The state of Maryland recently saw fit to create a commission on Innovation and excellence in education to consider how to improve education here. Since members of the Commission include representatives of the state education agencies as well as elected officials, there is every likelihood that their research will find its way into official government policy in time. While the words “innovation and excellence” are noble in intention, old ways of thinking and acting are hard to break, especially in the sensitive area of government and education. Resistance to real change comes from a huge public education establishment that is designed more to promote the economic benefits of the adults involved, rather than the taxpayers, children and families who are the effective clients and consumers. In this highly charged area of public policy, we have therefore seen only a long record of failure and degradation of any excellence and innovation in public education from its very beginning many years ago.

At their April, 2017 meeting, the Commission heard a presentation from representatives of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), which compared education in Maryland to several other “top performing” countries, namely Finland, Shanghai (China), Singapore and Ontario (Canada). Based on their study, it was suggested to increase the salary and benefits to teachers and aspiring teachers, to reduce the number of higher education institutions permitted to conduct teacher preparation programs, to limit alternative routes into teaching, and to make the school environment more professional for teachers, such as by giving more time for non-teaching activity.

Sadly, however, this NCEE formula for “innovation and excellence” in Maryland education is based on models of homogeneous culture and centralized government control that do not fit into the American way of life, which is rooted in values of individual liberty and diversity. What brings high performing student achievement in a cohesive, highly controlled economy, such as Singapore or China, therefore, simply won’t apply to education in America. Forced on society, it will only have the result of increasing the pace of escape from the public schools to home schooling and other non-public alternatives. In addition, the top-down authoritarian model carries moral risks that will surely degrade freedom in America, not to mention the very “innovation and excellence” the Commission is presumably seeking to bring out in Maryland education.

So, instead of tighter, more restrictive state-controlled teacher education and salary increases for school personnel, the Commission should encourage MORE (not LESS) diversity and choice, including freedom for serious innovative alternatives to the conventional forms of instruction and format which have become the habitual patterns of public schooling in the past. In addition, the state-run school system should de-centralize its rigid top-down control of the authoritarian model practiced elsewhere, to allow instead greater choice and competition at the grassroots level of each community and school. For example, set up means for parents and teachers to work together to establish the most efficient and meaningful priorities for curriculum, staff hiring, and instructional approach that suits their particular needs and intere

sts.

Since the Maryland General Assembly will most likely use the Commission recommendations to craft new laws and policies for the public school system, as well as elsewhere in the field of education, all taxpayers and citizens need to pay close attention to hold elected and government leaders accountable for what they doing in this critical area of public policy.