Can we reform Title II

Ed Sector and Andy Rotherham put out a pretty ambitious plan for the Obama Department of Education. In this chapter, he takes on Title II – the $3 billion in spending each year where “tangible results form these efforts are scant and there is little evidence that these funds are driving the sort of changes that are aligned with broader human capital reform efforts in education.”

For the 2006-7 school year, 47 percent of Title II funding went to class size reduction which has not produced great results and 32 percent went to professional development which has in large part become a joke – or in the think tank parlance “compared poorly to the other” professional development for other fields.

Rotherham then does the unthinkable in Washington – he proposes fully leveraging existing high performing programs like ABCTE, Teach for America and The New Teacher Project in order to help solve the human capital issues facing our schools.

This is nothing short of outstanding. In a city where “the new” is always a better solution than “what is working”, I applaud Rotherham’s thoughts and efforts and thank him for a insightful look at the problem. It appears that he is creating his dream job in the Obama Department of Education and right about now, I would really support that. And as a former Navy guy would love to see Powell for Sec Ed.

Please read more here.