Jennifer Stillman's blog

I recently spent a week in Washington, D.C. as part of a Federal Policy Institute, sponsored by Teachers College, Columbia University. As a student in the Politics and Education program, I have been wrestling with the policy implications of the open education content movement. While most great ideas start at the grass roots level, eventually policy makers feel compelled to get involved to regulate the environment, or to enhance the ability for the movement to grow. One of my goals as a co-founder of Open Planner is to support policies that do the latter.

As something of a policy entrepreneur, I am constantly sifting through policy problems, trying to match Open Planner and organizations like ours with the right "problem" as the appropriate "solution". In the current climate of NCLB, "Highly Qualified Teachers", or the lack thereof, are a topic of much debate. Whether the conversation during NCLB's reauthorization leads to a new goal: highly effective teachers, or to the term "highly accomplished teacher," as the NEA advocates, the problem remains the same: there is inconsistent teacher quality in this country, and this problem is exacerbated by the closed systems in which teachers usually operate.