Branstad enlists help to transform Iowa schools

DES MOINES – Gov. Terry Branstad and his top lieutenants delivered a combination sales pitch and pep talk Wednesday to Iowa school administrators who will play a key role in their efforts to returning the state's education system to its past glory of being one of the best in the world.

“You are a very important and critical part in our ability to succeed in restoring and revitalizing Iowa's quality education system,” Branstad told about 500 attendees at a School Administrators of Iowa conference. “The bottom line is that Iowa needs your leadership if we're going to accomplish our goal of being best in America and world-class competitive in education.”

Branstad said last week's two-day education summit began the reform process of enlisting school administrators, teachers, parents, parents and communities to join in a shared effort to raise expectations for students to learn, perform and excel at levels that meet the demands of an increasingly competitive world.

Jason Glass, director of the state Department of Education, said recently implemented core standards are a good starting point for a free flow of ideas on how best to chart the strategy moving forward and the steps needed to achieve success in transforming to a world-class system – an effort that he told SAI members will “require the courage necessary to make bold improvements.”

“Iowa must move from being a fractured system of schools to a school system. For too long we have left too much to chance that each individual school district or each individual school could provide a world-class education to each and every student on its own. There's a balance of state and local control that we must find and, frankly, capacity needs to grow on both sides of that equation.”

Glass conceded that the state agency he has guided for the past seven months “hasn't always been a model partner' and at times has been an impediment to meaningful improvement and change. But he said there is a commitment to get better and make positive changes – starting with a new set of priorities to be spelled out in September focused on innovation, high expectations and fair measures, and investment in educator quality.

He said the discussion will include compensation, focused on finding ways to pay people more and pay them smarter, raising base teacher pay, raising new teacher pay, creating teacher leadership roles, creating collaborative time for teachers to work together, extending the school day and the school year for students, addressing teacher labor market issues - such as shortages in math, science and special education teachers - and acknowledging exceptional educators.

“I'm not talking about a simple merit-pay scheme, I'm talking about a revolution in educator compensation that allows for broader and more systemic changes to be enacted and, more importantly, to be sustained,” he said. “We can't just keep asking for more money to do the same things. But I think we can ask for increased funding if we really can pull together a transformative approach. We have to be willing to use the billions of dollars that we already have in our system in more strategic and more thoughtful ways.”