HIS BIG life sciences proposal finally signed into law and an industry-pleasing BIO 2008 Convention appearance behind him, Governor Deval Patrick is coming off a good couple of weeks.
And now he's unveiling one of his biggest initiatives yet: his educational Readiness Project.
With the package still at the conceptual stage and its cost and funding up in the air, witnessing the roll-out has been more like seeing the preview of a highly anticipated movie than watching the feature presentation itself.
The trailer is certainly enticing. With Secretary of Education-designate Paul Reville playing a principal policy role and Gloria Larson, Bentley College president, helping lead the financial figuring, the cast includes some genuine stars.
And the potential is significant. Tom Birmingham, coauthor of the state's landmark 1993 education reform law, thinks Patrick's proposal has "a chance of restoring the primacy of education reform" on Beacon Hill.
"It is very exciting," says the former Senate president. Still, he adds this qualifier: "The absent center is the funding piece, because it is going to be enormously expensive." Or, to put it another way, we'll have to see the entire movie before we can really judge the final production.
But so far, with one lamentable exception - the failure to boost charter schools - the governor is tackling big subjects and proffering important ideas. Ideas like readiness schools, full-day kindergarten and universal pre-K, a heightened focus on each individual child's progress and preparation, enhanced anti-dropout efforts, a statewide teacher contract, consolidated school districts, differentiated pay for different subjects, dual enrollment in high school and community college, and (phased-in) free community college.
Not only will there be no watering down of the MCAS graduation requirement, the administration wants additional measures to assure student mastery of crucial knowledge.
"We know that there is a set of skills and aptitudes that young people must have to succeed that includes but goes beyond what is in the current MCAS," Patrick said in a Monday interview.
Added Reville, also present: "This should resolve once and for all any doubt that there might have been about where this administration was relative to the MCAS. This report brings us four square behind high standards, the stakes associated with those standards, and a recognition that even the standards that we currently have don't go far enough."
The governor and Reville hope to add a 21st-century skills dimension to high-school requirements, something that might take the form of a senior project that requires interdisciplinary skills and an oral presentation.
When it comes to the flexible, autonomous readiness schools, they will be asking teachers to change the way they work, moving away from contracts that extensively regulate the school day and toward one that permits wide latitude and flexibility.
"The concept is to have what is bargained kept to the essence," Patrick said. His list: salaries, hours, benefits, and due process of dismissal. Similarly, system-improving flexibility is one of the ideas behind a statewide teacher contract. Such a contract might use higher pay as a way to get better teachers in the schools where they are most needed, Reville says.
If neglected charter schools are an important outside-the-system experiment, Patrick's approach represents an inside-the-system effort, an attempt to make important reforms in cooperation and consultation with the education establishment.
So here's the question: Can the governor achieve the sweeping changes he contemplates through a process that puts a premium on winning agreement from the various components of that establishment?
"If the goal is to have every stakeholder sign off, it is going to be a very elusive goal," says a polite but skeptical Birmingham. Patrick, however, is sanguine. "They were there in the development of these recommendations and they will be there as the concrete proposals are developed, because they want to be a part of reform," he says.
I hope the governor's optimism is justified; certainly he has considerable powers of persuasion.
Still, as he and Reville pursue their praise-worthy plans, they need to be on their guard not to let consensus become the father of incrementalism - and the foe of real progress.
Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com.
