Morning Politico Education 2014 Predictions
Politico Morning edition featured a roundup of possibilities from education experts in the year 2014. Below are some predictions for the coming year:
WHAT WILL 2014 BRING FOR K-12?: We’re not in the prediction business, but a roundup of possibilities from education experts: (Watch for more in Friday’s edition of Morning Education.)
COMMON CORE WILL STAY RED-HOT: Education historian and activist Diane Ravitch predicts public opposition will grow as more states give standardized tests aligned to the new standards — and proficiency rates plunge.
–Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute gets even more specific: Indiana will officially dump the Common Core, and the Obama administration won’t try to stop it from happening.
–Charles Barone, policy director of Democrats for Education Reform, predicts that the anti-Common Core coalition will move on to try to kill unrelated reforms, such as tougher teacher evaluations. “We’ll see a lot of money poured into Common Core messaging,” he adds, but the decisive events determining the standards’ future will occur at the local level — “where supporters are least prepared to make their case.”
–Vicki Phillips, director of U.S. programs for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has a rosier crystal ball; she calls this “the year of collaboration” and predicts progress in giving teachers better professional development and new ways to work together to implement the Common Core.
–Joel Klein, CEO of Amplify, is another glass-half-full Nostradamus: “Despite a few hiccups and headaches here and there,” he says, “we’ll see strong support for the Common Core in 2014.”
–From Sir Michael Barber, chief education adviser at Pearson: “The central challenge for U.S. education will be for the Common Core assessments to prove themselves — if they do, the U.S. in time will be able to get off the plateau where it has been stuck in international comparisons such as PISA.”
–From an state education commissioner who wished to remain anonymous: “Forty states fully implement the Common Core State Standards by the fall, 25 states participate in year one of the testing consortia, 10 states pass superfluous ‘the Feds can’t tell us what to do….’ legislation, and all sides claim victory.”
PROGRESS ON PERKINS?: American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said she thinks career and technical education could make for some common congressional ground in 2014. In an interview on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers,” (also featuring Pro Education’s Caitlin Emma) she said there’s real potential for a renewal of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. Weingarten also called 2014 “the year of reckoning” for the education reform movement. The full interview: http://cs.pn/1d49de1
A GRAB BAG OF OTHER PREDICTIONS:
–Michael Petrilli, vice president at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, predicts that states will continue to adopt the Next Generation Science Standards, even red states…. even though they promote the teaching of evolution and climate change.
–Kara Kerwin, president of the Center for Education Reform, looks at polling that shows Americans dissatisfied with state education policy and eager for schools to be held accountable and predicts that education will overtake the economy as the top issue in at least half of 2014’s 36 gubernatorial elections.
–Andy Smarick, a partner at Bellwether Education, expects several states to seize control of struggling urban districts and begin moving to a system dominated by charter schools, a la New Orleans.
–Anne Hyslop, a policy analyst with New America Foundation, foresees a new bit of jargon entering the edu-lexicon: The ex-waiver-waiver … which she describes as a “creative solution” that the Education Department will come up with to soften the blow for states that lose or refuse to renew their NCLB waivers… but still don’t want to comply with NCLB as written.
