"Revisioning" a Brave New Future

Last weekend's Bangor Daily News had an interesting column ("The Shape of Schools to Come" by Todd Benoit) on the "Revisioning Education in Maine" report, due out in early September .

Benoit says the best part of the report is that it avoids "education-ese" (his word), that is, the often-insular jargon of school professionals. I have to be a bit skeptical; when you start out with the notion of "revisioning" you're already breathing pretty thin air!

Leaving that aside, here's his take on the meat of the recommendations:

They would increase the average size of school districts, unions, etc., to between 3,000 and 4,000 students, reducing their total number (currently at 286) and the cost of administration (unusually high in Maine). They would expand the school year by 10 days and include half-day pre-school; provide tuition money for post-secondary education; improve teacher pay, including for merit and based on the difficulty of filling a position, and include all teachers in a single statewide bargaining unit.

Maine's laptop program would expand and the focus on core subjects would increase. Teachers and students would get more flexibility for instruction - a lack of time wouldn't trump the need to learn. School choice would grow, and so would the time devoted to teacher training. Class sizes would rise from an average of 12.7 students to the national average of 15.6 students.

You can find the draft report from October 2005 here*.

What are your thoughts and opinions on the issue of "revisioning our schools" ?

*Warning: large pdf file/document -- 556K/72 pages. It may work better for you as an html file (here).