Education Reform

I believe that education is one of the fundamental ways that we secure our freedom as Americans. Thomas Jefferson said it best, when he wrote…

“I think by far the most important bill in our whole code, is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness… The tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
— Thomas Jefferson to George Wythe, 1786. ME 5:396

But as important as securing freedom is, there’s more.

• Our world is engaged in intense global competition that will not let up. As one very smart guy recently said, if you accept that 90% of the 3 billion people in Russia, India and China are uneducated peasants, that still leaves 300 million to compete with us for innovation and jobs.
• This new “knowledge economy” is driven by constant change and innovation. Skill sets are changing, and new growth industries are being born faster than old industries implode.
• Because of this, it’s no longer enough to have legions of people willing to work hard. Now we need legions of well-educated people willing to work hard. That’s the price of global admission today.

Our education systems are simply not built to meet these challenges. We feed kids through an assembly line, even though they have individual strengths and learn differently. We shuffle them from grade to grade, whether they’ve learned what they need to learn in that grade or not. And the lack of any meaningful competition or local control means that our schools stagnate without any innovative change to the delivery models that aren’t working.

The net results, documented in the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress, among other studies, are a travesty.

• Only 4 in 10 white students are proficient in reading, writing and mathematics.
• That number drops to far less than 2 in 10 black or hispanic students.
• Globally, a study of our 15-year-old students ranked us 29th out of 40 countries, yet our per-student spending ranks 2nd only to Denmark.

There are a variety of things that need to happen to fix this. We need higher standards, real local control, more competition, and creative innovation to change how we deliver education. And like any good organization, we need to take cost out of delivering education, so we can invest the savings in improving student outcomes.

My Role at Sierra College

None of us can singlehandedly solve this set of problems, but we can each do our part. In 2004, I stepped forward and was elected to serve a four year term on the Sierra College Board of Trustees, and I was honored to be re-elected in 2008 by a substantial margin.

While our local community college continues to grapple with many of the same basic reform issues of local control, competition and innovation, there were a different set of immediate problems back in 2004 that took my attention: namely, three straight years of budget deficits that were threatening to decrease student access if left uncontrolled.

By working together as a team, we created a balanced budget and prudent reserve policy that generated $4 million in new reserves in the five years starting with that 2004-05 budget cycle. As a result, Sierra College was arguably the best prepared community college in the state to weather the 2008-09 economic crisis while simultaneously increasing access to college. Our faculty and staff deserve a great deal of thanks for their hard work during the last few years.

Today, we’re in the process of realigning our resources to the areas where we need the greatest focus. Rather than funding everything (and thus making nothing a priority), our strategic planning process has been linked to resource allocation, and we’re now making smart decisions about budgeting in the context of our priorities. (That may sound like a smart way of saying “we’re spending our money on the important things”, but this is a huge step forward for a public institution, trust me.)

As the region’s resource for workforce development and university preparation, Sierra College has an outsized impact on local economic prosperity. I’m proud to continue my service on the Board of Trustees, and look forward to continuing the efforts we are making together to focus our resources on the critical problems we face as a community. If you have ideas on how we can strengthen Sierra College or reform education in general, I’d like to hear from you. You can reach me at aklein@sierracollege.edu.