The new report, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants—An Agenda for American Education Reform, is the latest indictment of American education practices. It is perhaps the most comprehensive look at the differences between our approach and that of our best foreign competitor nations. That we have a problem should be no surprise. The surprise is that we have been so loathe to face the truth of the ridiculously poorly designed education system whose foundation was laid over a hundred years ago. That effort by progressive forces replaced the “envy of the world” American Common School of Mann, Webster and others with a dumbed-down, going through the motions affair designed to prepare students to work in industrial factories as essentially human robots on assembly lines. As the global economy has changed other nations have worked hard to make their education systems meet the challenge of preparing students to have the tools to compete in a knowledge value world. We haven’t.
We have been worse than Rip Van Winkle in our slumber while the realities of our poor education performance go ignored. In 1957 the Russian Sputnik launch triggered a desire to add more rigor to our schools. Gary Lyon’s article in Texas Monthly magazine, Sept. 1979 “Why Teachers Can’t Teach” decried Ed school training as a farce and a fraud. In the 1983 A Nation at Risk report we were clearly told that our education system was affected by a rising tide of mediocrity and that if a foreign nation had imposed our education system on us we would consider it an act of war. Listing the reports and initiatives since A Nation at Risk would be a long task. The point is that we have had plenty of warning but have approached the needed reform by applying bandaid after bandaid to a zombie that has to have radical surgery if it is to be truly “fixed.”
My guess is that the parties whose vested interest (read huge amounts of money and power) will be threatened by the required change to reform our education system to one that is truly worthy of us is doomed to fail. Of course, that is betting on an extension of the current trend and that is an easy bet. Inflection points are caused by a big shift in ancillary forces from outside the system and they do not exist now because Rip has not awakened yet. By the time he awakes it will likely be too late and our children and grandchildren will have to live through much tougher times caused by our increasing lack of competitiveness in the global economy.
Listing some of the biggest anchors preventing the needed reforms –
• Education schools—compared to the best competition our training of teachers (and administrators) is weak to the point of ridicule. The low admission standards result in entrants to our schools of education scoring in the lower third of all SAT test takers. The course offerings of the schools of education are a total sham. Lyons described the courses as, “the intellectual equivalent of puffed wheat: one kernel of knowledge inflated by means of hot air, divided into pieces and puffed again.” The new report points out that the competitor nations require absolute subject mastery and pedagogy that is far more rigorous than the waste of time approach we take to pedagogy training. The admission requirements for our Ed school grad programs are similarly low. Thus our education schools are “diploma mills” skimming huge amounts of money from their farcical educator training programs. If you think that the universities that have schools of education will give up that low overhead, gravy train without a fight, well good luck.
• Current educators—these folk, to support the needed change would need to be retrained with rigor in both subject matter and pedagogy. That is, the current cadre of education “professionals” is totally inadequate to what we desperately need. During the study that resulted in “Standing on the Shoulder . . .” an American representative suggested adding a question about what percent of teachers were teaching subjects they weren’t trained in. The representatives from other countries thought he was kidding and then were aghast that it would even be considered to allow a teacher to “teach” a subject they didn’t know and know very well. Yet in America the Taylor management philosophy supports the philosophy that teachers (line workers) are interchangeable without being concerned about such trivial matters as subject knowledge. The joke is on us. The other countries have it right and we have it wrong.
• Poor management philosophy and structure—our schools are based on management principles of Frederick Taylor, Gantt and others who were involved in designing the systems used to manage production line factories in the early twentieth century. This management style has been long ago replaced by more humanistic and participatory models in many organizations outside of education although it is more prevalent than it should be even now. This top down, repressive style is NOT the way to manage professionals. Hence as in industry a perceived need for unions to protect against the long outdated management philosophy adds even more anti-change reality into the system. It also gives rise to pay for time in service instead of results achieved (merit) and emphasis on work rules that prevent effective performance of the mission. If the “step pay” plan weren’t in place, starting pay for new teachers who were of the training, competence and intellect required could be implemented.
• Unions—these have acquired huge levels of power and if the choice is to give up their power or continue the status quo which ensures their power stays in place, it is easy to predict their stance.
• Legislators—the unions wield great power in supporting the election of “compliant” politicians to office. They support candidates who will support their status quo agenda. This is another tough impediment to positive change.
• An army of researchers, education vendors, government bureaucracies—these people also see threat of less power or remuneration or both if the needed reform were to happen.
It is and has been clear for decades what needs to be done. But who will step up to the plate and get it done. It will require lots of guts, determination, and passion from those who understand the consequences for our progeny and country if we don’t force it to happen. One thing that must be crystal clear, change will not occur from within. Our educators are working to protect their self-interest at the expense of our children and our country. It is time to wake up and face the truth.
The Standing on the Shoulders. . . report is available at
http://www.ncee.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Standing-on-the-Shoulders-of-Giants-An-American-Agenda-for-Education-Reform.pdf
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
S O S D D
I read yesterday a commentary in Education Week trying to motivate school boards to balance their resource allocations to be fair to the “Gap” children. He bemoaned the fact that all of these years after the Brown vs Board of Education Supreme Court decision the gap in learning of our disadvantaged children has not improved. And he is right but as always in education it is an excuse to remind us that it is an external problem (school board in this case) to the sacrosanct and perfect education system they want us to believe exists. So the problem is defined by education insiders as school boards not doing the right thing, the people and legislators not providing the proper level of funding, parents not sending the kids to school already knowing how to read, write, do math and perfectly behaved. This is not an exhaustive list as the education establishment is very adept at deflecting the blame for their poor performance to any mildly plausible target.
Is anyone else bothered that our education problems rotate among the current year’s “cause célèbre?” The gap problem is certainly on the rotation and gets “undivided attention” (talk and more money thrown around to no effect) for a period of time periodically. You may remember that I have written before about the Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission Final Report of November 2005. In the report they do a fine job of defining the problem and admitting that the problem was only worse than when Robert Kennedy said a “third of a Century” ago that the problem was a stain on our national honor. However, the proposed solutions to the problem amounted to redoubling the effort to do the things that have failed so miserably in the past, better this time. UGH!! We could be excused for asking, “When will they ever learn?”
In reality the education fiefdom (defensive, delusional, insular, inbred and uneducated), doesn’t ever learn anything new. That might cause them to realize that the status quo is unacceptable, which it certainly is. If you remember my original four attributes of the education Fiefdom you will notice I added uneducated this time. Oh, there is an oversupply of worthless degrees from bachelors to masters to doctorates. Rita Kramer in her book, Ed School Follies asserts our educators are uneducated. She means by that they only study process in education schools and therefore do not have any subject knowledge worth mentioning. She says wisely that anyone who doesn’t know and love the subject they are teaching is not going to be effective.
Is this a problem? Yes, it is central to the choice of content free (discovery, constructivist) curricula because the knowledge to teach kids subject knowledge is missing. We are the only nation that uses this uncompetitive approach. All the nations whose kids are learning so much more than ours, use a content rich approach and have teachers who know the subject so they can teach effectively. Tragically, America with the Common School movement of Horace Mann, Noah Webster and others used the same method that our competitors use today. We listened to the Siren Songs of John Dewey, Fitzpatrick (Columbia Teachers College “million dollar” professor) who denigrated the great system we had at the time to install their progressive system designed to prepare people to work as “tell us what to do” workers in “big box” entities like industrial factories. The idea was to allow students to “explore and discover” the subject knowledge on their own. Of course this process is much slower because reinventing the wheel is slow and unpredictable. Thus, we discarded a system that worked and replaced it with the one that hasn’t worked and can’t work. This is why spending one more day or dollar and doing the wrong thing better which is the current approach is idiocy to the max. So why don’t we change? Good question and there is a good answer.
The Fiefdom has had time to develop a very effective strategy to prevent any real change from happening. They have time to do this because they are not spending time learning to understand subjects or improve anything. They are playing defense and we need to remember that. The central tenet of their approach is to use their pseudo professionalism to convince those interested in making productive change that the education expert process must be followed when considering any change. Thus, they demand that all changes being considered are studied by a committee of educators and community members. The administrators carefully select members of the committee to prevent any meaningful representation from truly motivated change champions. They may allow a token or two but make sure they are a distinct minority. This committee usually takes more than a year to reach its recommendations. If they recommend a change, the educators demand research by education experts to validate the recommendations. Of course, this is a rigged game because the “experts” are all part of the ”status quo at all costs” conspiracy. This process takes years typically and allows perhaps the biggest problem in making productive change in education to rear its ugly head. That is turnover in administration (especially the superintendent), school board members, or even key advocates of change who may move to a different job or become discouraged. This turnover provides an excuse to “restart” the process with new membership. Thus nothing positive ever happens.
This process is very effective at preserving the status quo and very, very effective at harming generation after generation of students. This is especially true for the gap students. However, we must remember that all of our students are being shortchanged by our mainline schools. While we always hear of all the exceptional kids who are stars in terms of scholarships, SAT and ACT scores, etc., they are the exception and in most cases I have seen they have a large component of parent provided support in the form of parent teaching, tutors, attendance of charter or private schools, or home school episodes to address problem areas. The overall performance of our kids versus their best foreign competition is mediocre (literacy) to poor (science and math). Perhaps most interesting is that the change process is based on the same premises of the “wandering in the wilderness” learning process employed by our schools. It is like taking a trek in the wilderness without a guide or a map. You can wander a long time. If you have a guide who knows the territory (or a teacher who knows the subject) you can get where you want to go much more quickly and safely. The educators depend on the discovery process to slow any change effort to ineffectiveness.
Facts you need to know to counteract the false doctrine of the education Fiefdom
• We don’t need to figure out what works or spend time on committees, hiring education expert consultants or long winded harangues at board meetings. It is well known what needs to be done. We must demand that the changes be implemented immediately.
• Education research is of poor quality. It is often slanted to reach the desired conclusion or poorly done from a statistical rigor point of view. Also, the researchers are careful to avoid telling comparisons between the status quo activities and those that are much better at teaching kids.
• The current education system was designed to create that population of worker bees good at taking direction in the industrial big box settings. It was also designed to create an easily convinced, credulous populace subject to “expert” top-down control.
• You cannot work with educators to bring about improvement. You must TELL them what they must do if they want to continue working in education. No other approach has worked or will work. If you aren’t prepared to go to war to get better education for our kids then you need to accept the poor performance and/or take responsibility for teaching your kids yourself.
• The current system is not preparing our kids to compete for high paying knowledge work jobs of the future. How many burger flippers do we need?
• Politicians (local school board, state legislators, national legislators) are all overly prone to cater to the education power groups because they are more effective than the heterogeneous public who only become unified when something big motivates them. Perhaps the most powerful of these power groups is the teachers union which can give large campaign contributions to sway targeted elections and can marshal their members to walk the areas to convince voters who to vote for their candidate with very slanted messages designed to protect their selfish agenda.
• The current content free approach is harmful to all kids but is far more harmful to the gap kids. They typically don‘t have the support system that their peers do to somewhat attenuate the impact of the poor current approach.
I have some questions for you. Is educating our kids to be competitive in the global economy worthwhile or will the tooth fairy make sure everything works out ok for them? Do you really think that anything will change under the current system unless the public revolts and wrests control from the education experts who aren’t? If you are objective you realize that we are on a long trek toward the future destroying cliff. Is the Thelma and Louise approach a good choice because that is certainly where we are headed. It is tragic that we spend the most per student of all the countries in the world with the exception of a couple of small countries and yet our performance is poor. You must know in your gut that something is drastically wrong with this picture.
Patton said that fixed fortifications were a monument to the stupidity of man. The current Fiefdom defenses are nothing if not fixed defenses. Sadly, we have no Patton type leaders to bypass the education fixed fortifications and rescue the kids, especially the gap kids from the poor performance of our schools. RFK was right, this is a stain on our national honor.
For those who haven’t already realized it the SOSDD, stands for Same Old “Stuff” Different Day which acknowledges that the education performance has been mired in a huge unproductive rut. It doesn’t matter what day it is, nothing ever changes.
Is anyone else bothered that our education problems rotate among the current year’s “cause célèbre?” The gap problem is certainly on the rotation and gets “undivided attention” (talk and more money thrown around to no effect) for a period of time periodically. You may remember that I have written before about the Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission Final Report of November 2005. In the report they do a fine job of defining the problem and admitting that the problem was only worse than when Robert Kennedy said a “third of a Century” ago that the problem was a stain on our national honor. However, the proposed solutions to the problem amounted to redoubling the effort to do the things that have failed so miserably in the past, better this time. UGH!! We could be excused for asking, “When will they ever learn?”
In reality the education fiefdom (defensive, delusional, insular, inbred and uneducated), doesn’t ever learn anything new. That might cause them to realize that the status quo is unacceptable, which it certainly is. If you remember my original four attributes of the education Fiefdom you will notice I added uneducated this time. Oh, there is an oversupply of worthless degrees from bachelors to masters to doctorates. Rita Kramer in her book, Ed School Follies asserts our educators are uneducated. She means by that they only study process in education schools and therefore do not have any subject knowledge worth mentioning. She says wisely that anyone who doesn’t know and love the subject they are teaching is not going to be effective.
Is this a problem? Yes, it is central to the choice of content free (discovery, constructivist) curricula because the knowledge to teach kids subject knowledge is missing. We are the only nation that uses this uncompetitive approach. All the nations whose kids are learning so much more than ours, use a content rich approach and have teachers who know the subject so they can teach effectively. Tragically, America with the Common School movement of Horace Mann, Noah Webster and others used the same method that our competitors use today. We listened to the Siren Songs of John Dewey, Fitzpatrick (Columbia Teachers College “million dollar” professor) who denigrated the great system we had at the time to install their progressive system designed to prepare people to work as “tell us what to do” workers in “big box” entities like industrial factories. The idea was to allow students to “explore and discover” the subject knowledge on their own. Of course this process is much slower because reinventing the wheel is slow and unpredictable. Thus, we discarded a system that worked and replaced it with the one that hasn’t worked and can’t work. This is why spending one more day or dollar and doing the wrong thing better which is the current approach is idiocy to the max. So why don’t we change? Good question and there is a good answer.
The Fiefdom has had time to develop a very effective strategy to prevent any real change from happening. They have time to do this because they are not spending time learning to understand subjects or improve anything. They are playing defense and we need to remember that. The central tenet of their approach is to use their pseudo professionalism to convince those interested in making productive change that the education expert process must be followed when considering any change. Thus, they demand that all changes being considered are studied by a committee of educators and community members. The administrators carefully select members of the committee to prevent any meaningful representation from truly motivated change champions. They may allow a token or two but make sure they are a distinct minority. This committee usually takes more than a year to reach its recommendations. If they recommend a change, the educators demand research by education experts to validate the recommendations. Of course, this is a rigged game because the “experts” are all part of the ”status quo at all costs” conspiracy. This process takes years typically and allows perhaps the biggest problem in making productive change in education to rear its ugly head. That is turnover in administration (especially the superintendent), school board members, or even key advocates of change who may move to a different job or become discouraged. This turnover provides an excuse to “restart” the process with new membership. Thus nothing positive ever happens.
This process is very effective at preserving the status quo and very, very effective at harming generation after generation of students. This is especially true for the gap students. However, we must remember that all of our students are being shortchanged by our mainline schools. While we always hear of all the exceptional kids who are stars in terms of scholarships, SAT and ACT scores, etc., they are the exception and in most cases I have seen they have a large component of parent provided support in the form of parent teaching, tutors, attendance of charter or private schools, or home school episodes to address problem areas. The overall performance of our kids versus their best foreign competition is mediocre (literacy) to poor (science and math). Perhaps most interesting is that the change process is based on the same premises of the “wandering in the wilderness” learning process employed by our schools. It is like taking a trek in the wilderness without a guide or a map. You can wander a long time. If you have a guide who knows the territory (or a teacher who knows the subject) you can get where you want to go much more quickly and safely. The educators depend on the discovery process to slow any change effort to ineffectiveness.
Facts you need to know to counteract the false doctrine of the education Fiefdom
• We don’t need to figure out what works or spend time on committees, hiring education expert consultants or long winded harangues at board meetings. It is well known what needs to be done. We must demand that the changes be implemented immediately.
• Education research is of poor quality. It is often slanted to reach the desired conclusion or poorly done from a statistical rigor point of view. Also, the researchers are careful to avoid telling comparisons between the status quo activities and those that are much better at teaching kids.
• The current education system was designed to create that population of worker bees good at taking direction in the industrial big box settings. It was also designed to create an easily convinced, credulous populace subject to “expert” top-down control.
• You cannot work with educators to bring about improvement. You must TELL them what they must do if they want to continue working in education. No other approach has worked or will work. If you aren’t prepared to go to war to get better education for our kids then you need to accept the poor performance and/or take responsibility for teaching your kids yourself.
• The current system is not preparing our kids to compete for high paying knowledge work jobs of the future. How many burger flippers do we need?
• Politicians (local school board, state legislators, national legislators) are all overly prone to cater to the education power groups because they are more effective than the heterogeneous public who only become unified when something big motivates them. Perhaps the most powerful of these power groups is the teachers union which can give large campaign contributions to sway targeted elections and can marshal their members to walk the areas to convince voters who to vote for their candidate with very slanted messages designed to protect their selfish agenda.
• The current content free approach is harmful to all kids but is far more harmful to the gap kids. They typically don‘t have the support system that their peers do to somewhat attenuate the impact of the poor current approach.
I have some questions for you. Is educating our kids to be competitive in the global economy worthwhile or will the tooth fairy make sure everything works out ok for them? Do you really think that anything will change under the current system unless the public revolts and wrests control from the education experts who aren’t? If you are objective you realize that we are on a long trek toward the future destroying cliff. Is the Thelma and Louise approach a good choice because that is certainly where we are headed. It is tragic that we spend the most per student of all the countries in the world with the exception of a couple of small countries and yet our performance is poor. You must know in your gut that something is drastically wrong with this picture.
Patton said that fixed fortifications were a monument to the stupidity of man. The current Fiefdom defenses are nothing if not fixed defenses. Sadly, we have no Patton type leaders to bypass the education fixed fortifications and rescue the kids, especially the gap kids from the poor performance of our schools. RFK was right, this is a stain on our national honor.
For those who haven’t already realized it the SOSDD, stands for Same Old “Stuff” Different Day which acknowledges that the education performance has been mired in a huge unproductive rut. It doesn’t matter what day it is, nothing ever changes.
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