Reform doesn't end with teachers

It's become fashionable these days to talk about our outdated, factory-style public education system, where kids clock in, line up and start the repetitive business of learning, but check out mentally long before they go home for the day.

And with his risk-taking, mold-breaking philosophy, incoming Iowa Department of Education Director Jason Glass is an industry rock star whose big ambitions are well-suited to the times.

He fit right in at last week's forum on education innovation hosted by the Grant Wood Area Education Agency, where at least one local high schooler reminded us of what we already knew: Students don't expect to learn much at school.

Glass wants to change that, to give schools the freedom to innovate and more technology to integrate to help bring school systems up to date. But so far, most of his remarks haven't focused on lighting a fire under students, but on holding teachers to the flame.

“The classroom teacher is where it all happens,” the 39-year-old Ohio consultant told KCRG's Beth Malicki on her weekly news show “To the Point.” “Everything in the system must be configured to support and improve the classroom teacher, and that starts with me.”

He's called for a hard look at a teacher compensation system that attracts mediocre applicants to the profession then rewards them for simply putting in their time (I'm paraphrasing). He's criticized “drive-by” evaluations that don't accurately measure classroom skills.

His ideas - greater focus on attracting potentially excellent teachers, more incentives for them to do well and greater rewards when they succeed - sound good from a distance. And Glass has as much experience with this as anyone - as a human resources director for schools in Eagle County, Colo., he helped implement a groundbreaking teacher merit pay plan. “Human capital” and compensation was his specialty during his brief stint as an educational consultant.

Glass has been careful to mention he wants to collaborate with teachers and schools on any changes, careful to say a merit system should reward good teaching, not serve as a kickback for acing standardized tests.

But Iowa's educators already have been exhausted by reforms - brilliant plans that could be summed up in four words, more or less: more paperwork, less control.

Iowa's students aren't the only ones who have been ground down by our assembly line approach to learning.

And teacher quality, as critically important as it is, isn't the only place to look for reform.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net