TeacherKen begins a movement

Early today, teacherken posted a diary at dailykos calling for the dailykos community to come together and propose dramatic education reform by YearlyKos 2007.

This diary is intended to ask for your help with the impossible. At the request of several regular posters, including DevilsTower, and the organizers of Yearlykos, we are attempting to do for education what Jerome and the others did for energy, which is complete [sic] reinvent our national policy. ... This diary will not offer solutions. Instead I will herein layout the scope of the task before us. I will then ask for your thoughts. ... I believe that we must totally redesign our entire approach to education in this nation. If we do not do so, we will not survive as a democratic republic. We will continue to move in the direction of stratification by class, by wealth, by social mobility or the lack thereof. Some of the questions we must address include the following: What does it mean to be educated? How do we measure learning? What are the purposes of schools? How do we balance the real conflict between efficiency and meeting the needs of unique individuals? How should schools and colleges be structured? How should we fund education at all level? What if any minimal common knowledge should we expect as an outcome of our educational processes? How can we have some assurance of common knowledge and still ensure that there is sufficient diversity of educational choices to meet the needs and the preferences of Americans that we provide the greatest opportunity to learn for ALL of our residents? How much of education should be a discrete and separate process and how much should be more broadly integrated with life outside of formal educational structures? Should some level of education be a Constitutionally guaranteed right a the national level? What should be the role of the different levels of government with respect to education, and to one another? How will we determine whether our efforts are working, or need to be modified?

The discussion heated up almost immediately in the comments, and many great suggestions were added. I will do my best to keep abreast of teacherken's progress in this undertaking as the EECD Subcommittee is the logical place to take such a proposal.