Governors Urge High School Reform as a Top Priority

Reform, what does this really mean? I am constantly amazed at the amount of time and money that is spent trying to improve a system that has really remained unchanged in its core. Each year obviously intelligent people get together and decide that the education process need reforming. They come with new sometimes radical ideas that ultimately result in baseline changes to the educational process for teachers and administrators.

After a few years working with this new plan teacher buy in wears out and basic instruction takes over resulting in the same old system taking hold. This is not to say that old system is wrong. Afterall, it is this very system of education that made all the reformers so capable of designing a new one. My point is not that the new ideas and plans are flwed but that without some type of grassroots plan the chance of it surviving or maintaining is slim.

New and creative instructional techniques must come from the very people in the trenches day after day. High school teachers will, in my opinion, never embrace a new plan unless they feel they had some input into the development and deployment. Teachers have seen too many programs come and go along with the political machine that created them.