3 big goals and 1 enormous elephant in Iowa

I came away from watching the 3 hour-long roundtable discussions in Iowa this week with three big-picture takeaways:

(1) We need to focus on connection and collaboration at and across all levels. Iowa's education system (and I would argue this is true for New York and most of the United States as well) is fragmented and disorganized. We need to develop an education system where educators are connecting with business leaders, as well as other educators across grades pre-k through college. We must develop appropriate student assessments that are correlated to real-world outcomes needed for college and career success and also correlated to meaningful applied learning experiences in school.

(2) We need to raise the expectations for all students, and provide educational experiences that prepare students for the 21st century demands for creative, technologically proficient, collaborative problem solvers. Students need more hands-on experiences and applied learning, more opportunities to connect with others within and beyond the classroom, and more assignments involving working in groups to creatively solve problems. Enriching educational programs must be provided to students across all communities, regardless of socioeconomic status. Struggling students need more time (whether before or after school or during school breaks) for focused instruction to ensure their success.

(3) We must make the teaching profession more attractive to top scholars by making teaching better respected, better paid (especially in highest-need areas like math and science), and better supported. Teachers are well-supported when they have ample opportunities for meaningful evaluation and targeted professional development. Teachers can grow tremendously by observing other teachers and being observed and informally evaluated by other teachers. Teachers also need more time to collaborate within grades and across grades in order to develop and deliver cohesive and meaningful educational programs to prepare students for success on appropriate assessments of college and career readiness.

The enormous missing piece in these discussions (though it was mentioned briefly in two of the roundtables) is a focus on resources. How is Iowa (and by extension, each state within the United States) going to pay for the resources it will take to put these excellent ideas into place? It will be interesting to see what, if any, conversation about providing more resources comes out of next week's Town Hall meetings and Education Summit.

You can go to the brand new Iowa Department of Education website for videos of the roundtables and a schedule of summit events that will be available live. The complete schedule of events, including breakout sessions that will not be shown live, is available on the old Education Summit website.