I agree that transparency is a highly valuable democratic characteristic that goes the wayside when individuals and organizations feel fear with maintaining control. The further a ship sinks, the more the PR machine runs, projecting sea-worthiness.

My rationality agrees that the community and parents have every right to see inside our public schools the same way we expect transparency from our elected officials. Somewhere in reality, however, I find a disconnect. From my experience at my school transparency and communication with parents sometimes begins to decrease (at least in perception) autonomy and status as the learning expert. Most parents are glad to know what’s going on, but some I have seen use that window to throw bricks through it. Perhaps this is an artifact of what Tyson proposes as our lack of sisu; parents and students feel you are for or against them.

The second resonating proposal was the substantial reduction in spending on educational bureaucracy and testing. Earlier on when he was praising Finland’s measures to attract the best and brightest to education I thought, “Yeah, but how much do the Fins may in taxes?” Saving money on those reductions would certainly be a start in paying for those recruitment incentives!

I’ve been working with a group of teachers at Teacher Leaders Network on a book (Teaching 2030) that addresses many of these same issues from teacher’s perspective. It’s time to lift our view past the edreform bog we seem to have sunken into lately. I welcome Tyson’s challenge of teachers leading!