The steering committee in charge of crafting our request for flexibility under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act held its first meeting last week. Three separate working groups will also start meeting in the near future.

As these groups of stakeholders begin their work, they’re using the feedback more than 1,500 of you offered last fall as their guide.

When we hit the road in December to hear what the public had to say about the system we use to hold our schools accountable, we heard that students, educators and families want a system that’s thoughtful, fair and constructive. We heard that people are tired of the system we have in place that determines whether a school has made “adequate yearly progress” entirely on the basis of results from a standardized test given once a year that compares the performance of this year’s fourth graders to last year’s. And we heard that there’s a strong desire to move beyond a system that stamps unfair and unproductive labels on schools.

The three working groups will focus their attention on the following three areas:

• Annual Measurable Objectives – examining how we currently measure the progress of students and schools and how we should do it in the future;
• Support and Interventions – reviewing the ways in which we can and should support schools in making improvements; and
• Educator Effectiveness – established in law by the current Legislature, this group will develop guidelines for creating teacher evaluation systems.

This work will be transparent, and everyone who wants it will have a chance to weigh in.

Watch in the coming days for meeting agendas and notes posted on our website, as well as background and reference materials. Also, we’ll continue to provide opportunities for discussion in the Maine DOE Newsroom and invite more private feedback.

I’m looking forward to this important work.

Teachers deserve our thanks all year long, but this week is a special opportunity to recognize their invaluable contributions.

We have lots of hard work ahead of us in Maine as we build a public education system based on the needs of each learner – a system that recognizes that our students all learn best in different ways and at different speeds.

As we take on this important work, the plain truth is, we can’t get the job done without great teachers.

That’s why one of the five core priority areas of our strategic plan, “Education Evolving,” focuses on ensuring that our kids are taught by great teachers and that our schools are led by strong leaders. And it’s why the most important piece of education legislation passed this year is a bill that guarantees teachers regular, constructive and fair evaluations, along with relevant professional development.

This week, let’s make sure we thank our teachers for the hard work they’ve done, and for the hard work they’re taking on each day to improve educational opportunities for our students.

The bill, An Act to Ensure Effective Teaching and School Leadership, requires that our school districts adopt educator evaluation systems that make it clear to our teachers and school leaders what’s expected of them, offer them constructive advice on improving their practice and support them in their continued professional growth.

Fortunately, this bill is headed to Gov. LePage’s desk for his signature after attracting overwhelming support this week in the House and Senate — more than two-thirds approval in each chamber.

The bill charges a specially appointed group of educators, parents and community members with developing guidelines for teacher and leader evaluation systems, and then requires districts to develop evaluation systesms based on those guidelines. Districts could also adopt model evaluation systems developed at the state level.

The state-level guidelines will ensure the integrity of the evaluation systems and protect educators from poorly done and poorly intentioned evaluations.

For example, evaluation systems must be based on clear standards; use multiple measures of effectiveness, including student achievement and growth as a significant factor; use a four-level rating scale; be conducted regularly; and must provide specific, timely and relevant feedback to teachers and principals that is used to direct and support professional growth.

I look forward to starting the next phase of this important work.

This week is a good week to find out more.

Susan McMillan of the Kennebec Journal just wrapped up  three-day series today that takes an in-depth look at proficiency-based education, how it’s been implemented in classrooms in Maine and elsewhere, what it means for the role of teachers, and what parents and college admissions directors think about it.

• Learning in a new light, March 24
• Following the movement, March 24
• Maine schools using the model, March 24
• Student choice at center of proficiency-based learning, March 25
• A transformation for teachers, March 25
• New England embracing new standards, March 25
• Data on new system limited, March 26
• Rushed or cautious?, March 26

On Thursday night, a number of educators who have been implementing proficiency-based education in their classrooms will discuss the approach at a public forum at the Samoset Resort in Rockport. I’ll also be joining the discussion.

Check out the flyer for more details.

I hope you’ll take advantage of these opportunities.

We heard loud and clear that students, educators and families want a system that’s thoughtful, fair and constructive. We heard that people are tired of the system we have in place under the No Child Left Behind Act, which determines whether a school has made “adequate yearly progress” entirely on the basis of results from a standardized test given once a year that compares the performance of this year’s fourth graders to last year’s.

That’s why in the coming weeks, we at the Department of Education – along with educators from our schools and others – will begin the serious work of designing an accountability and improvement system that works for Maine.

This means crafting a system that considers more than one factor before labeling schools as “low-achieving” or “making progress.” It means designing a system that recognizes our educators when they help students grow and provides them with constructive feedback and professional development when improvement is needed, and allows schools a wide variety of improvement strategies.

Our thinking last fall, when the U.S Department of Education first put its ESEA flexibility package on the table, was to work though the winter to produce a full waiver application by the late February deadline. In the weeks that followed, though, it became clear that developing a proposal that met the state’s needs in such a short period of time was unworkable and not in the best interest of our state or our schools.

The feedback we received in December clearly indicated that Maine people wanted real change to our accountability system, not minor tweaks. And we anticipated, wrongly, as it turned out, that the U.S. Department of Education would quickly rule on the waiver applications of the first 11 states to apply, giving the remaining states some guidance on their thinking. Only last week did they announce the approval of all but one of the waiver applications that were submitted.

So instead of submitting a full-fledged flexibility request , we have sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education to inform officials there that we plan to get to work on a comprehensive accountability and improvement system with staying power. And while we design it, we’ll plan to hold our testing proficiency targets steady for a year, as allowed by federal guidelines.

In this work, we’re partnering with our neighbor, New Hampshire. The letter we sent to Washington today bears two state seals and the signatures of both states’ education commissioners, and signals our intent to work across state lines to develop accountability and support systems that are in line with our shared vision of a learner-centered educational system.

We’ll soon announce the formation of a steering committee to oversee the development of our new accountability system, along with the creation of designated working groups to focus on various aspects of the system’s development. Our educators and stakeholders will play a key role in the development of this system and will be fully engaged in this important work.

Back in November, I wrote that Maine had an advantage in not being among the first states to submit a No Child Left Behind flexibility request.

I’m still of that opinion. After all, we’ve had the benefit of seeing the flexibility process play out with other states, reflecting, and gearing up to take a more constructive path forward. That we will soon begin down that path is the reason for today’s announcement. I am looking forward to the work ahead.

It’s been a busy and exciting month for us as we advance our efforts to move Maine to an education system that is centered around students.

Feedback has started to come in about our newly released strategic plan, “Education Evolving: Maine’s Plan for Putting Learners First.” We appreciate the constructive suggestions and comments from those who have taken time to read the document, and we actively encourage more feedback.

Check out the plan and join the discussion on our website.

As the feedback trickles in, some of the initiatives outlined in the document are already moving ahead.

On Tuesday, the Legislature’s Education Committee took an important — and unanimous — vote in favor of implementing a proficiency-based high school diploma, which will require that students demonstrate they’ve mastered course materials, rather than spent a specified amount of time studying each subject.

A proficiency-based diploma is an important step toward realizing the learner-centered education system we’ve articulated in our strategic plan, and it’s something we’ve been working toward since 1997, when Maine introduced the Learning Results standards. A proficiency-based diploma values the learning that happens rather than the time spent doing it. A proficiency-based diploma also recognizes that every student is different, every child learns differently, and they all learn at different speeds.

Also on Tuesday, Gov. LePage devoted time in his State of the State address to address the objectives of our strategic plan, asking legislators to “keep one question in mind: What is best for the student?”

Gov. LePage went on to discuss a few key initiatives highlighted in our plan. He talked about expanding student access to career and technical education — promoting it as an option for all students, and removing the adult-imposed barriers (like funding, transportation and scheduling hurdles) to accessing what is often the best choice for many of our learners.

The Governor talked about maximizing the effectiveness of our teachers and school leaders so Maine students continue to have access to some of the best educators around. We plan to do this by working with our teacher preparation programs and educators to: attract the best candidates to the profession; provide them with the training and support they need; set rigorous, yet realistic, performance standards for our educators; give them mentors in the early years; and craft evaluation systems that are fair, constructive and encourage continued professional growth.

The Governor also discussed allowing families – rather than their street addresses – more of a say in determining where students attend school.

In the coming days, weeks and months, the Department will continue to make important progress on a number of initiatives integral to the work outlined in the strategic plan — work that’s integral to designing an education system around the needs of the learner.

While the strategic plan is a working document that could change in response to your feedback, we at the Department are taking advantage of having a document that brings some focus to our work.

“Education Evolving: Maine’s Plan for Putting Learners First,” as the document is called, is meant to focus the efforts of the Department of Education in the coming years on a set of initiatives that we believe will have the greatest positive impact on our students.

It’s a plan that recognizes the changing nature of the educational enterprise: Technology is allowing our students countless opportunities to learn outside school walls and discover their passions, and the standards they have to meet to be successful in today’s economy are becoming more rigorous. The plan recognizes the past successes of our education system, while trying to evolve it to meet the needs of all learners – and so all learners leave that system prepared for college, careers and civic life.

It’s a plan that advocates for realistic steps to help improve our schools. The document relies on a narrow set of strategies meant to have the greatest possible impact even amid a limited pool of resources.

And it’s a plan that steers clear of one-size-fits-all mandates from Augusta. Instead, it positions the Department of Education as a partner with school districts in developing and disseminating best practices, ensuring the effectiveness and professional growth of educators, and helping students access learning opportunities beyond the school walls.

I was honored to be joined by five bright, ambitious and resourceful students at Tuesday’s event marking the plan’s release. The five students who spoke are experiencing the benefits of having a say in how they learn. The educators whose guidance helped them take control and make the most of their learning were there, too.

Maggie Stokes, a fourth grader at Williams Elementary School in Oakland, described her learner-centered classroom where she “unpacks learning standards” and keeps track of her progress using a “capacity matrix.” Having some choice in how she learns and meets the various learning standards, Maggie said, has made fourth grade a lot more understandable.

Gareth Robinson, an eighth grader at Auburn Middle School, discussed how he’s managed to harness the power of technology to maximize his learning. He’s used his Maine Learning Technology Initiative laptop to teach himself to play the guitar, produce a newscast about the Battle of Bunker Hill with classmates, and forge an international connection with a classroom in the U.K. (By the way, Gareth referred to his iPhone for notes as he delivered his presentation.)

Kaytie Scully and Morgan Horn from Sumner Memorial High School told the crowd about crafting personalized learning plans as part of the Sumner Pathways program so they can excel at work that’s meaningful to them.

Kaytie has turned her high school experience around since she’s been able to take adult education classes and work toward a Certified Nursing Assistant professional certificate, all while earning high school credit. Morgan has incorporated internships, job shadows, college classes and independent study into a personalized course of study that will allow her to graduate – and pursue her studies in medicine – a semester early.

Brooklyn Pinkham told us how she started excelling as a student when she finally had the opportunity to study her true passion – culinary arts – as a junior at Capital Area Technical Center. It’s something Brooklyn had wanted to do since she began high school. Now, Brooklyn is preparing to attend the Culinary Institute of America – one of the top schools in its field – to pursue her passion.

These five students are proof that there are great things happening in Maine’s schools today. Our schools are leading the way in developing new approaches to engage students in their learning, help them discover their interests and excel. We’re fortunate to have so many examples of learner-centered education to look to as we go about implementing “Education Evolving.”

My hope is that this plan’s implementation will make the impressive experiences of Maggie, Gareth, Brooklyn, Morgan and Kaytie possible for all Maine students, regardless of where they attend school.

I encourage you to read the strategic plan and offer your feedback at www.maine.gov/education/plan/.

In fact, it offers Maine an advantage when it comes to preparing an application for flexibility from provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind law.

In October, Maine filed its official notice of intent to apply for No Child Left Behind flexibility in time for a mid-February 2012 deadline. The middle of February is a full three months after mid-November, when 11 states sent their applications for NCLB flexibility to Washington, D.C.

That means that as we in Maine work on our plan for a new accountability system — one that recognizes our educators when they help students grow, provides them with constructive feedback when improvement is needed and allows for a wide variety of improvement strategies — we have the benefit of reviewing the plans of 11 states that have already designed such systems.

Maybe Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Tennessee have some ideas that could work in Maine schools.

I encourage you to take a look at the applications they’ve filed. They’re available for download on the U.S. Department of Education website. I also encourage you to review the website of the Center on Education Policy, which has a state-by-state breakdown of plans for seeking NCLB flexibility.

To be sure, we don’t plan to look only to other states to generate ideas for Maine’s flexibility application. A specially appointed team of Department of Education staff members is scaling up its activities in the coming weeks to hear from you.

This week, we’ve launched an expanded web page to detail our efforts to secure NCLB flexibility, at http://www.maine.gov/education/nclb/flexibility.html. That page will continue to grow as more information becomes available. And the page will soon detail how you can have your say: we’re developing an online survey and we’ll invite you soon to participate in a continuing online discussion about the elements of Maine’s application.

On Thursday, we’re holding a webinar with school superintendents to answer their questions and collect ideas on how to move forward with the development of our application. We’re also making plans to hold at least two in-person meetings and a webinar for the public in the coming weeks.

Those sessions will allow us to hear from educators and the public about what they’d like to see in an accountability system that replaces the decade-old system of arbitrary testing targets and adequate yearly progress we’ve had under No Child Left Behind.

As all of that is happening, Department staff members plan to reach out to various groups of stakeholders representing teachers, administrators, businesses and others to seek their input.

Stay tuned. If you’ve been waiting for information about Maine’s plans for seeking flexibility from No Child Left Behind, you’ll have a lot of it in no time.

Facing constant pressure to improve standardized test scores in math and reading, our public schools have found there’s little room and little money (and often not much political will) to experiment with new approaches to education that might engage students who haven’t traditionally succeeded in the classroom.

But Auburn’s public schools have overcome those odds.

This fall, the city has purchased enough iPads for all of its kindergarten students and teachers. The school district has loaded each tablet device with fun, educational, age-appropriate apps designed to help young children learn how to read, write, add and subtract. Auburn’s primary grade teachers are participating in training not only to familiarize themselves with the devices, but to learn how to integrate them effectively into their instruction. And the district is at work on a plan to allow kindergarten students to take their iPads home and involve their families in iPad-driven learning.

As Auburn implements each stage of its initiative, there are plans to evaluate how deploying iPads in the classroom has made a difference in student learning. The city hopes that by using an effective instructional tool in the early grades, fewer students will require expensive special education services later on.

Last week, I visited Auburn to attend a conference focused on the use of iPads in the early grades. (Auburn plans ultimately to integrate iPads into the first, second and third grades as well.) Educators from Maine were joined by educators from 10 states — and even some from overseas — interested in learning how the iPad initiative is going in Auburn and picking up the best practices for using the iPad in their classrooms back home.

Just by taking a risk in hopes of engaging students and helping more be successful, Auburn’s schools have created a buzz. Educators across the world are keeping an eye on Auburn to see if its investment will pay off. I’m thrilled to see a school district in Maine try something out that has the potential to make a significant difference in student learning.

Many are asking how Auburn’s schools can afford to purchase iPads for their students at a time when funds are limited. Ask the educators in Auburn, and they’ll tell you it’s an investment they can’t afford not to make.

Below are the remarks I delivered to curriculum leaders, superintendents and school board members at separate conferences last week.

I want to begin with a thank you to all of you for your hard work and dedication and for everything you do to make our schools better.

Everywhere I’ve gone since taking this job – all the schools I’ve visited – I’ve seen tremendous dedication from our educators and school leaders, including the many board members I’ve met.

You all, first and foremost, want to do the right thing for kids – and for that I thank you.

I don’t need to tell you that this is an enormously challenging time for school leaders.

We confront a handful of major challenges that, while they will test us, will also, I think, ultimately lead us to do transformative things in our schools. Specifically, I want to talk about three major challenges that we confront.

Challenge 1: Our legacy system isn’t getting the job done

The first is that when you measure the success of our schools by the traditional means by which we measure it – test scores, graduation rates, and so forth – we don’t seem to be moving the needle.  Test scores are essentially flat, graduation rates may be up a little, but have gained slowly – too slowly for many folks who think that we should be improving at a faster pace.

Too many of our kids are dropping out, too many who do complete high school are not ready with the skills they need to then move on to college and careers, and, in fact, too many don’t go on to some kind of post-secondary education, and too many who do don’t complete any kind of post-secondary degree.

As if all this wasn’t enough, if you read Tony Wagner, who was here a few months ago, and authors like him, he argues that the kids we are graduating are not ready for life and work in the 21st century in a much broader sense. The employers he talks to say kids coming out of school today can’t think, don’t know how solve problems. They need step-by-step directions to do anything. They can’t communicate effectively. They don’t think creatively. They are risk-averse, because they come out of an educational system where making mistakes is a bad thing.  We give you lower grades for making mistakes.

So in short, the system we have isn’t getting the job done.

Challenge 2: Recent initiatives aren’t helping

The second challenge is that there is growing evidence that the steps that we have undertaken to address problem number one have, in some ways, made things worse. In an attempt to solve problem number one, we instituted high-stakes testing, for instance. We grade your schools based on how they do on standardized tests in basically two content areas, math and English language arts, with the occasional science test thrown in as well.

What schools have done in response is focus their efforts in those areas, and in a time of budget constraints, schools and districts have trimmed other programs to focus more effort and more resources on these few content areas. In community after community that I visited, parents and kids complain about cuts to art programs and industrial arts programs, music programs and foreign languages.

I was at Capital Area Technical Center earlier this week to celebrate the opening of a credit union branch – a credit union, right in the school. Kids will work there, they’ll learn job skills, they’ll learn personal finance. They’ll learn with real money! Sounds great, right?  The problem is that the CATC has room to take 100 more student than they have, but the sending high schools won’t send them.  The center director says the high schools tell him it is because of budget cuts that this terrific educational resource, right in the middle of Augusta, is underutilized. A hundred open slots over there.

In part because of decisions like this – taken because schools are responding to the incentives, responding to the pressure of the No Child Left Behind Act – we have a massive student engagement issue. A recent Indiana University study found that 67 percent of students report being bored in school every day.

And then there is the impact of all this on your educators.  I heard repeatedly this spring that the heightened focus on testing and accountability is driving people out of the profession. We have a massive loss rate. Of 100 prospective teachers who enter education schools nationally, only 70 become certified. Of those who actually enter the profession, a third leave in three years and 50 percent leave in the first five years. So to get 35 teachers – at whatever level of effectiveness – at the five year mark, then you need 100 coming in the door.  We can’t keep this up.

So we have a system that isn’t getting the job done and the actions we’ve taken so far, under No Child Left Behind, don’t seem to be working and may be making it worse. So what do we do?

We need to make some big changes. And this is not, in my mind, a case of nibbling around the edges. This isn’t a situation where we need to adopt a new math curriculum or buy a bunch of interactive whiteboards or something.

Challenge 3: Our legacy system was designed for a different century

The third challenge we have is that to build a system to meet the needs of all kids, we have to go to the core design elements of the system we have – to age-based grade levels, to Carnegie units and seat time, to bell schedules – to the basic architecture of the industrial-era factory model of schooling that we all inherited.

With all we’ve learned about child development, we still put kids together in cohorts by physical age when they are five years old and keep them in that cohort for the next dozen years?

We have kids come to school when we want them to – at 7 in the morning, to learn algebra, then go down the hall and do earth science, and then come into my old classroom and learn about the Ancient Greeks and then go next door to language arts and read “To Kill a Mockingbird.” None of it is connected to the rest of it.  Equal time allotments for each no matter how much time students need to learn it. What are we doing?

I’ve learned, by the way, that the basic architecture of this system was established, in part, more than 100 years ago by this group known as the Committee of Ten. This was a high-profile committee of educators, chaired by the president of Harvard, and they released a report in 1892 which outlined the basic design of public schools today.

Any of this sound familiar?

• 8 years of elementary school followed by four years of high school.
• In math, arithmetic was to be taught from ages 6 to 13, pre-algebra was to be addressed at about 7^th grade, algebra itself was to begin at age 14, followed by geometry.
• The three-year secondary science program was to begin with biology and earth science, then to chemistry, then to physics.

The committee’s report also declared that “every subject which is taught at all …should be taught in the same way and to the same extent to every pupil.” It likewise determined that each subject should be granted the same “equal time allotment” regardless of whether a student needed more or less time to learn it. This was done, in part, the committee wrote, to preserve the “dignity” of each academic subject. It was the subject matter to which teachers were to do homage, not the needs of students.

But then, the Committee of Ten, was trying to build a system of schools to meet a very different set of needs. It was thought at their time that only an “insignificant percentage” of high school graduates would go on to college, so the ideal school system should “be made for those children whose education is not to be pursued beyond the secondary school.”

Envisioning a new model of schooling for a new age

What we confront, therefore, almost 120 years later, as we try to use this same basic system to bring all children to a high level of achievement on rigorous standards, is fundamentally a design problem. The system we have was designed for a different time, with different needs.

So the great challenge before us is not to simply tweak the system we have, but to make something better – to build a new model for schooling for a new age.

How do we get there?

This summer we spent some time at the office thinking about how we can focus the work of the Department on a handful of things that will get us where we need to go. We came to organize our thinking around five core priorities, that, if we can keep our focus on them, will help us to help you move our schools into a new era.

The first of these is Effective Instructional Practices.

Priority 1: Effective instructional practices

The core of this entire enterprise is what happens between student and teacher that results in learning. All of us who have taught have seen that flash of understanding from a student. We construct this entire universe of public education for that moment when a student learns. That is the reason for the whole thing.

So what happens in the classroom is the key to the whole thing. Do we have rigorous standards, do we have curriculum aligned to those standards, do we have instructional practices that put the student at the center — that gives the student voice and choice — do we have modern, 21^st century assessment tools, and robust data systems that help us tailor instruction to the needs of every child in real time?

Getting those pieces right — those things that happen in the classroom — is key.

None of these pieces will work, though, if we don’t have great teachers and leaders, which is the second priority.

Priority 2: Great teachers and leaders

Do we have common standards for teacher and leader effectiveness that speak to what our teachers and school leaders should know and be able to do?  Are our initial preparation and professional development programs aligned with these standards?  Do we have evaluation systems in place that provide teachers and leaders with constructive feedback, and that are also used to design and implement professional development offerings? Do we do enough to support teachers and leaders in their role as learners – supporting the work they do together to make their schools better.

One of the initiatives we’re working on, for instance, is developing an online community of practice where teachers, school leaders, curriculum coordinators and others can share best practices – share lesson plans, rubrics, curriculum materials and professional development opportunities.

The research is clear that great teachers and leaders are the key to high-performing educational systems. This has to be a top priority for us.

These great teacher and leaders though, can’t do their jobs if they remain locked into the factory-era structure of modern schools. That is why the third core priority is building multiple pathways for student achievement.

Priority 3: Multiple pathways for student achievement

At long last, can we move away from the assembly-line, age-based grade level system we’ve endured for generations, and move to a system where students move upon demonstration of mastery? We can. It is happening in schools right here in Maine, right now.

An entire cohort of schools has emerged that is moving a proficiency-based model forward. We will be doing some research into what this cohort of districts is doing, so we can share their work with the rest of the state.

Something that high performing systems do is establish gateways at certain critical points in a student’s academic career, such as the transition from elementary school to middle school. As we build a proficiency-based system, we need to ensure that students are fully prepared to move on ahead in their learning.

We also need more learning options for students. If we are building a system that puts the needs of students first, can we still cling to a model of schooling where the school the student attends is determined by the student’s street address? Can we continue to put administratively convenient limits in place that prevent students from attending Career and Technical Centers, or even, for older students, make use of the state’s Adult Ed system? Don’t we need to maximize the use of every educational resource at our disposal — no matter which side of the town line those resources fall on — if we’re going to meet the needs of all kids?

We also live in an age of anytime, anywhere learning, and if we are going to remain relevant in the lives of this generation of school children, we have to embrace new technologies such as digital learning. Schools can’t be the one place where students are not allowed access to digital learning opportunities.

Priority 4: A network of school and community supports

Around this system of schooling, we need to build a network of school and community supports – our fourth core priority.  We need to ensure that we have effective and efficient services for students with special needs, especially as we see the percent of students with multiple and severe learning issues on the rise. We need to better coordinate access to health and wellness programs, as again, we see a growing number of health issues affecting student learning.

In the world outside our schools, we need to engage families and communities as never before. In a student-centered, proficiency-based model, learning happens all the time. Students will demonstrate mastery of learning outcomes in projects done at home or in the community. In schools across Maine already, students demonstrate learning through community service projects and capstone projects that are interdisciplinary and that connect students to the world outside the school walls.

Employers, too, need to be engaged.  Students need exposure to the world of work, and need to see how what they know and are able to do can be applied in the workplace. Moving our state forward in the STEM fields, for instance, will require an unprecedented partnership with our STEM employers, as we look for ways to ensure that our graduates are ready for the careers of the 21^st century.

The last core priority area we have been working on relates to how we pull all these pieces together to create a seamless, modern educational system.

Priority 5: A seamless, modern educational system

Can we work with our education partners from Pre-K to higher ed in order to create a seamless system of education that provides our students with access to learning opportunities they need at every level? Can we align all of our coursework to ensure that students can move directly from high school to postsecondary educational opportunities without the need for remedial courses?

With regard to funding, can we ensure that we have adequate and equitable financial resources behind each student and school?

Can we integrate technology in a comprehensive way, from the back office to the classroom and beyond, in order to prepare students for the technological age in which they will live and work?

Can we build an accountability system that clearly and honestly reports how our schools are doing, that provides policymakers with real-time data that they can use to make our schools better, and that drives professional development and support opportunities to help our schools improve?

We don’t need more reforms, we need transformation

So those are the core areas that we have been focused on, starting as close to the learner as we can, in the classroom, with the teacher, and working out from there.  That approach, we think, keeps us focused on the most important thing, which is the learner and his or her learning needs.

Now, I asked a lot of “can we” questions in this presentation. A lot of them.

But this isn’t really a question of “can we.” We have to do these things.

We’ve been spending a lot of time talking about the No Child Left Behind Act. The Obama administration has put forward a waiver opportunity, which we intend to pursue, and Congress is arguing about reauthorizing the controversial law as we speak.

Nobody likes NCLB, but NCLB, I think, was more useful to us than we think.

The premise of NCLB was that if we had high standards and if we held schools accountable for student achievement, they would get better. But the law also presumed something else – that schools and school teachers knew what to do to get better, they just weren’t doing it.  So what we would do under the law is test the kids, put the results in the newspaper and shame the schools into doing what they needed to do to improve.

What we found though, is that while schools and districts did see some improvement by focusing on standards and by looking carefully at their instructional practices, we’re not even close to getting all students to master the learning standards. NAEP scores, for instance, have barely budged, despite a decade of serious effort on the part of most people in the education business.

What we have come to find, I think, is that while standards and assessment are important, what we can do to actually improve student outcomes within the system as it is presently designed is limited. We’ll never reach all kids if we don’t replace age-based grade levels with something better.  We’ve tinkered around the edges for too long, we’ve driven teachers, administrators, parents and kids all crazy trying to test our way to a better educational system.

We don’t need reform, we need transformation in our schools. It is happening already, there is great work being done, we’re looking to help in any way we can, and I look forward to working with all of you to just that.

[Section headings added on 11/2/2011.]