They Speak Process, We Speak Results

Did you ever try to communicate with someone who spoke a different language than you do? It is pretty difficult especially if hand waving won’t suffice due to the complexity of the subject matter. This is exactly the problem we face when trying to communicate with educators about the schooling our kids are getting.

Educators are taught pedagogy (teaching process) in education school. In fact process is so emphasized that subject knowledge sees little emphasis and is generally of poor quality when it is taught to future teachers. Thus, educators emphasize process above all else and this spills over into the way decisions are made and attempts at change implemented.

Parents and the public in general are results-oriented and don’t care what process is used as long as legal, effective, etc. Thus, when parents and the public talk to educators both sides are “speaking different languages.” This leads to dissatisfaction, frustration and poor communication on real issues.

So what needs to be done? Since the parents and the public are the “customers” for the service provided by the education establishment, it is incumbent on them to learn to speak “results.” This is critical if educators are to begin providing the positive improvement in performance that is long overdue. While educators always try to put a positive spin on each year’s CSAP results, any improvements are illusory at best. Basically nothing has changed for the better in mainline large school districts for decades. And nothing will until the ineffective processes used to manage the education system and the classrooms can be eliminated and replaced with a more results-oriented approach.

Following are some data to make the point that the performance is poor and the rate of improvement is nil.

• % Proficient or Higher, examples, from American Institutes for Research, NAEP versus TIMSS, 8th grade math; Singapore at 73%, U.S. at 27%. 17 countries scored above the US.

• Both The Proficiency Illusion, Fordham Inst. with NWEA and Assessing the Role of K-12 Academic Standards in States: Workshop Summary, Nat’l Academies Press, 2007 conclude that Colorado standards for reading and math are at the bottom of the pack compared to other states. The gap is big between Colorado and the states with the highest standards like S. Carolina, Massachusetts, California. Also in The Proficiency Illusion report they comment that the Colorado cut scores were reduced for both math and reading making the “expected improvement if things remained the same just due to the cut score reductions to be significant, as much as 9%.” I have looked at CSAP results for those years for districts and the state. The “improvements” didn’t even indicate that the performance had stayed the same but that it had declined in real terms against the lower standards.

• The Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission Final Report from 11/05 stated that in spite of spending billions on closing the gap that it was “demonstrably worse” than it had been “a third of a century” earlier when Robert Kennedy said the gap was a “stain on our national honor.”

• A regression analysis for one of the larger school districts in Colorado of reading prof or better vs. free or reduced percentage showed a very high correlation of over 95% with very high significance. I have looked at other districts as well and it holds for them too. So the value added by the ed process is of virtually no importance since the demographic variable appears to be far more important as a predictor of results. My belief is that this is a direct result of educators being told in ed schools (and supported by the core beliefs after getting into the workplace) that schools have little leverage and the student background is the telling factor in achievement. This was the finding of the 1966 Coleman Report. That report has been proven wrong by hundreds of studies since but is still quoted by people who want to use its findings as an excuse for the lack of progress on closing the gap. Isn’t it time to face that the current approach isn’t working and the steady increase in minority students (esp. Hispanic) makes it imperative that we finally add value and fix the problem.

• The process slanted curricula, e. g. Whole Language including its renamed derivatives and EveryDay Math which are content weak have been found in study after study to be very harmful to minority and poor students. The kids that come from more privileged backgrounds have parents who will fill the knowledge gap and make sure their kids get what they need to supplement the content poor offerings in the schools. The gap kids don’t often have that support.

Therefore the current results are not acceptable. The process straightjacket present in large school districts must be removed and replaced with a results ethic if performance is to happen for the benefit of our kids.