Education Reform Agenda: A Progress Report
While the Commonwealth is rightly focused on managing through difficult financial times and developing the action plan that will allow us to emerge from this crisis leaner and stronger, we have been hard at work implementing the Governor’s vision of a transformed education system.
The most significant accomplishment of the year has been the Governor’s successful advocacy for the inclusion of education as a top priority in the new federal stimulus bill. It would be hard to overstate the significance of this federal aid, not just for Massachusetts but for every state and all of the nation’s schools. Governor Patrick led the charge on this critical aid which will allow us to stabilize our systems of public education while advancing aspects of our reform agenda which might otherwise have been stalled due to the economic crisis.
On top of that, we have been fortunate to have a Governor who has made an historic investment in public education over his first term in office. The Governor increased spending on education by hundreds of millions of dollars over the two previous fiscal years. And when the economic crisis hit Massachusetts, he stood firm in his support for education aid to communities by preserving Chapter 70 funding for school districts. The budgetary support has helped Massachusetts as we shape our commitment to meaningful and sustained education reform.
We have two main goals: improve the quality of teaching and learning in every classroom and ensure that each student is prepared to take advantage of an improved learning environment.
The Readiness Project presented a set of strategies which comprised a ten year plan to build on our successes and accelerate the work to close persistent achievement gaps. Having established the Executive Office for Education last summer, we initiated the work of coordinating an integrated pre-kindergarten through higher education system of public education. No sooner had we begun than the global budget tsunami swept across Massachusetts. Notwithstanding the agonizing business of administering cuts, we moved to streamline our budgets, effect major cost savings and to emerge with a smarter, more powerful education system.
Simultaneously, we have made progress on many initiatives.
First, we have chosen new leadership and now have all three commissioners of our education departments now in place:
- Early Education and Care Commissioner Sherri Killins (http://www.eec.state.ma.us) started her work in February
- Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester (http://www.doe.mass.edu) has been on board since May
- Higher Education Commissioner Richard Freeland (http://www.mass.edu) has been in office since January.
Great education begins with great leadership, and we have three dynamic leaders who are pushing an aggressive reform agenda at their respective levels. In addition, all three meet on a regular basis to engineer alignment of priorities and promote the collaboration we believe will improve our education delivery system, such as college readiness strategies crafted by teams of high school and college educators, early educators and higher education faculty designing programs to improve content knowledge and skill in the early childhood sector, and elementary school teachers collaborating with early educators to identify school readiness indicators.
Second, we have worked with each department on key initiatives that guide our reform work.
Early Education and Care: The department has engaged in the expansion of Universal Pre-Kindergarten grants now serving 6,700 children, upgraded their website to aid families searching for childcare providers, launched a new procurement process for early childhood providers, mounted a “Birth to 3” Task Force to target state policy on children in the earliest stages of learning and begun to develop a quality rating and accountability system for their programs.
Elementary and Secondary Education: The department just released regionalization planning grants to 12 communities, worked with the board to approve a new charter school in Gloucester and convene a task force on achievement gaps, increased the number of Expanded Learning Time schools by eight bringing the total to 26 and is developing a new accountability and support system to immediately address issues in underperforming schools and districts.
Higher Education: The board approved new rules for measuring student persistence, moved to access tens of millions of dollars in federal financial aid for students, maintained support for Dual Enrollment programs and is working with institutions system-wide for the implementation this fall of a meaningful and positive transfer policy among the campuses. In addition to these reforms, we have begun releasing funds for long overdue campus construction as part of the Governor’s historic, $2 billion higher education capital bond bill.
Additionally, we have accomplished much in our office:
The Readiness Cabinet is progressing on the work to integrate health and human services and educational systems to improve child readiness through collaboration and building a data management and tracking system.
The Dropout Commission is already providing critical guidance as we continue to strengthen our work to keep students engaged and on track to graduate from high school.
We are building partnerships with colleges, school districts and charter school providers to aid in the development of Readiness Schools, autonomous, in-district, charter-like schools.
The Task Force on 21st Century Skills presented a report detailing how we can strengthen our schools and set higher expectations for students by ensuring they can apply and demonstrate their core knowledge and an array of “hard” skills demanded by 21st century employers.
Finally, working with the Governor, we proposed a new approach to charter school accounting and lifting the cap in ways which target our neediest students and our best charter schools.
The responsibility of leadership is to project a vision and to engineer progress in order to realize that vision. We cannot afford to back away from our vision of the more robust education system outlined in the Readiness Project if we are to meet the 21st century needs of our students, our society and our economy. We will move ahead in spite of formidable challenges because of our commitment to deliver on our education ideals and the promise of education reform: equity and excellence for all.