CARE - Not "Anti-Education" - Part 3

As I have reported over the last couple of days, many of the Racine Journal Times weblog postings to The Schools Report blogs have been critical of CARE - Coalition to Actively Reform Education. I feel that the JT education reporter, Brent Killackey, has not fairly represented CARE’s positive message of accountability and vision for RUSD. CARE advocates for decision-making to be made at the school level whenever possible. How can this be viewed as anti-educational?

CARE states:

“Directives from a central office that are removed from the classroom are not working. When ordered to adopt new ways of teaching without having an opportunity to provide any feedback, we do not get the ownership in the classroom needed to make these programs work. Yet, new ways of educating our children that are developed collaboratively get the ownership of teachers, administrators and parents and they will make them work.”


The Independent Commission on Education’s report published in January 2006 also stated that the district’s centralized approach to management “limits flexibility, innovation and accountability” – albeit the Independent Commission’s focus is financial and operational in nature. If it makes good business sense to decentralize operational methods, why should the delivery of the standard curriculum be centralized?

No one is advocating the use of different curricula; that would only add to the chaos, but every school should be allowed to be somewhat unique in the way they deliver the curriculum. If the staff at one school feels that direct-instruction would better serve the student population at their school, they should be able to use that delivery method. Conversely, if a more open-ended mode of delivering the curriculum is desired by the principal and teaching staff of another school; they should be able do so.

We need to better utilize our greatest resources; our building administrators and teachers. They need to provide feedback on what would work best in their schools. Clearly, the single directive (Quality District Model) coming from Central Office is failing to resonate in most of our schools. RUSD needs to do better, our community depends on it.