The Case for Comprehensive Education Reform- Governor’s Conference on Education
In this video, the Florida Commissioner of Education Tony Bennett addresses the need for comprehensive education reform at the Governor’s Conference on Education on March 22, 2013, at Cony High School in Augusta. He says that, the mission of every school of the U.S should be to make the academic achievement and career preparation of all students best in the U.S and on par with most competitive countries in the world. The message should be student-focused, success driven, and it must build a coalition of support for comprehensive education reform. He believes that school choice is a social justice issue of our generation, the freedom to compete is a level playing field for all and we just don’t need more types of schools, but we need more high-quality schools. There is a need to sustain reform which can be done by staying on the offense by creating and implementing a robust communications plan and by having a presence everywhere, both online and in person. Identify stakeholders that support reform and give them the tools and information to succeed, travel to every country and engage in meaningful dialogue. The goal implored is to bring in reforms such that they fit together nicely to bring in the positive changes in the education system.
In this video, Deborah Kenny, a visionary in youth leadership training and an expert in curriculum development talks about the future of education reform and how we should set about it. Education reform has come a really long way and it should be acknowledged that we all stand on the shoulders of giants, there are reformers who have come before us and we need to remember how much we have to learn from them. The education reformers who came before our generation had to face the enormous bureaucracy that was all centered on compliance and it evolved over time. She expresses her concern about the direction of education reform presently. For reforming education reform, she focuses on three things; the first is the need to shift from the mentality of teacher evaluation which is being overdone, to teacher ownership. The second way is increasing the quality and decreasing the quantity of testing. The third way is to rethink the purpose of schooling. She elicits on these three ways for reforming education reform and urges everyone to get involved to bring education reform to the next level.
