This is a comment I often hear after I post a blog on education that is critical of our education performance and especially if critical of educators. Thus, I would like to explore the reasons with you.
First, we need to face some realities:
• American education performance has been mired in unacceptable territory for many decades.
• Educators have defined the problems as being the fault of everyone but themselves. Mirrors are outlawed in education venues. Pogo cartoons are also not allowed.
• The achievement gap is not changing for the better. The Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission Final Report of 11/05 concluded that over the last third of a century the gap had gotten “demonstrably worse” in spite of spending billions to find solutions. Robert Kennedy called the gap a stain on our national honor but that hasn’t motivated educators to take the known steps required to fix it. They won’t allow themselves to admit they are wrong in their beliefs about what works in education.
• American students are not being prepared for the global competition for knowledge based jobs.
• The remediation rate for those who go to 2 or 4 year colleges is very high and not being reduced.
• Education schools overemphasize pedagogy to the virtual exclusion of subject knowledge. And the pedagogy they teach is technically wrong in important ways.
• The reason for this state of affairs – tragic for millions of students as well as for the nation – is that an army of American educators and reading experts are fundamentally wrong in their ideas about education . . . E.D. Hirsch, The Knowledge Deficit
The list could be a lot longer but I hope you get the point. The problems in education are not being addressed effectively and kids and their futures are being irreparably harmed. Thus, if we assume that we must play by the educators’ rules the status quo will continue ad infinitum:
• Civility and harmony at all times—that is, suppress the truth because it might lead to stressful situations.
• Swear fealty to educators as the education experts and agree that no education outsider has any grounds to identify problems or offer constructive criticism.
• Parrot the educator line that they are underpaid and overworked. Which considering their performance is totally false.
• Agree to leave all education decisions to the educators because they are the experts.
• Agree to the status quo preserving process educators use to maintain control and ensure no change occurs that might require them to perform better or renounce their false educational beliefs.
After 7 years working on understanding the education situation, interviewing numerous educators over 6 states and associated people like school board members, state education department denizens and members of the public, I realized that being civil and trying to reason with people in the education establishment was futile. They have simply decided that their vested interest is more important than serving the kids’ needs at the level they deserve.
Therefore, the question comes down to a simple one. Are you on the side of the poorly performing education bureaucracy or are you on the side of the kids and their future. That is an easy decision for me and hopefully for you. E.D. Hirsch has been working on this problem for decades longer than I have. He has concluded that educators will not change on their own. They will have to be forced by public and political pressure. I write the things I do on education in an attempt to inform the public on the reality in education. I am attempting to get people to go beyond the pseudo “good news” propaganda that is ubiquitously offered by the education establishment. Being nice when kids are being continually harmed has a very low priority for me.
The above applies to the mainline schools. There are charter schools (not all by any means) that perform much better than the mainline schools. This is especially true if they have strong leadership and a balanced philosophy where subject knowledge is valued. However, these schools affect a tiny minority of students. We must reform the mainline schools to make a difference for millions of kids.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Do Our Schools Prepare Kids for Factory Work or Knowledge Work?
While there is much posturing and TALK about preparing kids for knowledge jobs (21st Century Skills, etc.), there has been virtually no change in the substance of what is taught and how it is taught since the system was designed a century ago to prepare the masses for production line work in factories. Change is required, not talk if our kids are to be prepared to compete in a very different world than existed in the early twentieth century. Experts like Diane Ravitch have pointed out that the 21st Century Skills movement is an excuse to bring back failed old ideas with new and improved labels. This is not progress. It is criminal fraud and it hurts our kids.
During my education research over the last 7 years I have run into one comment more than any other from teachers about subjects they are tasked to teach. It could be paraphrased as, “I didn’t do well in math. I don’t like math, but I have to try to teach it to my kids.” Let me ask you, do you think the kids will learn well from someone who has a poor understanding of math and such a strong distaste for it?
Why worry about it, you might say. We must concern ourselves because math skill and knowledge are becoming increasingly more important now with the intensified trend toward knowledge work and the high level of global competition to get those good, well-paying jobs. Why is math important? Because--
• Math is the language we use to understand and model the world we live in. Rigorous math is used in most fields of endeavor. We all know that it is vital for scientists, engineers and applied mathematicians. However, math is used in research in many fields as they attempt to better understand their area of interest. It is used in medicine, psychology, education, and businesses of all types.
• Studying and working with math is good exercise for our reasoning powers. It is the best area of study to teach problem formulation and definition. In the real world problems are not presented as in dumbed down math texts where the data in the problem is the only data you need to solve it. In the real world there is an abundance of data that is meaningless to solving most problems. The key is to formulate the problem so that the important data is captured giving understanding to the causes and solutions for the problem at hand.
• Math is fun. Math is beautiful in its elegant structure.
Now the question to ask is do we keep preparing K-12 students for “do as you are told, factory work” as the whole process was designed to do or do we change to a system that facilitates and encourages all students to learn to their full potential. Factory work is continuing to decline as a career opportunity in today’s age of outsourcing and automation. To change for the better we will need to break some stereotypes. The first one and most hateful of all is. “Girls aren’t good at math and if they are there is something wrong with them.” This belief held by too many teachers, parents and others is a harmful self-fulfilling prophecy that dooms too many girls to poor performance in math. Perhaps its mirror image for boys is that they can’t do as well as girls in literacy areas. Both boys and girls have the ability to excel in both areas, especially with the low expectation curricula being used in our K-12 mainline schools.
For girls in elementary classes where most teachers are women, seeing their teachers distaste for math that always shows through, no matter how positive they try to be creates poor role models. “Gee, if Miss MacGuilicudy can’t do math, how could I ever do it?” As in any psychologically corrupt environment, students who violate the expected norms are subtly punished to get them into line with the expectation.
To change will require teaching teachers to learn to love math instead of fear it. The education schools can’t do this as they are populated with pseudo math staff who also fear and dislike math. The exception is when the government gives them a multimillion dollar grant to “invent” a math curriculum that will work to conceal the teachers’ lack of math skill. Even though they don’t understand math well at all they come up with a discovery curriculum that transforms the teacher into a facilitator of group discussions as kids “discover” how to solve problems. The problems “solved” are trivial. They have to be because the kids can’t solve them with the discovery method unless they are. This curriculum has spread across the nation like wildfire because educators want to be freed from the responsibility to really teach math as a hierarchy that builds on foundations learned in the previous year. The whole premise is like preparing to cross a great wilderness with a guide or without one. Wandering in the wilderness is not what we should be after in education. We need guides (teachers) who know the way through the wilderness. You only need to look at the discovery process and how it might apply to say, The Calculus, to realize the approach is ridiculous. While Newton developed The Calculus at age 19 to help him analyze physical phenomena, I defy you to assert that the discovery method would be an efficient way to train future scientists, engineers and mathematicians in The Calculus. You see that is the real problem. The constructivist/discovery methods take much longer than direct instruction to teach the material. That is why kids early in their K-12 careers do better than they do in the middle and high school grades. In the discovery process it is too easy for students to “discover the wrong principle” which undermines the foundation they need in the future.
The result? Kids who are exposed to this fraud reach middle and high school totally unprepared for algebra and beyond. Then the middle and high school teachers have to try to make up years of lost time and teach the new material too. No wonder the math performance of high school students is so poor. Oh, there are exceptions who do get it because their parents taught them or provided tutors to fill the void. Most students however, don’t have that advantage and end up turned off and incompetent in math. This limits their future possibilities greatly and since it affects so many students it affects the whole nation’s competitiveness.
The first thing you must realize is that the vast majority of educators do not understand subject matter. You pick the subject and they haven’t been exposed to it in more than a highly diffuse and superficial way. Yet, they have no problem posturing as experts to enable them to ignore the truth that is offered by those who do understand subject matter. Rita Kramer described the problem well in her bestselling book, 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.”
In math this has led to “holding the fort” against all appeals for objective review of the harm being done by the ridiculous approach to teaching math. The same argument can apply to literacy and other curriculum areas. The way the educators have been able to turn away the constructive criticism is to employ “outside” experts to approve their approach. Thus, they hire outside, education school educated consultants to review their program and offer ideas on making it better.
Of course, the public who hears of what sounds a reasonable approach do not understand that the “outside experts” come from the same weak, diffuse and superficial training as the school officials who hire them for the review. Do not be fooled, if a person has a doctorate or masters in education they are not educated. Arthur Levine in his research into education schools concluded that they “confer masters on those who display anything but mastery and doctorates in name only.” While some educators have learned subjects in other studies or on their own, most have not. In general, while well meaning, these people have nothing of value to add to improving our kids’ education and it is time that the public became aware of it. We must demand positive action to face the reality of the poor educator performance and poor understanding of what works that is hurting our kids.
During my education research over the last 7 years I have run into one comment more than any other from teachers about subjects they are tasked to teach. It could be paraphrased as, “I didn’t do well in math. I don’t like math, but I have to try to teach it to my kids.” Let me ask you, do you think the kids will learn well from someone who has a poor understanding of math and such a strong distaste for it?
Why worry about it, you might say. We must concern ourselves because math skill and knowledge are becoming increasingly more important now with the intensified trend toward knowledge work and the high level of global competition to get those good, well-paying jobs. Why is math important? Because--
• Math is the language we use to understand and model the world we live in. Rigorous math is used in most fields of endeavor. We all know that it is vital for scientists, engineers and applied mathematicians. However, math is used in research in many fields as they attempt to better understand their area of interest. It is used in medicine, psychology, education, and businesses of all types.
• Studying and working with math is good exercise for our reasoning powers. It is the best area of study to teach problem formulation and definition. In the real world problems are not presented as in dumbed down math texts where the data in the problem is the only data you need to solve it. In the real world there is an abundance of data that is meaningless to solving most problems. The key is to formulate the problem so that the important data is captured giving understanding to the causes and solutions for the problem at hand.
• Math is fun. Math is beautiful in its elegant structure.
Now the question to ask is do we keep preparing K-12 students for “do as you are told, factory work” as the whole process was designed to do or do we change to a system that facilitates and encourages all students to learn to their full potential. Factory work is continuing to decline as a career opportunity in today’s age of outsourcing and automation. To change for the better we will need to break some stereotypes. The first one and most hateful of all is. “Girls aren’t good at math and if they are there is something wrong with them.” This belief held by too many teachers, parents and others is a harmful self-fulfilling prophecy that dooms too many girls to poor performance in math. Perhaps its mirror image for boys is that they can’t do as well as girls in literacy areas. Both boys and girls have the ability to excel in both areas, especially with the low expectation curricula being used in our K-12 mainline schools.
For girls in elementary classes where most teachers are women, seeing their teachers distaste for math that always shows through, no matter how positive they try to be creates poor role models. “Gee, if Miss MacGuilicudy can’t do math, how could I ever do it?” As in any psychologically corrupt environment, students who violate the expected norms are subtly punished to get them into line with the expectation.
To change will require teaching teachers to learn to love math instead of fear it. The education schools can’t do this as they are populated with pseudo math staff who also fear and dislike math. The exception is when the government gives them a multimillion dollar grant to “invent” a math curriculum that will work to conceal the teachers’ lack of math skill. Even though they don’t understand math well at all they come up with a discovery curriculum that transforms the teacher into a facilitator of group discussions as kids “discover” how to solve problems. The problems “solved” are trivial. They have to be because the kids can’t solve them with the discovery method unless they are. This curriculum has spread across the nation like wildfire because educators want to be freed from the responsibility to really teach math as a hierarchy that builds on foundations learned in the previous year. The whole premise is like preparing to cross a great wilderness with a guide or without one. Wandering in the wilderness is not what we should be after in education. We need guides (teachers) who know the way through the wilderness. You only need to look at the discovery process and how it might apply to say, The Calculus, to realize the approach is ridiculous. While Newton developed The Calculus at age 19 to help him analyze physical phenomena, I defy you to assert that the discovery method would be an efficient way to train future scientists, engineers and mathematicians in The Calculus. You see that is the real problem. The constructivist/discovery methods take much longer than direct instruction to teach the material. That is why kids early in their K-12 careers do better than they do in the middle and high school grades. In the discovery process it is too easy for students to “discover the wrong principle” which undermines the foundation they need in the future.
The result? Kids who are exposed to this fraud reach middle and high school totally unprepared for algebra and beyond. Then the middle and high school teachers have to try to make up years of lost time and teach the new material too. No wonder the math performance of high school students is so poor. Oh, there are exceptions who do get it because their parents taught them or provided tutors to fill the void. Most students however, don’t have that advantage and end up turned off and incompetent in math. This limits their future possibilities greatly and since it affects so many students it affects the whole nation’s competitiveness.
The first thing you must realize is that the vast majority of educators do not understand subject matter. You pick the subject and they haven’t been exposed to it in more than a highly diffuse and superficial way. Yet, they have no problem posturing as experts to enable them to ignore the truth that is offered by those who do understand subject matter. Rita Kramer described the problem well in her bestselling book, 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.”
In math this has led to “holding the fort” against all appeals for objective review of the harm being done by the ridiculous approach to teaching math. The same argument can apply to literacy and other curriculum areas. The way the educators have been able to turn away the constructive criticism is to employ “outside” experts to approve their approach. Thus, they hire outside, education school educated consultants to review their program and offer ideas on making it better.
Of course, the public who hears of what sounds a reasonable approach do not understand that the “outside experts” come from the same weak, diffuse and superficial training as the school officials who hire them for the review. Do not be fooled, if a person has a doctorate or masters in education they are not educated. Arthur Levine in his research into education schools concluded that they “confer masters on those who display anything but mastery and doctorates in name only.” While some educators have learned subjects in other studies or on their own, most have not. In general, while well meaning, these people have nothing of value to add to improving our kids’ education and it is time that the public became aware of it. We must demand positive action to face the reality of the poor educator performance and poor understanding of what works that is hurting our kids.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
NAEP vs. TIMSS, 8th grade Math
Translating NAEP to TIMSS % Proficient or better
Singapore 73
S. Korea 65
Hong Kong 64
Japan & Chinese Taipei 61
Belgium (Flemish) 51
Netherlands 41
Hungary, Slovak Rep., Slovenia, Canada,
Russia, Australia 39 to 35
Czech Rep., Malaysia, Bulgaria, Finland 32 to 29
United States 27
Data taken from Linking NAEP Achievement Levels to TIMSS, American Institutes for Research (2007)
NAEP is our National Assessment of Educational Progress, i.e. our national test. In general the NAEP standards are consistently higher than those of the individual states who chose to reduce their standards to make complying with the No Child Left Behind requirement that all students be proficient or better by 2014 easier. That is, the states took the low road. If you want your performance to look better than it is, choose a short ruler to measure it.
TIMSS is The International Math and Science Study. The chart above lists only the countries whose kids scored better than ours in math for 8th graders. I chose the 8th grade level because it is a pivot point. That is, at fourth grade we do a little better and at high school level we do worse.
Most American mainline schools’ approach to teaching math is to use constructivist or discovery methods as embodied in EveryDay Math, for example. This approach does not build the foundational math skills during the elementary years required for success in algebra and higher math. Thus, as our kids progress through the grades they do worse and worse which is reinforced by TIMSS and other testing. This approach is definitely not preparing our kids to compete in the rising global meritocracy for the well paying knowledge-based jobs. This approach does make it easier for the elementary teachers who do not have adequate math knowledge to teach the foundational math skills required to be successful.It casts them in a facilitator role instead of a teacher role.
Research such as that of Liping Ma which compared American and Chinese elementary math teachers found the American teachers although “more educated” than their Chinese counterparts did not have the math understanding needed. This is no surprise since education schools prioritize pedagogy to the virtual exclusion of content training in their programs.
Our educators approach to math is what I call the Platte River Syndrome. That is the curriculum is a mile wide and an inch deep. This diffuse approach wastes lots of time that could and should be spent on building a strong foundation of hierarchical skills which is how math works.
A quote from the Singapore Ministry of Education is instructive, from their Nurturing Every Child, booklet (2006), “Teach Less, Learn More--Syllabuses will be trimmed without diluting students’ preparedness for higher education. This will free up time for our students to focus on core knowledge and skills.” You see in the chart above the validity of the Singapore approach and the failure of our approach.
One last comment, E.D. Hirsch, the stimulus for the Massachusetts Miracle (legislature required the ditching of constructivist curricula and achievement soared), says that educators are so brainwashed in their technically wrong beliefs that they will only change if forced to from the outside. That is, parents need to demand change and expect their political representatives to force it to happen. This is an area where negotiation with educators only delays the lifeline the kids so desperately need. Oh, the final nail in the coffin is that the constructivist curricula hurt the gap kids (minority and economically disadvantaged) the most.
Singapore 73
S. Korea 65
Hong Kong 64
Japan & Chinese Taipei 61
Belgium (Flemish) 51
Netherlands 41
Hungary, Slovak Rep., Slovenia, Canada,
Russia, Australia 39 to 35
Czech Rep., Malaysia, Bulgaria, Finland 32 to 29
United States 27
Data taken from Linking NAEP Achievement Levels to TIMSS, American Institutes for Research (2007)
NAEP is our National Assessment of Educational Progress, i.e. our national test. In general the NAEP standards are consistently higher than those of the individual states who chose to reduce their standards to make complying with the No Child Left Behind requirement that all students be proficient or better by 2014 easier. That is, the states took the low road. If you want your performance to look better than it is, choose a short ruler to measure it.
TIMSS is The International Math and Science Study. The chart above lists only the countries whose kids scored better than ours in math for 8th graders. I chose the 8th grade level because it is a pivot point. That is, at fourth grade we do a little better and at high school level we do worse.
Most American mainline schools’ approach to teaching math is to use constructivist or discovery methods as embodied in EveryDay Math, for example. This approach does not build the foundational math skills during the elementary years required for success in algebra and higher math. Thus, as our kids progress through the grades they do worse and worse which is reinforced by TIMSS and other testing. This approach is definitely not preparing our kids to compete in the rising global meritocracy for the well paying knowledge-based jobs. This approach does make it easier for the elementary teachers who do not have adequate math knowledge to teach the foundational math skills required to be successful.It casts them in a facilitator role instead of a teacher role.
Research such as that of Liping Ma which compared American and Chinese elementary math teachers found the American teachers although “more educated” than their Chinese counterparts did not have the math understanding needed. This is no surprise since education schools prioritize pedagogy to the virtual exclusion of content training in their programs.
Our educators approach to math is what I call the Platte River Syndrome. That is the curriculum is a mile wide and an inch deep. This diffuse approach wastes lots of time that could and should be spent on building a strong foundation of hierarchical skills which is how math works.
A quote from the Singapore Ministry of Education is instructive, from their Nurturing Every Child, booklet (2006), “Teach Less, Learn More--Syllabuses will be trimmed without diluting students’ preparedness for higher education. This will free up time for our students to focus on core knowledge and skills.” You see in the chart above the validity of the Singapore approach and the failure of our approach.
One last comment, E.D. Hirsch, the stimulus for the Massachusetts Miracle (legislature required the ditching of constructivist curricula and achievement soared), says that educators are so brainwashed in their technically wrong beliefs that they will only change if forced to from the outside. That is, parents need to demand change and expect their political representatives to force it to happen. This is an area where negotiation with educators only delays the lifeline the kids so desperately need. Oh, the final nail in the coffin is that the constructivist curricula hurt the gap kids (minority and economically disadvantaged) the most.
Friday, May 14, 2010
What I want to be when I grow up.
I want to grow up to be a robot.
Educators and parents please train me to be compliant to the will of the experts who run our country. Please train me to be gullible so that I will believe anything they say even if untrue. Please train me to be ignorant of the lessons of history. Please train me to be unable to think, analyze and decide on my own. Please make sure that my literacy, math, science and history knowledge are low enough that I don’t question what leaders say. Please train me to be happy with less and less personal responsibility and freedom.
Please say you care about me even though you don’t. Please take care of my health until my usefulness diminishes to the point where further maintenance is in your expert opinion too expensive. Please feed me and protect me from the truth because I am not able to handle it. Please make sure my schools do not train me in the subject knowledge required to be able to understand what is going on. I don’t want to know, it gives me a headache. Please keep the bad news from me for as long as possible, I don’t want to hear it.
And most of all please take care of me always.
I want to grow up to be an American
Educators and parents please reinstate the education philosophy that culminated in the American Common School movement that made American education the envy of the world from the 1830s through the 1950s. Please eliminate the “how to” approach which has been a miserable failure and re-establish the rigorous content-rich curricula, taught by subject knowledgeable teachers approach, of the American Common Schools.
Please teach me through competitive practice that I can build on my failures to perform better over time. Help me gain the mental toughness and “can do” spirit needed to effectively meet the growing global competition for good, well paid jobs. Please expect me to fully appreciate America’s history objectively. Help me to appreciate the struggles and the profound luck we had as a people to be led at our founding by incredibly clear-thinking and committed leaders.
Please help me to embrace high standards of personal performance in all things. Help me to realize that there is no free lunch and if it is to be, it is up to me. Help me to appreciate personal responsibility and personal freedom as guaranteed in the U. S. Constitution.
Most of all teach me to continually question and analyze the pronouncements of our leaders to discern the underlying truth. Teach me enough that I can make my own assessments regarding the latest claim of those who want to take more control of our lives by creating a pseudo-crisis.
Adults please lead by example modeling the ability to set high standards for yourselves.
Teach me to be an American.
Educators and parents please train me to be compliant to the will of the experts who run our country. Please train me to be gullible so that I will believe anything they say even if untrue. Please train me to be ignorant of the lessons of history. Please train me to be unable to think, analyze and decide on my own. Please make sure that my literacy, math, science and history knowledge are low enough that I don’t question what leaders say. Please train me to be happy with less and less personal responsibility and freedom.
Please say you care about me even though you don’t. Please take care of my health until my usefulness diminishes to the point where further maintenance is in your expert opinion too expensive. Please feed me and protect me from the truth because I am not able to handle it. Please make sure my schools do not train me in the subject knowledge required to be able to understand what is going on. I don’t want to know, it gives me a headache. Please keep the bad news from me for as long as possible, I don’t want to hear it.
And most of all please take care of me always.
I want to grow up to be an American
Educators and parents please reinstate the education philosophy that culminated in the American Common School movement that made American education the envy of the world from the 1830s through the 1950s. Please eliminate the “how to” approach which has been a miserable failure and re-establish the rigorous content-rich curricula, taught by subject knowledgeable teachers approach, of the American Common Schools.
Please teach me through competitive practice that I can build on my failures to perform better over time. Help me gain the mental toughness and “can do” spirit needed to effectively meet the growing global competition for good, well paid jobs. Please expect me to fully appreciate America’s history objectively. Help me to appreciate the struggles and the profound luck we had as a people to be led at our founding by incredibly clear-thinking and committed leaders.
Please help me to embrace high standards of personal performance in all things. Help me to realize that there is no free lunch and if it is to be, it is up to me. Help me to appreciate personal responsibility and personal freedom as guaranteed in the U. S. Constitution.
Most of all teach me to continually question and analyze the pronouncements of our leaders to discern the underlying truth. Teach me enough that I can make my own assessments regarding the latest claim of those who want to take more control of our lives by creating a pseudo-crisis.
Adults please lead by example modeling the ability to set high standards for yourselves.
Teach me to be an American.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
The News Isn’t Good, But Then in Education When is it Ever?
On May 4, the Colorado Dept. of Education announced the 3rd grade reading results for schools and districts around the state. The numbers scoring proficient or better dropped significantly for almost all districts. On the ten o’clock news the coverage included a third grader who was reading very well thank you, as if one kid reading well could offset the abysmal results. While there may be significant insight to be gained by parsing the data in great detail as a whole this report should finally wake us up to the fact that our education system is not doing the job acceptably.
That is hardly new. Robert Frost in his famous poem, The Road Not Taken, talks of taking a road less traveled that has made all the difference. In his case you assume a positive outcome. Our education system took a “road less traveled” at least in American education experience to that day back in the 1930s when the Progressives took control of all American schools of education. By the 1960s virtually all graduates of American high schools had been subjected to the progressive content free curricula during their whole school career. Beginning in the 1960s, SAT verbal scores plummeted and have been mired at their lower levels since then. In spite of educators’ excuses that this drop is caused by more minority and economically disadvantaged students taking the test, scores have gone down for all demographic groups.
The progressive detour from an education system that was the envy of the world has been a disaster. The work that Noah Webster and Horace Mann among others did to create the American Common School concept with rigorous curricula and high standards has been gutted and replaced by theories and curricula that simply have not worked and as E.D. Hirsch says cannot work because they are technically wrong at their foundation. I will leave it with you in the context of the Greek rioting to ponder the wisdom of the progressive approach which is designed to create a populace dependent on the state and prone to having their lives run by so called experts who know better. Greece’s current problems are a good example of what lies down the road if you create a nanny state where the people become dependent on the state for more and more and the incentives are to be anything but independent and self-sufficient. When the money runs out, and it always does, the immature citizens who haven’t learned to be independent start throwing tantrums like children.
Putting the New Results in Context
• Research has shown that if kids can’t read at grade level by 3rd grade the odds are they never will become competent readers.
• Colorado standards are at the low end of all states for rigor in both Reading and Math. Thus reading at grade level in Colorado is not the same as reading at grade level in Massachusetts.
• The gap between advantaged and disadvantaged demographic groups is large and staying that way. This has been the norm for decades in spite of throwing billions of dollars at the problem which have only gone to enrich education insiders, but haven’t helped the kids at all. Hirsch asserts correctly that the progressive content free curricula hurt the “gap kids” the most.
So Why Can’t We Seem to Turn Back to What Works in Education?
• Education schools are staffed by “true believers” in the progressive mantra and they aren’t going to change unless forced to. They teach their process only, virtually no subject knowledge philosophy to their students “like a catechism” as Hirsch describes it.
• Education is an extremely insular place. The “faithful” continue to reinforce the tragically wrong principles they were taught in education school to the exclusion of the truth. Outside input is rebuffed or worn down by well practiced delay tactics like creating committees, hiring consultants who are card carrying members of the education tribe, or even ignoring the input altogether.
• I was told by several superintendents when questioning the poor performance and the impact on kids that, “You don’t understand. Education is run for the benefit of the adults who work here, not the kids.” With that attitude, the educators have abdicated any semblance of professional responsibility or ethics to perform the function of educating kids well.
• Realize that the status quo crowd staff the state and federal education bureaucracies (they don’t want to admit their education school training is harming kids), the book publishers who find it easier to produce content free, watered down texts, the education “press” and the education researchers who access huge amounts of government and foundation money to polish the rotten apples.
• Hirsch concludes and he is right that educators will not reinstate what really works for kids unless they are forced to by outside forces.
• The constructivist curricula like Whole Language (and its renamed progeny to disguise the use of proven to be wrong methods) and EveryDay Math have been failures and will never work well. Big expensive programs like Marie Clay’s and also RTI are basically bandages on the curricula that can never work well enough. That is, a total waste of resources in an effort to try something new to deflect attention away from the core problem.
There are many other problems. Education leaders preen in the false glory of their advanced degrees even though Arthur Levine concluded in his Educating School Leaders (2005) based on a study of all degree granting education school programs that the education doctorate had no value for any public school administration job and that the schools were conferring masters on those who displayed anything but mastery and doctorates in name only. Teachers lack the subject knowledge depth that is required to teach the subjects effectively. The results being turned in make it obvious that Levine is right.
How Do We Begin to Deliver the Message That We Expect the Educators to Improve Their Performance?
Confrontation is the only way as uncomfortable as that may be. We must –
• Spread the word to neighbors, relatives, co-workers and friends that the education propaganda is just that, an effort to maintain the cushy status quo for educators.
• Write and speak at school board meetings decrying the abysmal performance.
• We must question the salary levels of administrators especially superintendents who are not performing well enough to justify half their salaries.
• We must expect contracts of poor performers to be not renewed.
• We must let our state and federal elected representatives know that we expect better performance to benefit our kids and that false education theories that harm kids are not acceptable for even a minute more.
• We must have staying power. This is not a “speak at a school board meeting or write a letter to a congressman once affair.” We must adopt a Chinese Water Torture (made famous during the Korean War) approach by “dripping” the truth on educators constantly.
That is hardly new. Robert Frost in his famous poem, The Road Not Taken, talks of taking a road less traveled that has made all the difference. In his case you assume a positive outcome. Our education system took a “road less traveled” at least in American education experience to that day back in the 1930s when the Progressives took control of all American schools of education. By the 1960s virtually all graduates of American high schools had been subjected to the progressive content free curricula during their whole school career. Beginning in the 1960s, SAT verbal scores plummeted and have been mired at their lower levels since then. In spite of educators’ excuses that this drop is caused by more minority and economically disadvantaged students taking the test, scores have gone down for all demographic groups.
The progressive detour from an education system that was the envy of the world has been a disaster. The work that Noah Webster and Horace Mann among others did to create the American Common School concept with rigorous curricula and high standards has been gutted and replaced by theories and curricula that simply have not worked and as E.D. Hirsch says cannot work because they are technically wrong at their foundation. I will leave it with you in the context of the Greek rioting to ponder the wisdom of the progressive approach which is designed to create a populace dependent on the state and prone to having their lives run by so called experts who know better. Greece’s current problems are a good example of what lies down the road if you create a nanny state where the people become dependent on the state for more and more and the incentives are to be anything but independent and self-sufficient. When the money runs out, and it always does, the immature citizens who haven’t learned to be independent start throwing tantrums like children.
Putting the New Results in Context
• Research has shown that if kids can’t read at grade level by 3rd grade the odds are they never will become competent readers.
• Colorado standards are at the low end of all states for rigor in both Reading and Math. Thus reading at grade level in Colorado is not the same as reading at grade level in Massachusetts.
• The gap between advantaged and disadvantaged demographic groups is large and staying that way. This has been the norm for decades in spite of throwing billions of dollars at the problem which have only gone to enrich education insiders, but haven’t helped the kids at all. Hirsch asserts correctly that the progressive content free curricula hurt the “gap kids” the most.
So Why Can’t We Seem to Turn Back to What Works in Education?
• Education schools are staffed by “true believers” in the progressive mantra and they aren’t going to change unless forced to. They teach their process only, virtually no subject knowledge philosophy to their students “like a catechism” as Hirsch describes it.
• Education is an extremely insular place. The “faithful” continue to reinforce the tragically wrong principles they were taught in education school to the exclusion of the truth. Outside input is rebuffed or worn down by well practiced delay tactics like creating committees, hiring consultants who are card carrying members of the education tribe, or even ignoring the input altogether.
• I was told by several superintendents when questioning the poor performance and the impact on kids that, “You don’t understand. Education is run for the benefit of the adults who work here, not the kids.” With that attitude, the educators have abdicated any semblance of professional responsibility or ethics to perform the function of educating kids well.
• Realize that the status quo crowd staff the state and federal education bureaucracies (they don’t want to admit their education school training is harming kids), the book publishers who find it easier to produce content free, watered down texts, the education “press” and the education researchers who access huge amounts of government and foundation money to polish the rotten apples.
• Hirsch concludes and he is right that educators will not reinstate what really works for kids unless they are forced to by outside forces.
• The constructivist curricula like Whole Language (and its renamed progeny to disguise the use of proven to be wrong methods) and EveryDay Math have been failures and will never work well. Big expensive programs like Marie Clay’s and also RTI are basically bandages on the curricula that can never work well enough. That is, a total waste of resources in an effort to try something new to deflect attention away from the core problem.
There are many other problems. Education leaders preen in the false glory of their advanced degrees even though Arthur Levine concluded in his Educating School Leaders (2005) based on a study of all degree granting education school programs that the education doctorate had no value for any public school administration job and that the schools were conferring masters on those who displayed anything but mastery and doctorates in name only. Teachers lack the subject knowledge depth that is required to teach the subjects effectively. The results being turned in make it obvious that Levine is right.
How Do We Begin to Deliver the Message That We Expect the Educators to Improve Their Performance?
Confrontation is the only way as uncomfortable as that may be. We must –
• Spread the word to neighbors, relatives, co-workers and friends that the education propaganda is just that, an effort to maintain the cushy status quo for educators.
• Write and speak at school board meetings decrying the abysmal performance.
• We must question the salary levels of administrators especially superintendents who are not performing well enough to justify half their salaries.
• We must expect contracts of poor performers to be not renewed.
• We must let our state and federal elected representatives know that we expect better performance to benefit our kids and that false education theories that harm kids are not acceptable for even a minute more.
• We must have staying power. This is not a “speak at a school board meeting or write a letter to a congressman once affair.” We must adopt a Chinese Water Torture (made famous during the Korean War) approach by “dripping” the truth on educators constantly.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The Woodcutter
Joe was a hardworking woodcutter. His father had taught him his trade. He knew the importance of keeping his tools, axe and crosscut saw sharp so that his productivity would be high. Joe would go to periodic workshops with other woodcutters to keep his knowledge of axe and crosscut saw up to date. His prices had gone up steadily over the years. He claimed it was only to keep up with the inflation rate but in fact his prices had gone up at more than twice the rate of inflation. So, his was a record of steady and dramatic decline in productivity.
While Joe worked as hard as ever he found his prices couldn’t compete with woodcutters who were employing better methods to cause improved productivity. Thus, with time his business began to decline as only those customers that he had locked in to long term contracts would buy his wood. As those multi-year contracts expired he knew his business would decline even more.
Joe formed a trade group of other woodcutters using axe and crosscut saw to lobby politicians and support those politicians for election who agreed to work to fix the price of wood products so that they didn’t have to compete. Because they were so frustrated, they even engaged in the occasional act of intimidation to make their point. They launched an advertising campaign extolling the virtue of their product and how their methods didn’t pollute the earth with chainsaw exhaust. They were careful to compare their productivity to others who used the same unproductive methods they favored. In this way they put the best face on their low performance. Their advertising theme was, “Would Paul Bunyan stoop to using a chainsaw?” They had some success over time but as more and more states enacted laws permitting free choice in the buying of wood products, the economic prospects for Joe and his fellow trade group members declined steadily.
Now to Education
Is education different than Joe and his axe and crosscut saw friends? Not at all. The educator ranks are working as hard as Joe and his fellow woodcutters to preserve unproductive processes. They fear anything that doesn’t conform to the scientifically incorrect content they learned in education school which is continually reinforced by professional development classes and faulty research.
The situation in education is worse than Joe’s though. Joe’s actions are impacting his own long term viability as a woodcutter. The educators’ actions are harming their own credibility and long term prospects but they also are harming generations of kids who are ill prepared to compete in the increasingly competitive global environment. The experienced educators are making the bet that they can outlast criticism long enough to retire before they have to change, prioritizing their own comfort over the welfare of the kids. Thus, there is a strong “preserve the status quo at all costs” ethic at work in our school districts.
E.D. Hirsch whom I consider to be the person with the most complete understanding of our education problems stated in his appearance at the Manhattan Institute last fall (available on booktv.org by searching on E.D. Hirsch and selecting view video):
• Educators will never change on their own. They will have to be forced by outside forces [the public].
• Our education performance is characterized by low student achievement, ethnic inequality of results, low levels of civic commitment by graduates.
• Since the progressives gained control of the education schools and deployed graduates trained (brainwashed) in their technically incorrect methods, Sat verbal scores have declined from a level of about 543 in the late 60s to a steady level of about 505 from 1980 to now. He points out the excuses of the educators that this change is due to an increase in minorities taking the test. Hirsch asserts that this increase cannot explain the decline in white middle class student scores. He relates research by Harvard researcher, Christopher Jencks which showed that Iowa with 98% white, middle class students saw a large decrease in SAT verbal scores as well. The researcher concluded it was due to curricula less oriented to content, i.e. watered down and weak vocabulary. Hirsch looked at the College Board stats and found a constant pool of about 1 million test takers each year where those scoring over 600 on the verbal SAT had declined 56% and the students scoring over 650 had declined by 73% since the progressive content-free approach had been implemented.
• Achievement gaps have not closed for many decades and Hirsch states they cannot decrease until a content-rich curriculum replaces the current content-free, watered down approach. He points out that the current curricula and methods harm the minority kids the most.
• Hirsch decries the “monolithic intellectual monopoly of faulty ideas” as the biggest problem in education. Trying to convince educators of the need to change is impossible. They simply have been too well brainwashed in the faulty ideas to change from within. Change can only happen if they are forced to abandon their technically incorrect ideas.
• Richard Hofstadter, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book, Anti-intellectualism in American Life, called for more content and less process in the education of our kids. He concluded the fragmented courses and watered down texts had to go if our education performance was to be improved.
What must the public do to end the harm our education system is doing to our kids?
• Educate yourselves to understand the reality of our poor education performance. For example, in Colorado where achievement standards are low, the comparison to other districts and schools based on the Colorado testing only tells you how a school or district compares to other weak performing districts or schools. Also, national standards are weak compared to our global competitors.
• Realize that the 5 decade progressive-approach detour into the education wilderness has been a disaster for our kids and nation. See my previous blog about the Borg Education system to refresh your memory on the aims of the progressive education initiative. They are basically trying to produce a credulous (gullible) populace that will be ready to believe in “expert” leadership and “made up” crises used to motivate more expert control.
• Realize that productivity is a null word in education where costs per student have soared at about twice the rate of inflation for many decades while results have stayed mired in “unacceptable” territory.
• Realize that educators are not the experts in what works in educating kids. They are the “anti-experts.”
• Realize that education degrees and certifications only provide evidence that the person has learned the “party line,” not that they should be valued as educators.
• Expect elected representatives at all levels to put service to kids as the top priority, not protecting the jobs, pay or benefits of educators. This will be difficult because ed power groups support malleable candidates who will vote the way they want them to if they make large contributions to campaigns. That is, if educators are performing poorly and they are in results where it counts, they must show greatly improved performance to justify hanging on to their positions.
• Realize that improvement can’t be made without hardnosed and sustained battle with the education power groups. These include the education schools, the federal and state education bureaucracies, the teachers unions, the administrator state and national groups, the school board associations, in other words everyone involved in the current mainline education system. The public must take responsibility to force the needed changes. Only the public has enough clout to overcome the entrenched and harmful treatment of our kids.
• Inoculate yourself against the constant drumbeat that more money is needed to “fix” things in education and that any cut will harm the kids. This couldn’t be further from the truth. More money only continues to feed the unacceptable status quo. It doesn’t go toward helping kids at all. In fact, if a freeze of school based administration and a reduction of 10% a year in central administration salary budgets were put in place until results improved by, say 50%, the message would finally be received by the educators. We must stop feeding this monster that destroys and attenuates kids’ future prospects.
While I support charter schools and vouchers, they simply don’t have the leverage to fix the problem for enough kids. A lot of charters are started by mainline educators who want to put the em Fah sis on a different sil Ah bul. Many charters aren’t putting in content-rich curricula which are needed to fix our education problem. Some charters are doing a great job and more power to them but they alone cannot be the answer. They impact too few kids.
Thus, if you care about our kids or the future of our nation, it is urgent that you become involved. Expecting educators to do their job and begin to serve the kids at the required level is a fool’s errand without “our help” which demands they get on with it NOW.
While Joe worked as hard as ever he found his prices couldn’t compete with woodcutters who were employing better methods to cause improved productivity. Thus, with time his business began to decline as only those customers that he had locked in to long term contracts would buy his wood. As those multi-year contracts expired he knew his business would decline even more.
Joe formed a trade group of other woodcutters using axe and crosscut saw to lobby politicians and support those politicians for election who agreed to work to fix the price of wood products so that they didn’t have to compete. Because they were so frustrated, they even engaged in the occasional act of intimidation to make their point. They launched an advertising campaign extolling the virtue of their product and how their methods didn’t pollute the earth with chainsaw exhaust. They were careful to compare their productivity to others who used the same unproductive methods they favored. In this way they put the best face on their low performance. Their advertising theme was, “Would Paul Bunyan stoop to using a chainsaw?” They had some success over time but as more and more states enacted laws permitting free choice in the buying of wood products, the economic prospects for Joe and his fellow trade group members declined steadily.
Now to Education
Is education different than Joe and his axe and crosscut saw friends? Not at all. The educator ranks are working as hard as Joe and his fellow woodcutters to preserve unproductive processes. They fear anything that doesn’t conform to the scientifically incorrect content they learned in education school which is continually reinforced by professional development classes and faulty research.
The situation in education is worse than Joe’s though. Joe’s actions are impacting his own long term viability as a woodcutter. The educators’ actions are harming their own credibility and long term prospects but they also are harming generations of kids who are ill prepared to compete in the increasingly competitive global environment. The experienced educators are making the bet that they can outlast criticism long enough to retire before they have to change, prioritizing their own comfort over the welfare of the kids. Thus, there is a strong “preserve the status quo at all costs” ethic at work in our school districts.
E.D. Hirsch whom I consider to be the person with the most complete understanding of our education problems stated in his appearance at the Manhattan Institute last fall (available on booktv.org by searching on E.D. Hirsch and selecting view video):
• Educators will never change on their own. They will have to be forced by outside forces [the public].
• Our education performance is characterized by low student achievement, ethnic inequality of results, low levels of civic commitment by graduates.
• Since the progressives gained control of the education schools and deployed graduates trained (brainwashed) in their technically incorrect methods, Sat verbal scores have declined from a level of about 543 in the late 60s to a steady level of about 505 from 1980 to now. He points out the excuses of the educators that this change is due to an increase in minorities taking the test. Hirsch asserts that this increase cannot explain the decline in white middle class student scores. He relates research by Harvard researcher, Christopher Jencks which showed that Iowa with 98% white, middle class students saw a large decrease in SAT verbal scores as well. The researcher concluded it was due to curricula less oriented to content, i.e. watered down and weak vocabulary. Hirsch looked at the College Board stats and found a constant pool of about 1 million test takers each year where those scoring over 600 on the verbal SAT had declined 56% and the students scoring over 650 had declined by 73% since the progressive content-free approach had been implemented.
• Achievement gaps have not closed for many decades and Hirsch states they cannot decrease until a content-rich curriculum replaces the current content-free, watered down approach. He points out that the current curricula and methods harm the minority kids the most.
• Hirsch decries the “monolithic intellectual monopoly of faulty ideas” as the biggest problem in education. Trying to convince educators of the need to change is impossible. They simply have been too well brainwashed in the faulty ideas to change from within. Change can only happen if they are forced to abandon their technically incorrect ideas.
• Richard Hofstadter, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book, Anti-intellectualism in American Life, called for more content and less process in the education of our kids. He concluded the fragmented courses and watered down texts had to go if our education performance was to be improved.
What must the public do to end the harm our education system is doing to our kids?
• Educate yourselves to understand the reality of our poor education performance. For example, in Colorado where achievement standards are low, the comparison to other districts and schools based on the Colorado testing only tells you how a school or district compares to other weak performing districts or schools. Also, national standards are weak compared to our global competitors.
• Realize that the 5 decade progressive-approach detour into the education wilderness has been a disaster for our kids and nation. See my previous blog about the Borg Education system to refresh your memory on the aims of the progressive education initiative. They are basically trying to produce a credulous (gullible) populace that will be ready to believe in “expert” leadership and “made up” crises used to motivate more expert control.
• Realize that productivity is a null word in education where costs per student have soared at about twice the rate of inflation for many decades while results have stayed mired in “unacceptable” territory.
• Realize that educators are not the experts in what works in educating kids. They are the “anti-experts.”
• Realize that education degrees and certifications only provide evidence that the person has learned the “party line,” not that they should be valued as educators.
• Expect elected representatives at all levels to put service to kids as the top priority, not protecting the jobs, pay or benefits of educators. This will be difficult because ed power groups support malleable candidates who will vote the way they want them to if they make large contributions to campaigns. That is, if educators are performing poorly and they are in results where it counts, they must show greatly improved performance to justify hanging on to their positions.
• Realize that improvement can’t be made without hardnosed and sustained battle with the education power groups. These include the education schools, the federal and state education bureaucracies, the teachers unions, the administrator state and national groups, the school board associations, in other words everyone involved in the current mainline education system. The public must take responsibility to force the needed changes. Only the public has enough clout to overcome the entrenched and harmful treatment of our kids.
• Inoculate yourself against the constant drumbeat that more money is needed to “fix” things in education and that any cut will harm the kids. This couldn’t be further from the truth. More money only continues to feed the unacceptable status quo. It doesn’t go toward helping kids at all. In fact, if a freeze of school based administration and a reduction of 10% a year in central administration salary budgets were put in place until results improved by, say 50%, the message would finally be received by the educators. We must stop feeding this monster that destroys and attenuates kids’ future prospects.
While I support charter schools and vouchers, they simply don’t have the leverage to fix the problem for enough kids. A lot of charters are started by mainline educators who want to put the em Fah sis on a different sil Ah bul. Many charters aren’t putting in content-rich curricula which are needed to fix our education problem. Some charters are doing a great job and more power to them but they alone cannot be the answer. They impact too few kids.
Thus, if you care about our kids or the future of our nation, it is urgent that you become involved. Expecting educators to do their job and begin to serve the kids at the required level is a fool’s errand without “our help” which demands they get on with it NOW.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Ruts and Ladders
Quality Control, the Vital Missing Ingredient in Education
As mentioned in the last blog post, Public Action Required, educators have demonstrated the ability over and over to ignore legal requirements thus avoiding facing up to the needed change in their performance to benefit our kids. The example given in that post of how they manage to continue using Whole Language methods in spite of the NCLB requirement that if you want federal education money you must use SBRR programs is hardly unique. They do this by asserting that Whole Language methods do comply with SBRR (even though they definitely do not) and so continue to harm our kids. How do they get away with it? They get away with it because our education system is running “open loop.” That is, there is no quality control process to close the loop. Oh, the federal and state departments of education do many audits but they are ineffective, “going through the motions” affairs done by people who have been trained in the same false doctrine as all educators. They also have been taught that conflict is bad and that suppressing the truth is ok if it creates a sense of harmony. In this sort of arrangement, there is no concern for how the kids are being served only for maintaining harmony at all cost. This can’t be argued because the results betray the truth to anyone willing to look.
This is not to say that school districts are not competent at managing their spending to be in line with their budgets. They generally are. However, the problem is that the resources are not spent wisely. That is, the inertia in the system favors the “we’ve always done it this way” status quo, instead of prioritizing the areas that would really bring about the massive improvement that is needed and possible. Oh, there is lots of spending on “new sounding” initiatives, but the underlying foundational things that need changing are not addressed. It is creating a façade of activity, but productivity measures results per unit input and the results never really change while the input costs have risen dramatically for decades. Thus, productivity of the education fiefdom has declined precipitously over that time. This entrenched “rut habit” harms kids greatly because while all, even the educators, know that improvement is called for, no one is acquiring ladders to climb out of the rut allowing better performance.
Unlike other government funded activities in which the quality function takes the form of an inspector general, education has no such entity. Part of the problem is that control over education is spread out between federal, state and local political venues. In reality this gives the school districts, education schools, curriculum providers, and so-called education researchers and curriculum developers ample room to continue avoiding accountability.
Any quality function must have independence so that they can be objective about the performance of the organization which they are tasked to evaluate. Thus, the reporting relationship at both a district and state level would require a direct reporting relationship to the appropriate board of education. Only in this way could the truth of performance be reported without fear of reprisal. In actual practice this reporting relationship would foster a cooperative effort with administrators over time to be able to “keep the board out of most issues.” This would allow much faster resolution of performance problems which are currently swept under the rug or ignored.
What would be the benefits of a properly conceived quality function in K-12 education?
• Improved accountability--this would stimulate much better performance over time. Problems are only given priority if they are highlighted within the organization. That does not happen in any productive way in education. Oh, achievement test results are there but there is no objective analysis of the causes of poor performance and their priority for solution. A quality function would facilitate for the first time in education the identification, prioritization and solving of biggest drags on performance first. There is no real discipline in education so that problems are not faced and solved. There is no penalty for poor work. There is no accountability.
• Non-compliance to legal requirements would be spotted early and corrected. This would prevent the problems as were discussed in the previous blog post where Whole Language was allowed to continue harming kids in spite of the legal requirement for SBRR reading programs. In the current state of education there is no closed loop to correct such violations or ideally prevent them from happening in the first place.
• Much better staff morale and satisfaction. No one wants to perform badly but in the current top-down management style, change is prevented even though it is desperately needed. Staff members are not allowed to participate in any meaningful way in problem identification and solutions. People have higher self-esteem and job satisfaction when they know they are doing a really good job. Today’s educator self-esteem is based on trying to believe that poor performance is really good performance. You can’t fool people and you certainly can’t lie to yourself without it negatively affecting your real self-esteem.
• It would stimulate improved leadership performance. This is because leaders would have to lead real change to solve the problems caught by the quality function. The days of ignoring problems and sweeping them under the carpet would be gone forever. Shining the light of reality on the situation would make upgrading leadership skill and knowledge unavoidable.
• Best of all, there would finally be an advocate for the kids with real power to stimulate urgency in pursuing improved performance.
Of course, now in a time of tight education budgets, the excuse will be, “We can’t afford to implement a new quality control function. I can guarantee you that a QC function well done would pay for itself many times over. Philip Crosby in his book Quality is Free points out that a quality function more than pays for itself by eliminating waste and the cost of doing things wrong. It would force districts to face the fact that they are wasting huge amounts of resources on counterproductive efforts. The people are working hard doing the wrong things. This is especially true of Central Office administration functions. When a new function is added it has a life of its own even after it is obvious that it is not providing any benefit. District leaders would rather continue doing a wrong, counterproductive and worthless function than eliminate it and the positions that go with it. That might cause stress and unpleasantness, something that the weak and overpaid leaders in education do not think they should have to deal with even though kids are being harmed.
And yet, by judiciously using hiring freezes and expecting staff to be flexible in doing a job that needs doing as opposed to one that is not worth doing, the situation could be corrected relatively quickly through attrition. If people chose to not be flexible then they would have the opportunity to seek employment elsewhere. Our kids are not served by continuing to pay a price in money and time for activities of no value.
As mentioned in the last blog post, Public Action Required, educators have demonstrated the ability over and over to ignore legal requirements thus avoiding facing up to the needed change in their performance to benefit our kids. The example given in that post of how they manage to continue using Whole Language methods in spite of the NCLB requirement that if you want federal education money you must use SBRR programs is hardly unique. They do this by asserting that Whole Language methods do comply with SBRR (even though they definitely do not) and so continue to harm our kids. How do they get away with it? They get away with it because our education system is running “open loop.” That is, there is no quality control process to close the loop. Oh, the federal and state departments of education do many audits but they are ineffective, “going through the motions” affairs done by people who have been trained in the same false doctrine as all educators. They also have been taught that conflict is bad and that suppressing the truth is ok if it creates a sense of harmony. In this sort of arrangement, there is no concern for how the kids are being served only for maintaining harmony at all cost. This can’t be argued because the results betray the truth to anyone willing to look.
This is not to say that school districts are not competent at managing their spending to be in line with their budgets. They generally are. However, the problem is that the resources are not spent wisely. That is, the inertia in the system favors the “we’ve always done it this way” status quo, instead of prioritizing the areas that would really bring about the massive improvement that is needed and possible. Oh, there is lots of spending on “new sounding” initiatives, but the underlying foundational things that need changing are not addressed. It is creating a façade of activity, but productivity measures results per unit input and the results never really change while the input costs have risen dramatically for decades. Thus, productivity of the education fiefdom has declined precipitously over that time. This entrenched “rut habit” harms kids greatly because while all, even the educators, know that improvement is called for, no one is acquiring ladders to climb out of the rut allowing better performance.
Unlike other government funded activities in which the quality function takes the form of an inspector general, education has no such entity. Part of the problem is that control over education is spread out between federal, state and local political venues. In reality this gives the school districts, education schools, curriculum providers, and so-called education researchers and curriculum developers ample room to continue avoiding accountability.
Any quality function must have independence so that they can be objective about the performance of the organization which they are tasked to evaluate. Thus, the reporting relationship at both a district and state level would require a direct reporting relationship to the appropriate board of education. Only in this way could the truth of performance be reported without fear of reprisal. In actual practice this reporting relationship would foster a cooperative effort with administrators over time to be able to “keep the board out of most issues.” This would allow much faster resolution of performance problems which are currently swept under the rug or ignored.
What would be the benefits of a properly conceived quality function in K-12 education?
• Improved accountability--this would stimulate much better performance over time. Problems are only given priority if they are highlighted within the organization. That does not happen in any productive way in education. Oh, achievement test results are there but there is no objective analysis of the causes of poor performance and their priority for solution. A quality function would facilitate for the first time in education the identification, prioritization and solving of biggest drags on performance first. There is no real discipline in education so that problems are not faced and solved. There is no penalty for poor work. There is no accountability.
• Non-compliance to legal requirements would be spotted early and corrected. This would prevent the problems as were discussed in the previous blog post where Whole Language was allowed to continue harming kids in spite of the legal requirement for SBRR reading programs. In the current state of education there is no closed loop to correct such violations or ideally prevent them from happening in the first place.
• Much better staff morale and satisfaction. No one wants to perform badly but in the current top-down management style, change is prevented even though it is desperately needed. Staff members are not allowed to participate in any meaningful way in problem identification and solutions. People have higher self-esteem and job satisfaction when they know they are doing a really good job. Today’s educator self-esteem is based on trying to believe that poor performance is really good performance. You can’t fool people and you certainly can’t lie to yourself without it negatively affecting your real self-esteem.
• It would stimulate improved leadership performance. This is because leaders would have to lead real change to solve the problems caught by the quality function. The days of ignoring problems and sweeping them under the carpet would be gone forever. Shining the light of reality on the situation would make upgrading leadership skill and knowledge unavoidable.
• Best of all, there would finally be an advocate for the kids with real power to stimulate urgency in pursuing improved performance.
Of course, now in a time of tight education budgets, the excuse will be, “We can’t afford to implement a new quality control function. I can guarantee you that a QC function well done would pay for itself many times over. Philip Crosby in his book Quality is Free points out that a quality function more than pays for itself by eliminating waste and the cost of doing things wrong. It would force districts to face the fact that they are wasting huge amounts of resources on counterproductive efforts. The people are working hard doing the wrong things. This is especially true of Central Office administration functions. When a new function is added it has a life of its own even after it is obvious that it is not providing any benefit. District leaders would rather continue doing a wrong, counterproductive and worthless function than eliminate it and the positions that go with it. That might cause stress and unpleasantness, something that the weak and overpaid leaders in education do not think they should have to deal with even though kids are being harmed.
And yet, by judiciously using hiring freezes and expecting staff to be flexible in doing a job that needs doing as opposed to one that is not worth doing, the situation could be corrected relatively quickly through attrition. If people chose to not be flexible then they would have the opportunity to seek employment elsewhere. Our kids are not served by continuing to pay a price in money and time for activities of no value.
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