The Call for Reform

In the April, 2013 edition of District Administration Magazine, Alison DeNisco reports in an article titled “Thirty Years Later, Little Has Changed” that despite numerous reform movements, including No Child Left Behind, a February report from the Equity and Excellence Commission finds that indeed, little has changed since the publication 30 years ago of the “A Nation at Risk” report.

DeNisco’s report highlights “the vast gaps in educational outcomes separating different groups of young Americans...” and calls on the federal government to take a more active role in public education.  The proposed action plan includes restructuring school finance systems to better reflect student need, efforts to improve recruitment and retention of quality teachers, providing high-quality early education for all children, and requiring states to meet realistic but aggressive expectations of student outcomes.

This all sounds so familiar... and I wonder how long it will be before we, as a profession and as a nation, begin to realize how far from the mark we are aiming.  We’ve wrung our hands for 30 years, fretting over test score comparisons among disparate nations with unique populations, social settings, and widely-varied economic and political systems.  In the process, we’ve converted a useful but rather insignificant metric into the primary goal of our educational system.  It’s as if we’re in a sporting contest and the only measure of success is the point total for each player.

To make matters worse, we intuitively know and pay lip service to the notion that education should be about maximizing the potential of every student, yet in our rabid pursuit of the winning record, we put policies and practices in place that practically guarantee minimum proficiency from each student regardless of ability.  Does it not occur to policy makers that test scores can be increased by also raising the bar for students with superior academic abilities?

Our educational system has been chasing this canard for so long that it’s considered almost subversive today to promote higher achievement from students with higher abilities, or to direct resources to developing talent in the arts and other non-core areas.  Instead of focusing our efforts on maximizing learning to the utmost potential of EVERY student, we concentrate all resources on those closest to the cut score... not because those students are more or less precious to us, but because schools and educators are judged almost exclusively by how many students make it over that very low bar.

Dr. Yong Zhao takes a hard look at the numbers in his blog, “Numbers Can Lie:  What TIMSS and PISA Truly Tell Us, if Anything?”  He makes the point that while international test score comparisons may be a valid indicator of “the extent to which an education system effectively transmits prescribed content”, comparison of economic measures on both a personal and national level would indicate that “the successful transmission of prescribed content contributes little to economies that require creative and entrepreneurial individual talents and in fact can damage the creative and entrepreneurial spirit.”

I don’t argue against the need for reform, in fact I believe it’s greater now than ever before.  But I do believe that in our zeal to “win” the test score comparisons, we’ve done far more harm than good, and what is more, we’ve lost sight of what the true purpose of education should be, particularly in the unique setting in which we find ourselves as a nation.  We face forward and see a future in which the global economy is undergoing unprecedented transformation, to a time in which the value of rote knowledge and content is diminishing and the value of creative skills and flexibility in thought and learning is at a premium.  We decry students being unready for post-secondary education and yet we look at the face of higher education changing daily, as illustrated in the discussion paper “College 2020” from the Center for Policy Innovation Discussion and the article “Education Technology Success Stories” from the Brookings Center for Technology Innovation.

The target of required skills seems to move almost daily, and we see mounting evidence of the shift in economic power from monolithic corporations to agile, small-scale and flexible entrepreneurship, yet we insist on the pursuit of a standardized, inflexible education system based on uniformity and content-based score performance.  At a time of unprecedented opportunity and value centered on individualized talent and interest, a time when we see the third world emerging as an economic force based not on corporate might but innovative thinking, rather than stepping forward to meet new opportunities we instead look back and pine for “old school”.

New technologies and communication channels open the door to learning avenues never before available.  We can move forward with individualized learning, we can provide authentic collaborative and creative projects, we can develop 21st Century skills, and we can measure and track academic progress through dozens of different metrics.  The technology available to our teachers and students today make all of these things possible.  Yet we continue to view test scores as the sole indicator of success and point our efforts not to the future, but rather to creating proficient test takers

I believe curriculum reform should be directed to the future rather than to the past.  We need to step forward and embrace change, and we need to leave behind the notion that the measure of success lies in the contest of test scores.  As educators we need to muster the courage to apply new pedagogies, to come together with our colleagues and communities and to demonstrate in ourselves those skills we know our students need.  We need to take education back and change it from something done TO students to the opportunity it should be FOR students to learn and grow.

Regarding Curriculum Design... Who Cares?

I know the title of this blog comes across as a very flippant remark.  But now that I have your attention, let me explain.

As the blog assignment requires that our opinion be supported by research, I did what most of you probably did, I typed "Who should define curriculum?" into the google search page.  And just as the Education Week article associated with the assignment points out, it seems there are as many definitions of what "curriculum" means as there are people trying to define it.  So, what's a blogger to do?  How do you hold and defend an opinion over a topic for which there is no agreed upon definition?

And then I realized, you can't define what is meant by curriculum until you can articulate the purpose of education.  Of course, there's not much more consensus on this subject than there is on the definition of curriculum, and yet we have schools, we have the social institution of formal education, we have countless programs devoted to the sole purpose of training educators, and in fact, the school forms the central hub of almost every community in our country.  We obviously collectively feel that education serves some very important purpose.

Ah, but what purpose, that is the question, and thus, the title of this blog.  Who cares?  Because the purpose of education, which tells us what the basis of curriculum should be, depends very much on who is doing the caring.

It was much easier to answer this question 50 or 100 years ago (though they may not have agreed back then, because this debate has been going on for over a century).  In his excellent TED Talk on the state of education, Dr. Ken Robinson explains that when the current system of education was conceived, it was primarily designed to meet the needs of industry, turning out workers and laborers to fill factories and provide management.  In 1930, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote that the purpose of education was to develop citizenship.  By that, she meant that the primary focus of education should be to produce thinking, intelligent people who would understand their duties as citizens and be active and involved in the process of politics and leadership.  

Today, Daniel Pink, in his book A Whole New Mind argues that we’ve moved out of the Knowledge Age, are leaving the Information Age, and are now entering the Conceptual Age, which requires new skills and a new form of learning, emphasizing creativity, innovation, and design skills.  Yet our assembly line, sort-them-out education system is still firmly planted in the industry-based Knowledge Age.  He argues that today, the individual must be valued for their unique contributions and ability to think creatively, take initiative, and incorporate a global perspective into their decisions.

In each perspective or age, the primary concern of education, that is, who is doing the “caring”, is different.  We seem to be entering a much more “learner-centric” time, where the main focus is on nurturing the needs of the individual student, and developing each to their full potential.  If this is indeed what education is to be about, then our methods, thoughts, and definition of curriculum must be radically altered from those previous ages.  A nationally designed, uniform and standard curriculum will not suit those needs.  Nor will high-stakes, standardized testing tell us if we are succeeding.

As a nation, we seem insistent on sticking to the old industrial model of education and curriculum design, hanging our reform hopes on a national curriculum and standardized testing.  Meanwhile our culture continues to move into the individualized Conceptual Age, our economy becomes more centered on  innovation and clever ways to generate and consume new information, and awareness and interaction on a global scale is becoming an essential skill.

I believe our students and many educators recognize the growing disconnect between policy and the needs of learners, and with them the needs of our society.  If this disconnect continues to increase, the tone and meaning of the question, “Who cares?” will continue to shift from inquiry to sarcasm.

How to Create Poor Leaders

Any endeavor that requires teamwork and results also requires quality leadership.  This is certainly true in every level of education, from student activities and the classroom all the way up through local administration and state and national policy formulation.  It is my belief that much of what ails education today stems from a crisis of leadership at all levels.

By this, I do not mean to say that capable leaders do not exist in education, nor do I place the blame of poor student performance and a lack of learning on the current leaders themselves.  It’s not as if anyone personally set out to fail our children or to hinder the performance of our academic institutions.  Yet quite clearly, our educational system is not measuring up to the goals of academic achievement, personal development of students, or producing quality citizens.

What is a leader?

 In my experiences as a student, team member, classroom teacher, coach, and director of technology, there are certain traits that all good leaders share.  While these leadership traits and qualities can be examined, studied, even defined and taught to a certain extent, they cannot be truly exhibited by all.  By its very definition, leadership requires followers, one leading many, an elite.  

This idea carries a negative connotation in today’s world, especially in the world of education, where we seem to be obsessed with total fairness and equality along with the expectations of identical, standard achievement by all.  This illustrates the first point of how our current system selects for poor leadership.  Make the end-goal impossible to achieve.  

Goals

Regardless of style, great leaders have the ability to focus followers on a common, attainable goal which includes a desirable result for all.  The goal does not have to be easily obtained, but it must be possible.  Examine the goal thrust upon today’s educational system by No Child Left Behind, uniform “common” standards, and high stakes testing.  All students MUST be proficient at passing tests in a narrowly defined subset of academic content areas.

As a component of the larger purpose of education, this goal may be attainable and desirable.  But as we are all aware, this has become the ultimate and end goal of every school, even to the exclusion of all other goals.  

Today we seem to speak of accountability and raising expectations only in the context of this goal.  It’s as if a basketball coach were to be evaluated on the basis of point production, steals and assists by every player.  While a good coach would recognize that setting individual goals in these areas based on each player’s potential and ability would be beneficial to the team, it is doubtful that any coach with ability would take a job in which success were judged solely on these factors.  What is more, it is doubtful players would work hard to achieve these goals if the measure of team success were reduced to the public display of these skills by each individual.

Creating leaders

The pathway to leadership in schools is another shortcoming of our current system.  Too often an administrative certificate and leadership position is seen as a means of exiting the classroom and obtaining higher pay.  Many individuals do not enjoy teaching or find that it does not meet the idyllic expectations they may have had, yet they have a significant investment in their own education for that purpose and the only exit paths available are to choose a different career or to “advance” to a leadership position.  

This is not to say that all administrators were poor teachers, but the system is not designed to identify and funnel talented leaders into administration.  Certainly some administrators entered the profession with the goal of ultimately leading a school, but rather than selecting and cultivating leadership talent from the ranks of teachers, the currency of advancement in K-12 education is quite simply college credit.

Culture

You can make a solid argument that leadership among teachers is in fact discouraged in the current system.  We all know how it actually works in schools lacking quality leadership at the top.  Teachers who display leadership and initiative are asked (or often assigned) to take on more responsibility, with little or no monetary compensation let alone the provision of extra time to meet the new responsibilities.  Meanwhile, others who demonstrate poor leadership and initiative are rewarded by being “left alone” lest they produce even more difficulties for the administration to deal with.

Once this strategy of negative feedback is in place, it becomes self-sustaining.  It drives quality leaders away and encourages a sense of malaise and defeatism.  Resentment among team members grows and capable teachers retreat to their classrooms where they can safely display their talents in an environment under their own control.  Teachers quickly learn the mantra, “never volunteer” and all efforts to encourage teamwork and school progress or success are met with cynicism and anger.

State and national leadership in education seems to me to have taken on a completely autocratic style.  The answers and methods to be used are prescribed by the political bureaucracy and have evolved to become completely based on punishment and negative consequences. The leadership role at individual schools and districts has been usurped by state mandates and performance is judged not by display of excellence or achievement, but rather by the avoidance of failure at any cost.  While this autocratic style of leadership can be effective in certain scenarios, it ultimately depends on the installation of meek subordinates who follow directions and procedures without thought.  Even the most autocratic coach quickly learns that leadership on the floor or playing field is required for success.

Incentive

As a final point, I believe that great leadership and teamwork must have a reward, some mark of success in achievement of common goals.  Although this may be financial, most quality educators did not enter the field with monetary rewards in mind.  Whatever the mark may be, to have value it must ultimately be EARNED by both individual and team effort.  There is no real mechanism in place for this condition in our current system of education.  There is little public recognition of success save for individual student achievement, and that recognition is reserved for the student.  In fact, in our culture, high achievers are discouraged from pursuing a career in education.

 

If we want to develop quality leadership in education, we first must create realistic and meaninful goals for students and a culture in which leadership and success may be rewarded. This can only happen if those meant to be served by education can perceive the value of the efforts and appreciate the end result. In this we are speaking of the students, parents, and communities in which the schools exist. We must stop trying to serve a political bureaucracy obsessed by test scores and standardized output of product.

The System Approach

On the surface, it seems to make sense.  US test scores are low compared to other nations.  We fear this may pose a threat to our position in the world, our society, even our way of life.  We feel we must act before it is too late.  We conclude that our schools must not be providing a quality education to our students or the test scores would be higher.  

The problem is, there are so many schools, students, and teachers in our country that we can’t even identify what is wrong.  So first, we must standardize everything.  Every school should be doing the same thing, and then we can tell who is screwing up our test scores, and what we need to do to fix it.

When I wear my IT hat, I can appreciate this logic.  Tech staff face this sort of problem all the time.  Some automatic alert is sent or the performance of some system is not optimal.  This issue must be corrected before it turns into a bigger problem, possibly crashing the entire infrastructure.  First we identify the systems affected, then we try to isolate the cause of the problem.  Once the cause is identified, we take corrective action.  Often this means applying software patches or replacing a faulty piece of equipment.  Problem solved.

This “IT” approach is wonderfully effective.  Straightforward, easy to grasp, and chances are, someone else has had the same problem so there is lots of advice available from others on what to look for and how to fix it.  One of the best things about the IT part of my job is the feeling you get when you have successfully solved and corrected this type of problem.  

If you want this approach to work well (and in IT, you NEED this approach to work well), there are certain conditions which must be met.  In fact, a good part of what IT system engineers and managers do is to constantly strive to meet these conditions:

1. Keep your systems and equipment as uniform as possible.
2. Follow industry standards when selecting hardware and software.
3. Continuously monitor and analyze metrics and keep them within accepted norms.
4. Provide failover and redundancy whenever possible.
5. Isolate your systems as much as possible from the dangerous world of malicious users and outside threats.
6. Minimize radical changes in topology.
7. Provide robust backup systems so that you can always go back in time to a place before the problem existed.

This method of operation is so powerful and effective that it’s been successfully applied to many industries, including agriculture, manufacturing, even shipping (have you seen the UPS commercials about logistics?).  It’s infused into our culture.  It’s even been successfully applied to human systems... think of the NFL, NBA and other professional sports.  All based on a system of standardized, replaceable parts.  Why wouldn’t it work in education?

The truth is, it probably would... IF we were willing to meet the conditions of standardization, which would look something like this:  

1. Keep all students, teachers, classrooms and schools as uniform as possible.
2. Select a national, standardized curriculum all the way down to the text books, lessons and assessments.  Control what is taught, when it is taught, and how much time is spent on it.  
3. Monitor progress continuously.  Every day, every class, every student.  Whenever a score is outside of certain narrowly prescribed limits, take immediate action.  If necessary, replace the student, teacher, or lesson.
4. Maintain extra students and teachers “on the shelf”.  You can’t allow the failure of individual components to affect overall system performance.  If possible and cost-effective, repair the component and then place it back in service.  If not, discard that component.
5. Isolate students and teachers from new ideas or approaches.  Those should only be considered by the managers at the system level, and if approved, they should be implemented into the system following industry standard practices.  Whenever possible, new ideas should be tested in an isolated lab setting where the effects cannot be spread to the entire system.
6. Minimize change.  Try to keep the same components in place for as long as possible, but when their specifications fall below standard performance benchmarks, replace and discard.
7. If we find a systemic problem that cannot be easily corrected, go back to what was working before and try to avoid reproducing the problem.

Thank goodness I also wear a teacher hat!  No thinking, feeling human is willing to meet those conditions.  That’s the beauty and value of people.  We can do many things, we can understand and appreciate different perspectives, different models.  We understand context, we can see where a system might apply and where it won't work. We understand that people are not parts, that we’re not interchangeable components of some massive machine or system.  And each of us knows that our value to communities, cultures and nations cannot be measured by test scores.

The problems with applying the “systems” model to education are obvious.  The flaws in the logic begin with the assumption that when we compare US test scores to other nations, we are comparing measurements from equivalent components.  I don’t know of anyone who would argue that the testing population of US students is functionally equivalent to that of Finland or Malaysia. And the problems continue with the assumption that international test performance is the primary product that the education system should be trying to produce.

There is no existing evidence that international test scores are any indicator of current or future national prosperity, economic power, workforce capability, or productive capacity.  Nor are they indicators of human health or happiness.  Since those relationships cannot be established, we thus distill the primary reason for the push to standardized, common curriculum.  Raise test scores.

If that were our true goal, I’m completely confident it could be achieved.  With a strong federal mandate and enough money to create the necessary curriculum and assessments, every school could be cranking out proficient test-takers and our national ranking would surely rise to the top.  It would simply be a matter of cutting out the faulty components and replacing them with standard parts that do the job as intended.  

We all know that education is an individual, intensely personal experience.  We know that true learning involves failure, that self-confidence is bred in overcoming adversity, and that there are nearly as many different learning styles as there are students.  We know that regardless of the learning style, one to one tutoring and personalized learning is the most effective model to attain proficiency in any subject.  And we are starting to see the possibilities that new communication technologies, information access and teaching strategies can provide.  All of these truths lie in direct opposition to treating people and their education in a systematized, standard way.

As students, as professionals, as a nation, we need to have the courage to stand up and demand that the purpose of education be directed to the learner, to our communities and to our national interests, instead of sacrificing individuals to the purpose of winning an international numbers contest.

Should Schools Introduce a Value-Centered Curriculum for All Students?

Should Schools Introduce a Value-Centered Curriculum for All Students?

This is a tricky question on several levels, and it can’t really be discussed intelligently without agreement on what is meant by the term “values”.  More specifically, are values the same as morals?  Ethics?  How do values relate to character?  

According to ChangingMinds.org, values are the rules by which we make decisions about right and wrong, should and shouldn’t, good and bad.  Morals have a greater social element and are more universally accepted.  Ethics relate more to the set of values within a given context, such as professional ethics or academic ethics.

All of these terms relate to what we call “character”, and yet it seems to me that character encompasses more than values, morality and ethics.  Leadership, for example, can be thought of as a character trait, yet by it’s very definition (the ability to lead others), this trait cannot be exhibited by every individual of a group within a specific context.  One or a few must lead, others must follow.  Military, corporate, and educational institutions are all based on, and organized around this concept.  Each institution values good leadership, but does that make leadership a value?  And if it is, can it be codified and taught to all individuals as part of a curriculum?

Few would argue against the notion that good character development is important to the community, culture and society in which we live.  Yet the question remains.  Can character be formally taught by an institution, or is it rather the culminating effect of living and learning within a given culture or society?  Many believe it can be taught, some states go so far as to pass laws that require schools to teach it in a formal way.  For example, North Carolina’s Student Citizen Act of 2001 requires that “every board of education develop and implement character education instruction with input from the local community.”  (http://www.ncpublicschools.org/charactereducation)

The question is not whether values and character are important, but rather whether it should or can be included as a formal part of the curriculum.  In my opinion, such inclusion is a fool’s game.  Every school has a code of conduct, a set of discipline rules, a dress code, a student handbook, etc.  These are not taught in a formal setting per se, but rather are part of the institutional fabric.  Students (and staff) learn most of these rules by observing the behavior of others or through their own experience in taking action and experiencing consequences.  Most of this learning is not formal, even if we attempt to make it such.  

One danger I see in such formalization is that at some point, the understood “rules” or “values” will be in conflict with the formal teaching.  Values are not immutable, they exist within a social context.  When that context changes, formalized values may conflict with actual practice.  Few things undermine institutional authority more quickly than observed and blatant hypocrisy.  For example, our school currently has a rule that bans the use of cell phones by students during the school day.  This rule implies that such use detracts from the educational process or that at the very least, such communication has no value within the educational structure.  Yet we also issue mobile devices (iPads) to every student in the belief that instant and ubiquitous communication and universal access is a premium part of the educational experience.  Students certainly recognize this hypocrisy, and this realization calls into question the validity of all other institutional values.

We live, learn and work in a time of great social and educational change, and this change includes shifting values and ethics.  That is not to say that values, ethics and morality are disappearing, indeed they are necessary and will always exist to serve the needs of society and our institutions.  But they must change with the times and the culture, or they cease to be valid.  As stated in the Gale Encyclopedia of Education:  Overview of School Curriculum,  “As the implicit expression of the pervasive modern self-image of the citizen and nation, these changes have not, and do not, take place as a result of planned activity or reform. Instead, they come about as the model of society, and modern models for the curriculum, are incorporated, in routinized ways, in the work of teachers and policymakers.”  (http://www.answers.com/topic/overview-of-school-curriculum)
 

We say “Accountability”...

Testing, Teachers, and School "Accountability"



Let’s be honest.  Education has always been about accountability.  Students are to be held accountable by teachers for their behavior and the quality of their work.  Teachers are to be held accountable by administrators who evaluate them.  Administrators are to be held accountable by the board of education and the public they represent and work for.  The entire system is based on accountability.  

So if the entire system from its inception is based on measured performance, standards of behavior and demonstration of knowledge in a quantifiable way, what started the “accountability craze”?

Obviously, the notion arose among our leaders or the public that despite the entire system being based on the principle of internal accountability and performance measurements, education is failing.  We either don’t hold people accountable, we aren’t measuring performance correctly, or both.

What are the indicators that lead to this conclusion?  We could have endless debates about socio-economics, how to measure quality instruction, and the causes and effects of poverty.  But at the end of the day, the indicator of success in education is test scores.  More specifically, how the United States ranks on those scores in relation to other nations.

The idea of accountability here is misleading.  It’s not about holding people responsible for doing the job they were hired to do, it’s about assigning blame.  It’s human nature... someone has to be to be responsible for the low test scores.  The flaw in this logic is perfectly illustrated by the political solutions which attempt to “fix” the problem.  “Get test scores up, or else...”  

Again, the “solution” is not about accountability, it’s not about educators doing their jobs more skillfully or strategies to improve learning or understanding the root causes of academic underachievement.  Just get the test scores up and we don’t care what happens in the classroom.  A classic case of the end justifying the means.

The sad and frustrating thing about this approach is that the flaws are well known.  As Rothstein, Heywood and Adams point out in “Teachers, Performance Pay, and Accountability”, this model is overly simplistic and leads to three issues that must be confronted:

1.  The approach misrepresents common practice in the private sector.  Economists who study incentivised pay have pointed out for some time that when dealing with professionals holding complex roles (teachers and administrators, for example), basing pay upon numerical measures is incomplete at best, and generally of little economic value in the corporate world.

2.  The second issue is known as Campbell’s Law in the social sciences and Goodhart’s Law in economics.  It states that since purely numerical measures are necessarily incomplete, holding workers accountable based solely on these measures leads to serious distortions in both production and measurement.  Workers will strive to produce what is measured at the expense of what is not, even if it causes harm to the system.  Further, employees often take steps to corrupt the performance measures and overstate production.

3.  The third issue is score inflation.  In education, this is often dismissed, but it is a serious issue and almost completely invalidates the measured results.  I’ve witnessed this very thing happening in several schools.  Students are removed from the testing pool via absense or special education programs.  Teacher focus shifts to the “bubble kids”, those close to the proficiency cut score, as they offer the best hope of improving the reported numbers.  Many schools freely admit, “we teach to the test”.  I’ve even heard of schools rewarding students for high scores by offering open campus, special treats, or being excused from required attendance at certain activities.  Our school has a program in which juniors and seniors are rewarded with cash for top scores!  All of this is done in the name of education without thought to what it does to the very data we are trying to measure.

As teachers and administrators, we must first recognize these flaws.  Then we must actively educate our local communities about what we do, how we do it, and the reasons why we do what we do.  We must re-open the local channels to the community that have been closed by the takeover of control by state and federal mandates.  We SHOULD be held accountable, but not by test scores, not by numerical performance, but by our communities, parents, and students.  Only in this way can we shift the focus of education back where it belongs... on the learner.