Mo Green’s technocratic plan misses the point of education
It’s not a plan for students — it’s a dashboard for looking busy
Education isn’t nearly as technical, bureaucratic, or complicated as the industry would have you believe.
You can dress it up with as many pedagogical terms and best-practice KPIs as you want. But at its core, only one thing really matters: What do we want our children to be know and do by the time they graduate?
But as first-year Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green kicks off his statewide tour this month, we’re getting a lot more of the former and none of the latter. The product he’s selling: “Achieving Educational Excellence,” a five-year plan packed with targets, jargon, and a new reporting bureaucracy.
It sounds ambitious. But it’s hollow at its core — and built on the same faulty assumptions that have hollowed out public trust in our education system.
A statewide plan with no real levers
To his credit, Green lays out specific goals that will be easy to measure. Things like:
92% four-year graduation rate
ACT average of 20
30% AP participation
89% market share for public schools
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