Polishing a Rotten Apple

Did you ever think about how the “reforms” in bureaucratic organizations (education, governmental regulatory agencies, etc.) always start with the assumption that the status quo has value as a starting point? That is, the approach is to try to “polish a rotten apple.”

It is easy to understand why this is so. The bureaucrats are deathly afraid that if any needed changes were looked at objectively, their own jobs and “cast in concrete” habits would be in jeopardy. This is why, for example, the Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission Final Report of 11/05 states that while billions of dollars have been spent attempting to close the gap that the current situation is worse than when Robert Kennedy, a third of a century ago, called the gap a stain on our national honor. The efforts always start and end in the same place, the status quo, wasting huge amounts of money and limiting our kids’ futures because they are not educated to their full potential.

Here is a look at current assumptions common in education that I believe are roadblocks in the way of serving our kids as they deserve to be served.

1. Big school districts with a strong central office, top down structure are more efficient and more effective. The centralized structures have been done away with in large organizations outside of government funded bureaucratic operations because they found that competition forced them to admit that a decentralized structure performed much better. The fact that the same is true of education settings when it has been tried is discussed in William Ouchi’s new book, “The Secret of TSL.”

2. Education school training is required to be able to teach or lead effectively in education. The education schools are basically “diploma mills” milking the public trough for all the money they can garner. The preparedness of their graduates when compared to the requirements to do an effective job is weak at best. The education schools’ graduate programs have no rigor and are in what Arthur Levine called “A Race to the Bottom” reducing admission and graduation requirements while shortening program length in an effort to attract more and more people interested in the paper not the education that would allow them to do an effective job.

3. The research in education is rigorous and can be relied upon to make important decisions on curriculum and methods, etc. In fact, the research in education is generally of poor quality because it is slanted to favor products or services of the researchers or poorly done from a statistical rigor point of view. See the What Works Clearinghouse at the US Dept of Ed website.

4. The education oversight bureaucracies at the Federal and State levels are doing a good job of setting standards, achievement testing regimens, certification requirements, etc. Because the denizens of these bureaucracies have been trained in the education schools’ graduate programs they don’t have the knowledge or objectivity to break the cycle of low standards and support for education processes that don’t stand scientific scrutiny as pointed out by E.D. Hirsch in The Knowledge Deficit. Would you think it strange that someone with an education doctorate that Levine found in his research to be of no value in any public school administration job, would fail to criticize the very degrees that many of them have? Right.

5. Educators are expert in the subjects they teach. This is one of the biggest problems that goes unaddressed. Oh, there have been efforts like the highly qualified requirements in the NCLB law but they have failed to make a difference. This is because the “remedial” classes required are populated with educators so that they are taught down to that level of competence. This is just another example of going through the motions to satisfy a legal requirement but not the intent. Thus, the intent of the law is short-circuited. Rita Kramer describes the problem well in Ed School Follies, “The people who become ‘educators’ and who run our school systems usually have degrees in education, psychology, social sciences, public administration; they are not people who have studied, know, and love literature, history, science, or philosophy. Our ‘educators’ are not educated. They do not love learning. Naturally enough, they think of the past as dead because it has never been alive to them. And they will not bring it alive for their pupils.”

So, what is to be done? It seems we have two choices. First, we can give up and cut the money spent on “improving education” to zero (which would require dramatic cuts in admin staffs in school districts) by admitting that it hasn’t happened and won’t happen under the current modus operandi. Or, we can dismantle the assumptions listed above and cause a “reset to first principles” to determine what is the right way to proceed. As part of this we would need to set very high expectations to prevent the re-establishment of the same processes with different names. Inevitably lots of toes would have to be stepped on and some of the worst actors sacrificed as an object lesson for the rest that reform was not a talking exercise but a walking exercise with real and positive results required. You might blanch at the thought of sacrificing some of the educators to make the point. I have absolutely no problem with that as millions of kids are continually sacrificed at the “status quo; let’s make it cushy for the adult educators” alter. It is time to start behaving as though the kids have some priority in our education system.

Management Thoughts for Educators

Needed—a data driven, closed loop, short cycle management process to effect positive change in the organization.

Data—Attitude Change Required
• The data approach of educators is conditioned through decades to always look for a way to put the best face on bad performance
• The data approach of managers who face the need to improve continually is to put the worst face on the data to identify the biggest problems and fix them quickly.

Large Organizations Don’t Function Well With Centralized Management Structures
• Top-down, one-size-fits-all precludes addressing any unique problems or opportunities for improvement
• Communication is very difficult because of the multitudinous paths created by the top heavy structure (can of worms)
• Change is extremely difficult because of the structured decision making process that involve specialists, committees, months of study, the board of education, etc. The war will be over and we will have lost because we couldn’t address the problems effectively in real time.
• “Customers” (parents especially) lose patience with the lack of real progress and vote with their feet leaving the district with their kids.
• The centralized structure provides “cover” for weak managers who don’t have the training and experience required for a more streamlined, participative structure that would be much higher performing.

Several Big Urban Districts Are Decentralizing Their Management Structures to Give Autonomy to the School Principals—Big Performance Gains Have Resulted

Five Pillars of School Empowerment (from The Secret of TSL by Wm. Ouchi)
o Real Choices for Families (we have this in Colorado)
o Empowering schools with the Four Freedoms
o Effective principals (trained and coached in leadership academies, 15 month cycle but on the job)
o A system of accountability
o Weighted Student Formula budgeting

The Four Freedoms of School Empowerment—Control of:
o Budget
o Staffing Pattern
o Curriculum
o Schedule

Action Steps required to get to “there from here”

Retool leaders with leadership academy approach—all leaders including superintendent and board (especially performance standards and management theories)

Assess current leaders
o Knowledge and skills in basic management areas including psychology of motivation, behavior prediction & modification, theories of management, esp. relating to change management, communication, performance standards
o Evaluate current principals’ ability to “jump” to the new more rigorous principal model. That is, from the current “follower of central office edicts” to “independent manager of a school” with control over budget, staffing, curriculum, schedule.

Begin planning for transition
o Ex. Pilot group of schools (elementary, middle and high)?

Evaluate current central office admin staff for fit to the new structure. Plug-in to new jobs consistent with the new structure as openings occur (only if a good fit).

Wind down no longer needed central office functions to free up budget and transform to new central office support model. That is, recognize the bad habits that do not contribute to the core mission of educating the children well.

This outline is brief but provides a road map for those willing to face the reality of our current mired in place education performance.

Pros at Being First in Line at the Public Trough

Like sharks getting the scent of new education standards blood, the suppliers of services to the education “industry” are volunteering to “help” the schools spend their taxpayer money on their own products and offerings. A recent article in Education Week "Conflict of Interest Arises as Concern in Standards Push," explores the problem.

Kathleen A. Hinchman, the president of the Oak Creek, Wis.-based professional association and the author of a letter pointing out the concern of standards writers acting in their own self interest, said the National Governors Association and the Council of the Chief State School Officers, the two organizations in charge of the common-standards endeavor, should provide a public document that identifies ties that the writers have to companies or organizations that might benefit financially from products aligned with the standards.

“Ms. Hinchman, a literacy professor at Syracuse University, in New York, said her organization wants to ensure that the creation and use of common standards is not plagued with the kinds of conflict-of-interest problems that arose with the federal Reading First program, which was funded with $1 billion per year at its peak.

At least one federal official made a significant financial profit from a reading program that he wrote and promoted while he was an adviser to states about the federal program, according to a 2007 Senate report. Another Reading First contractor and researcher received a large boost in income during the program’s tenure when she was also advising states on which assessments and texts to select to meet its requirements, that same report said. ("Senate Report Cites ‘Reading First’ Conflicts," May 16, 2007.)

Some of those who made money off the venture were affiliated with universities rather than businesses and wrote curriculum materials, developed tests, or consulted.
In the common-standards effort, Ms. Hinchman said a writer might favor one standard over another because it could more easily be turned into an instructional material or an assessment tool that he or she, or those they are connected with, could profit by.

‘It makes a lot of sense to indicate the relationships between people who are designing education policy and their various roles in government and business,’ said Patricia H. Hinchey, an associate professor of education at Pennsylvania State University.

With the connections spelled out, she explained, someone could say, ‘You supported X rather than Y, and oddly, X lends itself to a business agenda. Why is that?’ Ms. Hinchey is also a research fellow with the Education and Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado."

Concern is also expressed that Apple’s Karen Cator, who chaired the Partnership for 21st Century Skills Board, will become head of the U. S. Department of Education’s Office of Education Technology. A question being asked is will Cator use her new office to promote P21’s discredited ideas? I’d say you could bet on it. You can also bet that Apple will be the recommended choice for education applications.

Sunshine is the ultimate antiseptic. Insiders are already pushing back hard against more disclosure of potential conflicts of interest which confirms the problem as well as anything could. Let the sunshine in.