toward flexibility for local school districts…

Part of the push is to re-vamp No Child Left Behind, the landmark Bush-era legislation that focused on closing the achievement gap for minority children, but also has been lambasted by parents and educators as too narrowly focused on testing.

“I’ve heard for years from principals and teachers that this does not work,” said U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, a North Carolina Democrat who, along with U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, helped lead the effort to develop the principles. “The stale arguments of yesterday are impeding change, and the same-old, same-old is too late.”

Hagan said new legislation must encourage all progress – recognizing, for example, when a teacher helps a 5th grader, for example, move up from a 3rd-grade reading level to a 4th-grade reading level.

Now, testing focuses primarily on whether children are at or below grade level.

There’s quite a bit to this proposal, including better testing methods, retention of new teachers, flexible approaches to meeting academic targets, and prioritization of funding for the lowest-performing districts in individual states. And yes, it includes more of the competitive “Race to the Top” style grants for states who submit education reform plans.

We know that the convoluted process of awarding these grants in previous years, and Colorado’s failure to win the competition despite significant reform measures like last year’s Senate Bill 191, has left a bad taste in a lot of local mouths. But there’s no question we could still use the money; and one would hope these reforms, local and federal, would factor as well.

Additionally, we haven’t seen any signs to indicate this is a backroom subversion of everything good and decent in the world, as seems to frequently be charged when the name Michael Bennet is mentioned with “education.” We realize this won’t put a stop to the, um, theories.