As part of Edwards’ plan to Restore the Promise to America’s Schools, he wants to ensure an excellent teacher in every classroom. To do this, he’ll raise the pay of teachers in high-poverty schools, provide more resources and support for new teachers, train more principals to work in high-poverty schools, reduce class sizes, and require tutors be highly qualified teachers. Wait, what was that last one? That last one strikes me as pie-in-the-sky crazy, despite its good intent. But first, my dos centavos on a few others. On pay perks: Yes, $5,000 might attract some new good teachers to work in high-poverty schools. But it’s not enough to get them to put down any roots there, which is really the problem. $5,000 more for national board certification, which has shown some evidence of impact, is a nice idea but not much in the way of powerful incentive to come and stay in high-need and often high-cost urban centers. More support for new teachers is a good call but the devil is in the details here- he’s really talking about fewer students and fewer responsibilities for new teachers plus a veteran-novice buddy system. My concern is that this is a tall order that sounds great on the menu but doesn’t really convey to the plate. Better leadership is essential for better teaching, as Education Sector proposed here.
And then there’s that tutoring idea. He’s talking about using Title I funds, specifically for Supplemental Educational Services (after school services aimed at enhancing academic achievement), more responsibly, which is a good thing. We can’t have just anyone setting up shop to provide “out-of-school” educational services for our neediest students. But requiring that all tutors be highly qualified teachers makes no sense. First, logistically this just isn’t going to happen. State education agencies can’t even ensure that all SES providers are quality- is this now going to be the measure for a “quality” SES provider- having a list of “qualified” teachers who, no doubt, will not actually serve as tutors? If we can’t get highly qualified teachers in these schools, what’s the plan exactly to get them to tutor after school? Second, tutoring and teaching are not the same. What it takes to be a good teacher is very different from what it takes to be a good tutor, and some of the best tutoring programs employ cross-age and peer tutor models. Attention to the afterschool world deserves to be on the agenda but not so carelessly. Note that Edwards’ plan also includes “emphasizing extended learning time” as a way to turn around low-performing schools (again, these same schools that need good teachers and good tutors)–more attention to this is also good but proposing highly qualified teacher-tutors in one place and longer school days (ostensibly taught by these highly qualified teachers) in the other seems devoid of strategy.
Lowering Student Loan Default Rates: What One Consortium of Historically Black Institutions Did to Succeed 
College and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success
03/19/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on college graduation rates and the NCAA Tournament in the Detroit Free Press.
03/19/10 | Linda Perlstein links to Education Sector's "College- and Career-Ready" event.
03/17/10 | Ben Miller's column on graduation rates and NCAA Tournament eligibility is mentioned on The Wall Street Journal's The Daily Fix.
03/17/10 | Kevin Carey's critique of Diane Ravitch's latest book is quoted in Doublethink's Conventional Folly blog.
03/15/10 | Ben Miller pens an op-ed for US News & World Report on using graduation rates to determine NCAA Tournament eligibility.
Some non sequiturs in this piece. I am a “highly qualified” teacher and I am a super tutor, if I do say so myself. If one is “highly qualified” to “teach” one is “highly qualified” to “tutor,” because “tutoring” is “teaching” one student at a time. If you know your subject inside out (as a “highly qualified” teacher does) then you can just look at a student’s graded homework and exams and tell right away what the student does or does not understand, and simply help the student learn what they obviously do not know but do need to know to get the correct answer on their exams and homework problems. If you want quality tutors, you need look no further than “highly qualified” teachers to fill that need. But the state doesn’t want “highly qualified” teachers working as tutors, and wants to see the entire educational system fail. Why? So that the system can become privatized. Indeed, big business is behind this. Billions of dollars in educational funds are the prize. And the worse mess the educational system is in to begin with the less pressure there will be on privatized schools (charter schools) to perform well. And one thing I think is humorous in this piece is the notion that there is a “tutoring program” that will work for kids. “Program?” Tutoring is not “programed” education — that is what the regular school day is all about. “Tutoring” is properly customized teaching to a particular student’s particular academic needs, at any given point in time. Additionally, the schools that are failing to produce results and must hand out NCLB-mandated free tutoring are schools that pass on hiring highly qualified teachers and opt to hire some person without a college degree — that’s right, a school can hire anyone they want. They just have to say that no one else wanted the job. That’s a lie of course. Basically, the game is rigged, and the kids are the victims. You know how they say “it’s all about the children?” What they really mean is its all about greed, and how much you can grab for yourself right now. The state board of education effectively BANNED “highly qualified” teachers from working as NCLB-mandated tutoring services providers. The only way anyone or anything can be an NCLB-mandate tutoring provider is to first run a tutoring business for 2 years in the past and show that the business resulted in improving student academic proficiency. Well, how you can prove that I have no idea. More, how does the business get hold of privileged and private student academic data? But what is really weird is that a “highly qualified” teacher who would only PERSONALLY provide their services to schools needing tutors cannot do that! The state board of education insists that any applicant must have run a tutoring business for 2 years in the past, and prior teaching in classrooms does not count. Of course, teacher don’t run tutoring businesses… Oh, but it is interesting to note that almost all the (10) members of the California Board of Education making these policies were appointed by the Republican governors, and, of course Republicans want to privatize everything. Naturally, you don’t want “highly qualified” teachers out there serving as tutors and making the educational system actually work, as that would interfere with the greater scheme to privatize everything. Enough said.