A Conversation With Ted Preston

CEO, The Achievement Network
October 2011

The Achievement Network is committed to helping all students achieve academic excellence by providing urban, low-income schools with effective data-driven strategies to identify and close gaps in student learning, and helping schools to embed these strategies into their everyday routines to measurably close the achievement gap.

How is Achievement Network reforming education?
We’re raising the bar for academic achievement by building networks of schools.  These district and charter schools work together, all taking common assessments, and use the same practices to analyze data to figure out how kids can achieve that high bar.    

What is the ultimate value of a good education?
There's a lot of evidence that suggests that academic performance in grade three is highly predictive of a student’s outcomes in high school and university.  So providing a good elementary and middle school education is a way of helping people get the tools to achieve what they want to in life. This is very much an American ideal. 

Are there specific success you’d like to point out?
Yes.  However there’s a worry that some of the current education reforms are creating islands of excellence.  We and others are trying to figure how to get these different investments, these different initiatives to come together and have an even larger impact.  We need to organize all of the parts so that they’re working on behalf of the kids. 

Is the U.S. falling behind other countries?
Students in many other parts of the world are generating the ideas that drive their economies.  They’re better prepared to connect to people outside of their own countries, to deal with people who are quite different from them. 

So, is a good teacher the best remedy?
A strong teacher can make all the difference, especially for students below grade level or who need to catch up. And when we think about a great teacher, it’s not just someone who helps students read and write, it’s a person who also cares about these kids and pushes them, recognizes their differences, and envisions who these kids can someday be.  It's a difficult package to assemble, but we know that there are a lot of good people out there and we need to create the systems to attract, retain, and reward them. 

Is your ultimate goal to close the achievement gap?
Closing the achievement gap is really just a starting point.  In each district we need to ensure that there aren't some students who are getting written off, while others are getting far more attention.  But we can’t just focus on the district level.  We’ve got to look at how we take students from where they are, and think about what they can achieve as individuals.  We need to build a system that understands those students’ aspirations and how they can impact their families and the community.

Does a good education also create not just smarter, but better people?
People who’ve had a good education feel that they have more choices—that they’re in greater control of their lives.  And the more people take a responsibility for what they do, the stronger they become as individuals.         

How do the rest of us benefit if a student gets a good education?
At a minimum, people are more capable of engaging with the world around them and contending with every day issues.  With greater understanding, also comes the ability to become a more active citizen.  Education creates a sense of empowerment.  People are positive and engaged. And that’s certainly better than the alternative.