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Blog Entry 7 of 34 Life in the St. Vrain
News and commentary on educational issues, especially as they pertain to education in the St. Vrain Valley.

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~BradJolly

Parker Fowler's Plan for Reforming St. Vrain
Contributed by: Brad Jolly   on 11/13/2007

Dr. Parker Fowler has proposed a ten-point plan for reforming the St. Vrain Valley School District ( Times-Call, November 9). Nearly all of Fowler's plan is perfectly sensible; its fatal flaw is that it would require radical change, and this is something the district simply will not do.

There are some excellent administrators in St. Vrain who truly desire positive change, but such change has been painfully slow. For example, the district has been working on student performance standards for about a decade, but the number of standards actually assessed and enforced is zero.

The chief inhibitor to real change is the district's Catch-22 situation: its desperate need for positive public relations prevents the district from acknowledging the plain truth about student performance, but radical reform that would truly help students presupposes the acknowledgment that there is a serious problem to be addressed.

Here are Fowler's ten points, along with my analysis.
1. Stop hiring poorly-educated individuals for teaching positions. Require that teacher candidates score above the 50th percentile (to start) on a national exam.
Singapore actually selects teacher candidates from the top 30 percent, so the idea is not without merit. But Fowler expects the district to discriminate against people just because they cannot demonstrate academic prowess on a standardized test? That goes completely against the ethos of the teachers' union and the mindset of public education generally. This simply will not happen.

2. Open doors to instructors coming through bona fide non-traditional routes, such as Teach for America. Rely on previous performance rather than pedigree.
I am not an expert on Teach for America, but the little I have read is not positive. In general, I support alternative certification, and private schools do very well with uncertified teachers. I believe the district does hire alternatively-certified teachers to some extent already, but again, a Catch-22 situation exists: many top minds who consider teaching are repulsed by the anti-intellectual atmosphere in schools of education.

3. Pay teachers a hefty bonus for successful teaching in schools under social duress. Pay all teachers a bonus commensurate with the success of their students. The goal should be a median annual salary of, say, $75,000 (2007 dollars) for a 12-month at-will contract.
There is no doubt that the current teacher compensation scheme is severely flawed. Teachers are remunerated without regard to student performance or the subject matter taught.

Like all of Fowler's ideas, this one has merit, but the union simply will not accept at-will employment.

I will address the rest of Fowler's plan in future blog entries.


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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Brad Jolly

Longmont , CO

Brad Jolly has posted 34 blog entries and 24 comments since joining on 9/14/2005. Brad Jolly 's average blog rating is 4.11.
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