Candor on our school system

DAVID DRISCOLL should be taking a well-deserved victory lap.

Instead, as he sits in his office discussing his impending retirement after an accomplishment-filled run as the state's education commissioner, Driscoll is sounding alarms.

Asked whether US children, growing up in a country that undervalues scholastic achievement and clings to a relatively short school year, can compete with their international peers, he is blunt.

"No," he says. "Absolutely not."

Not the way our educational system is currently configured. Why, if Horace Mann, the father of American education, came back today, "there is only one institution he would recognize, and that's schools," Driscoll says.

Every other major US institution has changed and modernized, he says. But schools have clung to the standard day, to the September-to-June year, to old ways of teaching and thinking.

"It has to be completely overhauled," Driscoll says. "I think we almost have to start with a blank piece of paper. It is odd to say after 43 years in the business that it needs to be overhauled . . . but our kids cannot do it, given the way we are presenting education to them."

A better system would mean a longer school year for at least some students, a longer day, merit pay for the best teachers, and salaries that would draw top instructors to urban schools, he says. It would focus more on the depressingly high percentages of minority children who are dropping out. It would mean more charter schools, to increase options for families, explore new approaches, and push the traditional system to change.

Teachers' unions, meanwhile, need to abandon their "knee-jerk typical union reaction to everything," Driscoll says. More should be expected of parents as well.

"They send the kids with a Coke and a Twinkie to snack time, they dress them inappropriately," Driscoll says. "Teachers will give you horror stories. . . . We have to get serious about finding ways to raise the responsibility of parents."

Driscoll is worth listening to not just because he's refreshingly candid, but because he knows the system inside out, having also been a high school math teacher and a superintendent. As commissioner, he has insisted that schools need to have clear standards, and he has had faith that Massachusetts students could meet those standards.

"We were literally, literally, graduating thousands of kids, giving them diplomas, and they didn't know anything," he said. "They really didn't. We now know what they know and don't know."

This year's impressive high school performance on the MCAS exams is still more evidence that the state's education reform efforts are paying off.

Driscoll is proud of those results, and rightfully so: He oversaw both the creation of the curriculum frameworks that guide teaching in every subject and the implementation of the MCAS as a graduation requirement.

Harvard Pilgrim chief executive Charles Baker, a former member of the Board of Education, remembers the pitched battle over the curriculum framework specifying what students needed to learn in math.

"We had an army of angry math teachers trying to rip the whole idea to shreds," Baker recalls. "On the day it all came to a head, Dave said: I have been a math teacher . . . but I am telling you, what we have been doing isn't working. We have to acknowledge that kids aren't getting what they need out of our current way of handling math."

"I was never so proud of Dave Driscoll," Baker concludes.

Driscoll, who will leave on Aug. 31, isn't the only vital force the state is losing.

Jim Peyser, who as chairman of the Board of Education has worked closely with Driscoll to push the system toward standards and accountability, is about to leave as well.

Back in 1999, Peyser was a rival for the commissioner's job, and the choice of Governor Paul Cellucci. But Driscoll, then interim commissioner, had more votes on the board, and so a compromise was hammered out: Driscoll became commissioner, Peyser the board chairman.

Together, they have proved a formidable team.

"Dave turned out to be not just a reformer but someone who understood the system as well and could move it as a result of that knowledge," says Baker. "And in Peyser he had a perfect overseer, someone who was really good at managing the board and totally committed to the agenda. I give them both enormous credit."

So do I. The determined duo has been instrumental in making education reform a success.

This state is deeply in their debt.

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.