Fourteen top Education Leaders met on February 4-5 to develop recommendations for the Obama administration to tackle America’s education crisis. Empowered by the magnitude of the education challenge, harkening the call for change from the Obama administration, and speaking directly as Congressional hearings were taking place to debate the stimulus package, the group leaned on years of substantive research and practice to develop 6 Consensus statements that provide pathways to transforming our schools. 

In brief, the 6 Consensus statements cover the following topics:

A. Assure readiness
Success in the classroom requires that children arrive ready to learn – cognitively, physically, and psychologically everyday throughout their school years.

B. Provide rich learning environments for all students
We believe that all young people in America deserve rich learning environments that challenge their thinking, promote learning by doing, and focus on higher-order thinking skills that encourage life-long learning and prepare young people to be engaged, collaborative citizens.

C. Transform standards, curriculum, instruction and assessment
High quality, age-appropriate standards are the heart of the system. We need to develop curriculum, instruction, and assessment based on those standards. Standards should be more common, more rigorous, and benchmarked against the top international standards. Curriculum, instruction, and assessment must be aligned with each other and with those international benchmarked standards.

D. Improve overall teacher quality
We believe our nation’s teachers, including early childhood and extended learning educators, are to be praised for playing a vital role in developing the intellectual capacity and curiosity of our children. Yet there is a wide variance in teacher quality, not only from school system to school system across the nation, but even from school to school in the same system, and classroom to classroom within the same school. As well, a variety of funding, hiring, and seniority transfer policies often result in poorer students getting the poorer teachers, contributing to lower performance and higher drop-out rates.

E. Ensure the development of 21st century school leaders 21st century school systems demand 21st century school leaders. This requires support and development of school board members, superintendents, central office administrators, building principals, and teachers. Evidence shows that high quality instructional leadership improves student and school performance. Therefore school leadership should be focused on a combination of student learning, progress, and culture building, while enhancing the quality of teaching.

F. Generate and Use Research Effectively
Educational research has explored various dimensions of the teaching/learning process and strategies that promote educational excellence and equity. Research has also examined issues related to educational inequities in financing, teacher distribution, and the discordance between mandates and the resources to carry them out. Despite work carried out in these domains, several challenges characterize the field of educational research.

Read the full Forum Concensus Report…

Learn more about the recently concluded Courageous Leadership for Shaping America's Future IV forum in Washington, D.C.