Agree or disagree. Dr. Tony Bennett is passionate about education reform.
Yesterday, Parents for Choice in Education hosted the 2nd Annual Education Symposium and invited Dr. Tony Bennett, Indiana’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, and winner of Fordham’s 2011 “Education Reform Idol” competition to be their keynote speaker.
This event was held in Utah so naturally I was interested.
In a separate interview with KNRS 107.5, Dr. Bennett, said that he believed that teacher unions have pushed their agenda too far, resulting in teaching professionals who have become comfortable in their jobs with little, to no, accountability.
Bennett said that the cost of making it harder to reward good teachers and dismiss bad teachers is that we’ve forgotten about the children.
He went on to say, in part, “This fundamental shift is mirrored in Indiana’s third-grade reading legislation, which requires third graders to master third-grade reading content before moving on to fourth-grade instruction.”
“In one year, Indiana has dramatically transformed its education landscape. We did this because we could no longer accept a system that didn’t prepare our children to compete with their national and global peers. So we set high expectations for student performance. And we set high expectations for the teachers and leaders responsible for educating them.”
This train of thought is gaining traction. Time will tell if these, and other, state-mandated reforms will make a difference.
It always does.
“If knowledge is the greatest source of wealth, then individuals, companies, and nations should invest in the assets that produce and process knowledge.”
-- Thomas Stewart, editor of Harvard Business Review, in his book, “Intellectual Capital: the New Wealth of Organizations.”
We’ve always struggled with the fact that most teachers are not properly prepared in college to go into a classroom and teach reading. We have the answer for that.