Over at Building the Teaching Profession, Barnett has a great post discussing Ellen Lagemann’s recent Education Week commentary, “Public Rhetoric, Public Responsibility, and The Public Schools.” Among other sound observations and questions, he asks:
Why don’t we ensure that teachers have the skills to work more effectively with their students’ parents and family members and give them the time and tools to do so? […] Why don’t we pay all teachers a professional salary and reward the very best with both additional salary and time to lead their colleagues?
Why indeed. It is a matter of priority for the nation and there needs to be a campaign to generate excitement about innovation in the way we train, reward and maintain teachers. There have been bills and laws, of course, that try to make this happen. A great example are the bills introduced by the chairmen of the House and Senate education committees Rep. George Miller and Sen. Edward Kennedy, the TEACH ACT of 2007 (see here for more). The bills (which are the same in the House and Senate) would help the pre-service and professional development of teachers, but the ideas have failed to cause any great excitement, which begs the question: what would cause excitement? That is not easy, and because it’s tough the idea exposed to a more expansive “open source” solution. In so doing it may be useful to study what American Express is doing to generate “open source” ideas and how other industries have used collaborative idea “mashing” an vetting to come up with creative and effective solutions to elusive problems.