Join the conversation

Kathleen Parker could have been writing about school reform when she penned the following lines: "What some may see as cooperation is viewed by true believers as weakness. Any attempt to compromise is viewed as surrendering principle."

Her target is tea party members. Many of them are ganging up on GOP policy makers who made the tough decision to vote for bank bailouts when our financial system was on the verge of collapse. But cooperation has become a dirty word in school reform, too. That has to change.

Collaboration has become particularly déclassé since Arne Duncan cited it as a reason for some states' success in the Race to the Top. Some bloggers assume that buy-in from unions and other groups on the front lines of any big change will dilute reform. So they've been wagging their fingers at state leaders who might fall prey to all this new-age, touchy-feely talk about collaboration. Real reformers won't give in to such talk. In reform, it's all or nothing, we're told.

Are these bloggers taking a page from the tea parties? One usually thoughtful commentator has even posited a school reform "litmus test" for politicians. Florida governor Charlie Crist failed this test when he vetoed a state law that would have tied most of a teacher's evaluation to students' scores on tests that, in many cases, don't yet exist. Never mind that testing experts think the law is risky and premature. Crist sinned against the purity of an idea, much like those GOP members of Congress who dared cast a vote for TARP.

But all the chest-thumping and "my way or the highway" rhetoric may do much more harm than good. Collaboration is practical. The odds of success are much higher when more people are on board from the start. Purists of all stripes usually can't get everything they want. And that's not always a bad thing.