I came across a new Huffington Post column by education professor Gary Stager that got the mental gears grinding. The author was dismayed by a Washington Post piece in which urban reform leaders (including DPS’ own Tom Boasberg) call for specific teacher policy and charter school reforms. The piece has been labeled as a “manifesto.” (You may recall that Kevin Welner wrote a somewhat thoughtful response to Boasberg et al. here at Ed News Colorado — one worthy of honest disagreement that stirred a fair share of controversy.)

While there’s the response from Welner, on another plane came this other response sympathetic to his that I found at the same time more revealing and more confounding. In his column, Stager insists that the co-authors of the manifesto

are unqualified to lead major urban school districts. Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein are not qualified to be a substitute teacher in their respective school districts. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan could not coach basketball in the Chicago Public Schools with his lack of credentials. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that they advocate schemes like Teach for America sending unprepared teachers into the toughest classrooms armed with a missionary zeal and programmed to believe they are there to rescue children from the incompetent teachers with whom they need to work. In public education today, unqualified is the new qualified.

Stager — whose own website promotes him as an “out-of-the-box” education thinker — then goes on to assign a Progressive reading list of Deborah Meier, Alfie Kohn, Jonathan Kozol and Gerald Bracey et al. to help the dominant “Reform™” advocates eschew high-stakes accountability and testing, and get beyond the notion “that there is only one way to create productive contexts for learning.” Why does that sound like a straw man to me?

Now it may be to my detriment, but I’d never heard of Dr. Stager before reading his column. And I’m nearly certain he’s never heard of me. Given his position as an education school professor, I very well may lack the requisite credentials to hold a contrary opinion. I admit I haven’t read most of the books he highlights, nor in most cases did he give a compelling reason to change that fact. Nonetheless, hopefully I’m not utterly “unqualified” to raise a few pertinent questions:

• For one who has proclaimed that education is not suitable for students as a one-size-fits-all enterprise, what is so threatening about the existence of: a) Teachers trained outside the established university education system and b) Charter schools that offer different types of programs?
• If established Progressive educators already “know how to amplify the enormous potential for children,” why have their decades of dominance over the profession yielded little or no discernible progress? Why should they continue to be entrusted with so much power, without so much as an acknowledgment of the stagnant conditions that have given such tremendous life to the “Reform™” movement?
• Why should parents and other citizens embrace the proclaimed vision “of sustaining a joyful, excellent and democratic public education for every child” while simultaneously being preached down to for a lack of expertise? Why should low-income parents satisfied at the results of have chosen to send their children to “charter-based obedience schools” like KIPP or West Denver Prep be motivated to listen?
• If it is so much better for our educators simply to be “qualified” (aka credentialed by a state-recognized university education program), why are so many “qualified” Colorado educators not equipped to teach younger students the research-based basics of reading? Why are so many “qualified” elementary teachers not properly equipped to teach basic math skills?
• Would the Big Picture model touted in the column have spread so far to serve so many students if not for public charter school laws and the innovators who worked outside the system to make it happen? What percentage of educators employed by Big Picture are traditionally licensed?
• If it is the contention that research doesn’t support the dominant “Reform™” paradigm, and that one-size-doesn’t-fit-all, could widespread support be found among Progressive education professors to scrap the high-stakes No Child Left Behind regime in exchange for a system that empowered students and parents with universal choice–since research consistently shows the effectiveness of vouchers in satisfying parents and improving student learning?

Humble questions from an unqualified someone.

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