Adding the Missing Ingredient in the Achievement Gap Reduction Cake

The Final Report of the Colorado Closing the Gap Commission issued in November of 2005 is a 42 page report that identifies the achievement gap problem in general terms and recommends a list of changes that they believe will solve the shameful gap problem. First some quotes from the report defining the problem:

There is a lion in the streets. It threatens every citizen. It endangers the future of our society in a world that grows ever smaller as technology and trade bind us closer together in a competitive global economy.

This threat is the deplorable level of educational attainment that currently is the fate of the great majority of our poorest and most vulnerable children, a population disproportionately black and Hispanic.

More than one third of a century after he decried this situation as a “stain on our national honor” the educational conditions Robert Kennedy described are demonstrably worse.

Pouring billions of dollars into a search for solutions has eased the conscience of the fortunate but has not succeeded in saving those children who continue to be victimized by our abject failures.

To some ears, the words of the Commission may seem unduly harsh. However it is our collective feeling that nothing less than language such as this will suffice to summon that true sense of urgency so long overdue.

Following the assertions in the Forward are a list of elements that the commission believes will fix the problem; Data and Assessment, High Expectations, Higher Education, Administrator/Teacher Qualifications and Professional-Development, Parent and Community Involvement, and Best Practices. We could criticize the details in their list because much of it is tangential to the problem. If it were otherwise we would have seen some dramatic improvement. Thus, I conclude that the commission was another expensive waste of time and another exercise to convince the public that we are serious about the problem. Results are the test and they say loudly that we only talk about reducing the gap and avoid the pain and changes required to really fix the problem. The approach is like a magician waving his hand to take attention away from what he is doing with his other hand.

Why haven’t the billions spent as mentioned in the forward resulted in improvement? Because it follows the time honored and tragically wrong approach America takes to educating our kids. We have created a bureaucratic monster that is a top-down, one size fits all, directive approach. It has far more in common with the Soviet-style central planning approach to managing their economy than it does to a culture where desired results are specified and people are expected to meet them but given freedom to adjust methods to their own local challenges. The current approach is making it very difficult to turn in improvements in performance. When you couple that with the almost total lack of change leader competence in the education arena you have a mired in place disaster.

The education fiefdom (delusional, defensive, insular and inbred) is very adept at ignoring input from outside the walls of the fiefdom, especially if it is true. Arthur Levine in his Educating School Leaders (2005) points out that the education school leadership programs are poor. His report is over a hundred pages long in 8.5 by 11 format. Some of the conclusions are that the ed school leadership programs “confer masters on those who display anything but mastery and doctorates in name only. They engage superintendents and principals in studies irrelevant to their jobs.” He said we have an urgent need to “retool” our education leaders. I have talked to many ed leaders over the last 5 years while researching a book. Levine is right. I didn’t find one superintendent in the six states I sampled (including state supes of the year) that I would consider competent.

Leadership competence is the gating item in the quest for gap reduction or any other substantial education performance improvement. It is the missing ingredient in the cake. How to fix it. For sure you don’t give the job to the education schools. They have not done a good job in the past and certainly don’t have the skills and experience to do better anytime soon. The answer, “Horrors,” is to bring in outside trainers with change leadership skill and have them train and coach leadership teams in districts on site. I say horrors because in the fiefdom, outsiders have no credibility or value in their Group Think view.

Of course, it is very likely that this prescription to help the gap kids will be ignored too because it says that elements of the current education setup are not doing their job and need rehabilitation or replacement. And apparently the protection of educators (in the global sense including ed schools, dept of education and district personnel) who don’t know how to do the job is much more important than really solving the horrendously unfair and unacceptable damage to our kids. However, the last quote from the report forward above tells the likely direction. “To some ears, the words of the Commission may seem unduly harsh. However it is our collective feeling that nothing less than language such as this will suffice to summon that true sense of urgency so long overdue.” Translated it means, “Roll up your sleeves and do more of the things that have failed so miserably in the past. But you can’t blame us, we tried.” And we apparently need to apologize for being harsh when talking about a problem that has such “harsh” consequences for the gap kids. Apologizing for saying the truth is a disease that is prevalent in education where the skill of suppressing the truth is well honed.

So what should we do if we really cared about fixing the gap problem as opposed to talking about it? The solution that makes the most sense is to set up a State Leadership Academy to do the needed retooling of education leaders. This must be led and staffed at first by outsiders who have real-world experience in “performance organizations.” They must have a real passion for the mission. As Peter Drucker the famous management consultant said, “Whenever anything important happens it is because of a monomaniac with a mission.” This would be a herculean task but one that is well worth the effort because the kids will finally benefit. It would show results quickly and it would be very inexpensive compared to the other attempts that have failed in the past.

Copyright © Paul Richardson 2008