Aspen – Presidential candidates have faced hundreds of questions during debates, but only one that dealt with public education, former Gov. Roy Romer lamented Tuesday.
“Iowa thinks: ‘Our schools are pretty good.’ What they don’t understand is the Koreans are going to eat our lunch. Sing apore, Korea, China – they’re all doing very much better than us,” Romer said while sitting on an education panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival,
The three-term Colorado governor, who went on to lead the Los Angeles Unified School District, is spearheading a novel, $60 million nonpartisan political campaign, “Ed in ’08,” intended to highlight the crisis in American education and the need for immediate and drastic improvements in various areas.
“This generation (of parents) is coming to the conclusion that their children are likely to have less of a standard of living than they have,” Romer said. “They will not have access to jobs that (their parents) had access to. There is a world out there that is becoming very skilled and very knowledgeable. … I think that finally is going to drive the bread-and-butter issue of the politics, but it is so late to be getting to it.”
Romer, whose campaign is backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, spoke on a panel with Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet and Michael Feinberg, a founder of the Knowledge is Power Program that turns troubled public schools into high-performing academic centers for at-risk students.
The annual week-long gathering sponsored by the Aspen Institute, a progressive research organization, features policy leaders, captains of industry, heavy-hitting politicians and media stars discussing politics, culture and society.
This year’s lineup includes former President Bill Clinton, Bob Schieffer of CBS News, musician and social activist Wyclef Jean, presidential adviser Karl Rove, Virgin Group magnate Richard Branson, former CIA Director James Woolsey, humanitarian activist Queen Noor of Jordan and former Secretary of State Colin Powell discussing topics as varied as the future of energy, arts and culture and the emergence of China as a superpower.
Romer, Bennet and Feinberg agreed reforming public education is crucial for workplace competitiveness, and they offered basic suggestions: require more student time on tasks in the classroom, set rigorous academic standards and craft better assessment tests, place effective teachers in every classroom, and encourage parental and community involvement.
The KIPP program – including a Denver school that requires longer school days and intensive student involvement – has seen remarkable improvements in student achievement, but the underlying tenets can be replicated everywhere, Feinberg said.
“KIPP is never going to serve 100 percent of the kids. We don’t want to do that,” he said. “We want to see if we can have what we call the ‘Fed Ex effect.’ When Fed Ex took 10 percent of the market, the U.S. Postal Service – another government monopoly – learned how to do next-day air.”
Staff writer Steve Lipsher can be reached at 970-513-9495 or slipsher@denverpost.com.
