Lessons from the leafy suburbs: Reform may be harder for the rich

Robyne Camp / June 12, 2012

Guest blogger Robyne Camp served three years on her board of education in Irvington, New York, losing a tight race for re-election in May. Her first career was in financial services, specializing in complex lending to insurance companies. Her second career began in her 40s, after she was widowed, when she became a lawyer. She has worked as a pro-bono assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, representing abused and neglected children in appeals cases and prosecuting domestic violence crimes.

Three years ago, in a landslide election six months after the crash, I won a seat on my local school board in Westchester County. This May I lost my bid for re-election in a hotly contested five-person race for two open seats. I learned some lessons.

When I ran, I was a reform candidate in an affluent district where reform candidates rarely run (and don’t win if they do), but the village was then in turmoil, and the rules had been suspended. I was swept into office and assumed responsibility (along with four colleagues) for oversight of a district whose salient demographics can be registered in a glance:

Projected enrollment school year 2012-13: 1740

Projected per pupil spending 2012-13: $29,400

Reduced-Price Lunch: 2 percent

Limited English Proficient: 2 percent

Black/Hispanic: 6 percent

Asian or Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander: 9 percent

White: 83 percent

Small, affluent, majority

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Lessons from the leafy suburbs: Reform may be harder for the rich

The need for school board leadership

Timothy G. Kremer / June 8, 2012

Guest blogger Timothy G. Kremer is the executive director of the New York State School Boards Association.

Mark Twain once famously remarked "I'm all for progress, it's change that I can't stand."  Of course, Twain fully understood progress does not happen without changes to the status quo.

What constitutes progress for a school board? Hiring a great new superintendent and forging a harmonious partnership? Often, school board progress is defined in the form of a strategic plan that the entire staff and community rally around. Both are reasons to be proud because they can lead to great accomplishments.

School board members must welcome all rational forms of change that serve the goal of raising student achievement.

Ultimately, though, progress has to be measured in terms of student achievement gains. Unlike Mark Twain, school board members must welcome all rational forms of change that serve the goal of raising student achievement.

School boards have generally been supportive of the New York State Regents Reform Agenda, although it is fair to say that that many boards have a healthy dose of skepticism about grand, top-down initiatives such as Race to the Top, Common Core Standards and the new Annual Professional Performance Review or APPR.

Isn't it interesting that after all these years, New York and seven other states recently were granted a waiver from the punitive, one-size-fits-all requirements of No Child Left Behind that have proven to be,

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The need for school board leadership

Redefining public education to ensure the constitutional right of a quality education for ALL

Darrell Allison / June 6, 2012

Guest blogger Darrell Allison is president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, which supports greater educational choice for all parents and students across the state. For more information, please go to www.pefnc.org.

As president of a statewide organization devoted to ensuring that ALL children—regardless of income or zip code—have access to a quality education, I hear plenty of opposing talking points…that we need to spend more on public education, that education reform measures will lead to the death of public schools, that public tax dollars are being used for private gain.

In spite of tremendous spending, our poorest kids are still missing the mark. And this is totally unacceptable.

When I hear this type of rhetoric I think of how North Carolina has spent over $35 billion on education over the last five years, yet only 50 percent of poor elementary and middle school students passed state tests—compared to nearly 80 percent of their wealthier peers.

In spite of tremendous spending, our poorest kids are still missing the mark. And this is totally unacceptable.

I’m all for “public education,” but I believe “public education” should consist of a system based more on the quality of schooling a child receives and less on the particular educational model. In an op-ed that was published across North Carolina earlier this year, I wrote that each of our state’s educational models, including our traditional public

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Redefining public education to ensure the constitutional right of a quality education for ALL

The most important priority: kids come first

Michelle Rhee / May 16, 2012

Guest blogger Michelle Rhee is the founder and CEO of StudentsFirst, a bipartisan grassroots movement working to improve the nation’s schools. She previously served as chancellor of Washington D.C. schools and before that founded The New Teacher Project, which helps districts recruit effective teachers to challenging schools. Michelle began her career as a classroom teacher in Baltimore.

Too often decisions are made and policies are set based on the interests of adults in the system rather than student needs.

As I spend time visiting and studying school systems across the country, I see many bright spots. But I also see far too many places where children are being educationally shortchanged. That’s reflected in the still-enormous gaps between what poor and minority students know and can do academically and the performance of their wealthier, white peers. And it’s also reflected in the growing gap between American students and their peers overseas.

So how did we get here and what do we need to do to give our kids—all our kids—the twenty-first century education they deserve? 

I can’t point to any one policy that is responsible for holding our kids back. But I can assure you that there is an overall approach to education policymaking that is hurting children. And that is this: Too often decisions are made and policies are set based on the interests of adults in the system rather than student

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The most important priority: kids come first