Please, Not Another Flood of ‘New Ideas’ : Education: The President’s vision is praiseworthy, but today’s dire need is for the ‘building blocks’ of learning.

Several years after declaring himself to be the “education President,” George Bush began to make good on that promise last week by unveiling America 2000, a strategy for revitalizing the country’s education system. Much of what he proposed deserves support: The plan is comprehensive, and it would extend active responsibility for schools beyond that of parents and educators to include political and business leaders.

A coherent vision is critical to achieving educational excellence, but it has never been sufficient for implementing fundamental change or sustaining it. Much of the debate over the President’s plan has focused on two controversial elements, a system of voluntary national examinations, and the promotion of greater school choice for students and parents. But the difficulty of translating presidential vision into everyday reality may turn out to be greatest for the “new generation of American schools.”

The President proposes that these new schools be designed by R&D; teams in collaboration with local communities and funded by business contributions. Congress would be asked to appropriate $550 million to create 535 “break the mold” schools with radically different approaches to teaching and school organization. The theory is that these new schools would produce higher student performance, cost no more than conventional schools after initial start-up, and serve as prototypes for transforming the country’s other 100,000-plus schools.

At first glance, this appears to be a promising mechanism for uprooting the system and replacing it with a better one. But this strategy makes two questionable assumptions about the link between ideas and broad-based change. The first is that American education suffers from a lack of good ideas. In fact, the problem may be just the reverse: Too many good ideas never get beyond the status of promising innovation. American schools have been bombarded over the past 40 years with innovations, such as “new math” and “open classrooms,” that became no more than fads because they were rarely implemented in any meaningful way.

Twenty years of research on the educational change process shows clearly that moving innovations from experimental sites to large numbers of schools is never automatic. The more comprehensive the change, the more difficult to implement and sustain. Schools willing to experiment with new ideas typically are the ones most interested in improving themselves and have greater staff capacity than the average school. Furthermore, no matter how effective an innovation is in one school, the faculty, students and parents at each new school at which it is introduced must go through the process of adapting it to their own needs and circumstances. Consequently, innovations often fail to produce lasting and fundamental change because reformers do not realize that the required level of investment at ordinary schools is far higher than was necessary for the initial demonstration project. If the President’s plan is to fulfill its promise, it will require as much investment in the slow, difficult work of school-by-school change as it now proposes for R&D.;

A second assumption underlying America 2000 is that educational improvement can occur without major new infusions of money; that existing funds just need to be spent more effectively and creatively. This assumes that the building blocks of a good education--sufficient numbers of competent adults ministering to the educational and social needs of children in adequate facilities and with good instructional materials--are already in place. Yet these very building blocks are threatened by severe budget crises in many states and localities. For example, at a time when an overcrowded health-care system has shifted more of that burden to the schools, Los Angeles schools may have to lay off most of their already reduced school nursing staff. And the fiscal crisis is not limited to California; more than half of the states have to reduce spending.

At a time when the states, which pay for the bulk of education, face a worsening fiscal picture, the President offers good ideas and demonstration schools. Most educators would agree that the schools can do a better job but wonder how his vision will compensate for an inadequate supply of the basic ingredients that make good schools--well-trained, commited teachers, engaging instructional tools and sufficient support services to keep children healthy and eager to learn.

The President’s blueprint for America 2000 deserves praise, but the ideas it offers must also be combined with a sustained investment in giving every school the capacity to educate its students well.