Dive Brief:

• Frequently changing political whims make it hard to have consistent education policy and nearly impossible to give initiatives time to work, and a new report from the Learning First Alliance urges governors to empower local leaders to achieve long-term success.
• According to eSchool News, “A New Philosophy on Education Decision-Making” makes six recommendations, including moving forward with college- and career-ready standards implementation, expanding communication efforts to help the public and public officials understand the link between these standards and student achievement data, and emphasizing the needs of individual learners in instructional decisions.
• It also suggests expanding links between teacher education and preK-12 programs that facilitate intensive collaboration between the two, expanding professional development programs for teachers and other school leaders, and redesigning assessment and accountability systems so they are useful to teachers and students while reflecting progress by students, schools and districts.

Dive Insight:

The focus on college and career readiness has been a major piece of the Obama administration’s education legacy. The term has become a buzzword over the course of Barack Obama's presidency, and the emphasis is clear — schools should not be preparing students for one thing or the other. College and career readiness is critical to give students the skills they’ll need long after they graduate from high school.

The Common Core State Standards focus on this level of readiness. While educators and experts widely believe the standards themselves were a step forward for states, politics got in the way in several of them and forced districts into periods of limbo. The call for consistency across changing political administrations is important and can also be applied to consistency in districts that cycle through their own leadership. Whenever everyone wants to make his or her mark on a district, students and teachers don’t have time to see any one initiative work.