Dorn returns from other Washington with a message

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By DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP Associated Press

Summary

Randy Dorn told a business group on Thursday that Education Secretary Arne Duncan made it clear he and President Barack Obama are looking for innovation and results, and the superintendent says Washington has some ideas worth sharing.

Story Published: Feb 26, 2009 at 10:49 PM PST

SEATTLE (AP) - Washington's new schools chief came back energized and ready to focus on innovation after a brief visit with the new U.S. education secretary in Washington, D.C.

Randy Dorn told a business group on Thursday that Education Secretary Arne Duncan made it clear he and President Barack Obama are looking for innovation and results, and the superintendent says Washington has some ideas worth sharing.

States with innovative ideas will get more money from the federal government, but then they will have to prove their ideas work. The stimulus bill set aside $5 billion for Duncan and a team of advisers to distribute for creative ideas.

"Hope, opportunity and opening doors is what education is about and that's what Obama wants to do," said Dorn, who spent Wednesday in Washington, D.C., with 40 other chief state school officers, plus Duncan and Vice President Joe Biden.

Dorn brought back a message from the other Washington: federal officials are looking to the states to generate many of the new ideas the government will pay for.

Duncan brought a lot of ideas from Illinois, where he ran Chicago public schools for seven years, including an appreciation for National Board Certification for teachers, a program Washington has also embraced.

Chicago also has experimented with tying teacher bonuses to student performance, bringing professionals from other careers into teaching and helped start charter schools.

In response to a question, Dorn said Washington state voters repeatedly defeated proposals to allow charter schools so he wouldn't be going down that path.

He said Washington has found other ways to innovate with online learning, interesting magnet schools like Aviation High School in the Highline School District, and the Running Start program that allows high school students to take college courses for free.

Dorn expressed a willingness to explore higher pay for the best teachers, if the state teachers union wants to sit down to talk about the idea.

Duncan also called on the superintendents to work together for innovation. Dorn said this may help him achieve his goal of computerizing statewide achieve testing because Oregon has already found a way to do this.

While in Washington, D.C., Dorn spoke to Oregon Schools Superintendent Susan Castillo and he said they plan to have further discussions about future partnerships.

Some of the ideas Dorn would like to share with the rest of the nation include a program the Bremerton school district uses to bring dropouts back to education, which includes housing and teaching young people how to organize their entire lives.

He also likes a robotics program that gives kids a hands-on way to learn math and science.

Biden and Duncan made it clear that reform efforts that don't get results should be abandoned.

Biden told the assembled superintendents three times that he was going to follow every stimulus dollar given to state education programs and they must be able to show that those dollars helped kids, Dorn said.