Our Views: Push Change for Schools
By OPINION PAGE STAFF
Published: Aug 18, 2006
The new leadership at the Baton Rouge Area Chamber wants to make a mark in public policy in the region. It’s a great concept, but it will require a willingness to make strong recommendations that might ruffle feathers.
The first major issue tackled by the policy team put together by Chamber President Stephen Moret is public education in the region. The first two of a projected five reports have been released. They all eventually will be available on the chamber Web site, http://www.brchamber.org.
Both of the released reports had useful things to say, but basically laid out the issues facing public education and did not — as we hope later reports will do — provide concrete recommendations for change.
The first report gathered data on student achievement from all the nine-parish region’s public schools. This regional focus is useful. If investment in public education has one purely business-oriented rationale, it is in the value of a literate and trainable work force. And companies don’t recruit their workers from only the East Baton Rouge Parish system, or the Zachary system, or the Ascension system. They recruit from the region’s pool of workers. A regional focus, pushed in many areas of the Moret-led chamber, is a much better way to look at education.
The second report tried to assess how our systems are doing compared with those of peer cities: Given the large number of students from poorer family backgrounds, not too badly. Still, the ultimate economic benefit of a work force is in its performance, not relative success of similar school systems.
The chamber report acknowledged as much. “Despite the finding that student achievement in the overall Baton Rouge area is generally in line with that of other regions facing similar challenges, the results of our public school systems are often viewed in less forgiving terms, particularly within the field of economic development,” the report said. “Our weak standing relative to other regions negatively impacts the decisions of companies and individuals on whether to relocate to our area, start or expand businesses, and employ local workers.”
A third report coming soon will look a specific factors that affect student achievement. Eventually, the chamber reports will conclude with recommendations on how to improve public education in the region.
It is vital that the chamber reports, to be credible, first of all be based on sound data, thus the emphasis in the first two reports on the data about the local systems. “The power of data-driven reform is tremendous,” observed one student of education reforms in the Southern states, Ferrel Guillory of the University of North Carolina, in a speech this year to the Council for a Better Louisiana’s leadership program.
The chamber reports, particularly in the disputatious arena of education policy, also must provide policy leadership — and that is where controversy is bound to arise. The educational policy establishment is a large and status-quo-oriented crowd of officials, unions and other interest groups united primarily by a desire for more funding.
The chamber’s credibility will be enhanced by the thoroughness of its research, but that “street cred” will be squandered quickly if its recommendations do not provoke as well as reassure.
Bold and forward-looking policy recommendations will attract attention and support, even if they might be controversial.
As the chamber’s second education report said, the costs of business as usual in public education could not be higher. “Our future economic prosperity will depend on how successful we are in continuing and accelerating our efforts to improve student achievement throughout the Baton Rouge area.”
Story originally published in The Advocate
