EdPWR’s “Ten Commitments” May End a Decade of K‑12 Policy Stagnation
A coalition of education groups has released a detailed “Ten Commitments for Public Education” that could finally revive federal K‑12 policy after years of quiet.
Background to the “dormant decade”
In 2014 the author predicted that No Child Left Behind would survive the Obama years, only to see it replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) at the end of 2015. A later mea culpa admitted that bipartisan fatigue had halted major national debates on K‑12 education, leading to the prediction that only a few pre‑K and college‑tuition bills would surface in the 2016 cycle.
ESSA has since ended major federal K‑12 policymaking for a generation, with the first cohort of students who entered kindergarten under the law in 2016 now nearing graduation. The author has repeatedly complained about this “reform quiescence” and urged education‑equity advocates to craft a new agenda.
EdPWR’s Ten Commitments
A coalition of education organizations operating under the EdPWR banner has produced a document titled “Ten Commitments for Public Education.” The author describes it as “the first serious effort to articulate a new approach to running and improving schools that I’ve seen in years.”
The commitments span topics such as school safety, education technology, literacy instruction and public school choice. The author notes that the list reads as “relatively uncontroversial,” making it suitable for political campaigns that promise “safe schools full of literate kids.”
From talking points to implementation
While past progressive K‑12 agendas often boiled down to “support public education with more resources,” the Ten Commitments aim to go further. For each priority, EdPWR “lays out a clear goal with specific state and federal policy actions to achieve it, and a guarantee to parents and families on what these goals mean for their children.”
One example is the promise of “The Schools Our Kids Deserve,” which includes “honest, easy‑to‑understand information about how your child’s school is performing, where it can improve, and options to ensure no student attends a school where they are not learning.” The document calls for updated, improved, and more comprehensive school report cards that show academic performance and resource availability. Schools that consistently lag on these metrics would receive additional funding to aid improvement.
Blending old and new ideas
The author sees the plan as a hybrid of “the transparency of No Child Left Behind” and a 1990s progressive idea of setting public standards for the basic resources schools need. This combination, he argues, provides both the polished talking points politicians need and the concrete substance required for actual policy execution.
Conclusion
Although the Ten Commitments are not presented as a final answer, they represent a “profound success” on both the rhetorical and actionable fronts, offering a potential end to a decade of K‑12 policy inertia.
