The Biggest Roadblocks Preventing the Education Improvement We Must Have

In the last blog post I outlined several problems with our education system. How do we change the education system to lay the foundation for the improved performance that we desperately need? It boils down to two basic changes in how we manage our education empire. The two changes are to retool our education leaders to be competent change leaders and to retool the way legislators and the bureaucracy they create specify the education process. I am convinced that with great leadership from a “retooled” leadership cadre much improvement can be made. Greatly improved leadership ability would allow the education system to take the initial improvement steps that can be done without other facilitating changes. Greatly improved leadership will also lay the foundation to take advantage of the changes I propose in how the legislators and education bureaucracy manage our education process. Removing these two roadblocks to improved performance would facilitate our attempt to leapfrog the global competition effectively preparing our kids to compete well in the “real world.”

We differ from most of our competitor nations in that they tend to have education “ministries” in the central government that call the shots on curricula, standards, etc. without much outside interference. For our strongest competitors there is a large commitment to improving performance at a rapid pace because they realize that educating their children well is a competitive factor in the global arena. They decide what to do and implement it quickly. We talk problems to death so that ideas are often obsolete before our extremely ponderous process gets around to doing anything. The current “triple jeopardy” approach to managing and funding our education endeavors creates a straightjacket that greatly limits the freedom of educators to address their own unique situations and to prioritize their efforts accordingly. The Federal government, State government and the local School Boards all have to get their two cents into the equation. And oh, the time it takes and the convoluted approaches that result. The laws and the regulations written by the bureaucracy are a danger to the future of our kids. I find it ridiculous that on the one hand we say to educators, for example, “You must fix the achievement gap problem” and then specify a process so tightly that they have no freedom to make the changes required to meet that demand. It is like telling a man wearing leg irons that he needs to win the Olympic hundred meter dash or be penalized severely. Of course in the “soft management” environment of our education system the penalty for the educators is akin to 50 lashes with a wet noodle. However, the penalty paid by the kids who are not educated to their potential is a huge due bill that is a blight on our society.

The hubris involved in legislators (advised by “experts” from the education power groups all with vested interests to protect) believing they can specify a top down process that will work effectively and efficiently in all situations is ludicrous. This cobbled together, top down approach hasn’t worked for anything but continuing the status quo with glacial changes for the past many decades. The idea that you can specify and control the education process before hand adequately to provide for all of the myriad impediments that arise and cause the need for a detour from the original plan is idiotic. William Oncken Jr., the famous management writer and trainer, observed that you can only control performance when and where it is happening. That is, you need competent leaders free to act to achieve the desired result. Yet, whenever pressure builds to “solve the education problem” the players all revert to the same failed process that virtually guarantees that no real progress will be made. Thus, they form task groups, take testimony, hold meetings around the state to get public input and then the legislature specifies more tight processes which won’t work in the real world. Einstein’s quote about doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result being insane comes to mind.

If we would think about it with objectivity, the laws need to specify results not process. You see, it is the results that matter, not the processes by which they were obtained as long as they are ethical and legal. It is very likely that any number of processes can work to meet the goals. The advantage of specifying results is that you unleash the organizations to use creativity to develop new processes some of which will be far superior to those “dictated in the past by the legislators and their bureaucratic minions.” This, if the laws specified the desired results coupled with appropriate performance incentives would free the system to make very large improvements quickly. Most organizations will gravitate quickly to the best processes developed by the “creative winners” because the penalties for not performing well will demand it. This is a much cleaner approach from an organizational hygiene perspective as well. That is, people freed to really perform well instead of being in a “robot, do this, do that” rut will have much higher morale and also more fun in doing their jobs. This transformation of education workplaces from “sociological zoos” to productive and fun places to work and succeed is vital to serving the mission of educating our kids to their potential.

This type of improved process development is impossible within the time-honored “we’ll set up a blue-ribbon panel to study the problem and recommend a solution” approach that has been tried unsuccessfully over many decades. Competition among practitioners in the real world will develop superior methods to achieve the desired results much more quickly. This is our big opportunity to finally develop the methods to start beating the competition because we could tap into the vast creative resource that is currently ignored and suppressed. While our global competitors have a focused top down process that is more effective than our current diffuse top down process, they will not be able to compete with an education system that is free to develop positive alternatives in thousands of different organizations across the land where competent change leaders manage the teams required to make the improvements we desire.

Therefore, it is imperative that we demand that the legislators move to a results orientation in the education laws they pass instead of the process approach they have been using ubiquitously. Also, because the retooling of education leaders to implant the skills and coaching needed to be truly effective change leaders is a prerequisite to leading that development of positive alternatives it must be done immediately as well. This two-pronged approach could make our education performance improve very quickly to the great benefit of the kids and our society.

Copyright ©Paul Richardson 2008