WPLN News Archive; Joe B Wyatt (Rebecca) 5 25 00; News Archive 5/23/00-7/3/00

school reform assistance is the term which describes a service certain companies provide which helps schools implement new things such as learning programs curriculum and teaching methods five years ago these companies were nonexistent today it's big business more than ten percent of public schools use school reform assistance providers and that affects the education of more than five million students the problem is there are no standards by which teachers superintendents school boards or the public can judge the effectiveness of the individual provider and whether or not the program is worth the cost that's where joe b wyatt steps into the picture since january he has chaired a blue ribbon committee which is developing guidelines to ensure schools get what they want and need it hasn't been an easy process they have gotten from too many standards to too few but nobody expected this to be easy after all what about our school systems ever yes i mean let's face it there's still debates in this country

over how one teaches biology just to pick a hotspot we still have debates in part to this country parts of the state about teaching evolution so one of the things that i think is reasonably well known is if you have an ideological issue and it is concealed at the time you buy into something it is going to erode away from the inside so you need to get as many of the issues out on the table financial ideological borat works in an inner city school might not be practical in the rural school there are just many many issues to really were the panel was made up of the heads of national organizations representing teachers principals and school boards there are other heavy hitters like jane walters the former tennessee commissioner of education james guthrie the director of the peabody center for education policy and a former west virginia governor gaston caperton and other words these are people who are more used to come and then with uncompromising when you get in this room not

anyone agrees us towards a not everyone agrees it's actually more dispersed than that but then you sort of come around to say look we're not trying to make the whole cake were really trying to establish the senate due diligence questions that should be asked by any enterprise school system who wishes to do comprehensive school reform what kinds of questions are they asked and also if we can what kind of measures should they expect from what it's already available in the literature is best practice comprehensive school reform became big business with passage of the old a porter bill in nineteen ninety seven this bill provided federal tax dollars to help schools adopt successful comprehensive school reforms including the yearly one hundred forty five million dollars for incentive grants as a result this has attracted a lot of new things that haven't been tested and so the purpose of kind of standard review is to provide a roadmap as bob governable role would call it a road map by which you would

play and the kind of reform you want then you would know what questions to ask what measures to take the candidate systems that you were looking at and considering for your school system money isn't the only reason comprehensive standards for school reform a systems are so important sure school districts hate to get on their faces when a highly touted program turns out to be the wrong program for their needs but the most important reason as the students has not only debilitating and discouraging but what sometimes can happen is that children's educational experience becomes damaged and a child to have a good experience for five graves have a bad experience for two grades and that bad experience for two grades will damage their warning experience for the rest of their educational life there's a lot at stake or if well meaning people or well intentioned people don't know the tricks of the trade so to speak i should say best practices what could be done what has been done by others that help

them to come peer of the alternatives they might use then you can actually damage a school system and spent a whole lot of money and failed so the consequences are pretty significant retiring vanderbilt chancellor joel be wyatt who chairs the national committee seeking to set standards for schools and the public to use in evaluating school reform assistance programs and companies they hoped to release the results next month for national public radio i'm rebecca bain