Of Cars and Schools

(I changed the title of this blog from Fuel Efficient Muscle Cars to the current title because I had so many hits from car shoppers seeking a fuel efficient muscle car.  LOL.  Perhaps this title will clear the air.  BW, 7/22/13)

I loved my 1974 Z-28 Camaro.  It was a great car.  I was single, had just started teaching, and sold my old Volkswagen Beetle to buy the Camaro.  It was hot.  I got about 9 miles per gallon, it was dark blue with deeply tinted T-tops, and with the twin pipes and 4 barrel carburetor you could hear me coming from miles away.  Gas cost 34¢ per gallon.  I will not likely ever own another such car.

I should be driving a Prius, or a Leaf, or a Volt or some other such fuel efficient vehicle.  Yes, they cost more, but they do not cost more than the truck I am driving.  Even so, I just can’t picture myself (even my old self) in such a buggy.  I still see me in Z-28, or a Vette, or a Mustang GT, or something fun to drive, spirited, fast, high performing.  I even miss my MG. 

As the price of new vehicles goes up, the price of gas goes up, and the wide array of available cars increases, my vehicle selection changes.  What I would like is a fuel efficient muscle car.  Something that gets about 40+ miles per gallon, is hot, fast, quick, nimble and loaded with creature comforts for less than $20,000.  Sound reasonable?  Sound possible?

We get it that we can’t be both fuel efficient and high performing when it comes to cars.  Why is that so hard to get when it comes to schools?

We are asked to perform to ever higher standards, be ever more efficient, and spend less and less money.  You should be screaming.  There is no fuel efficient muscle car.  There is no cheap way to be a high performing school district.  Tell our legislators that we cannot go faster and farther with less gas and better mileage. 

And you do not improve performance with more gauges on the dashboard.

Sacrifice and Celebration

Palm Sunday and it is time for a reflective, descriptive piece.  I’ve been thinking about sacrifice and celebration. 

School systems function in the present, are future oriented, and mindful of the past.  They are highly complex social and political organizations devoted almost exclusively to human interaction and qualitative assessment.  The event horizon for tangible professional assessment of the quality of their processes and products is almost an entire generation away.  The practical horizon for public assessment of their processes and products is daily.  These systems have virtually no organized political or economic clout, though their subtle impact on every community is dramatic and not fully understood until the impact is negative.  At the same time, there is likely no system that is more critical to the quality of life of this nation than the public school system.

There's more.

School systems function in the present.  They are subject to financial constraints and accountability.  They are limited by time and resources.  They cannot offer opportunities to young people that cannot be realized due to facility, personnel and budgetary limitations.  School systems teach the kids who walk in the door, and parents send the best kids they have to school.  School systems hire the best staff they can, but each teacher can only teach kids to his or her own highest professional potential.  And, principals can both manage and lead schools to their own highest potential.  Though every school system in the nation would love to be able to equip all staff and students with the most modern technology, offer a wide array of support systems for students who fail to meet expectations or arrive at school physically, emotionally, or economically ill, offer a wide array of learning opportunities in emerging enterprises, and a wide array of extra and co-curricular activities, it quite simply cannot be done by all systems everywhere.  What each system does is the result of the tension between available resources, local values and state and federal expectations and requirements.  Recently, that has felt more and more like sacrifice.

School systems are future oriented.  From pre-kindergarten programs through high school graduation the implicit goal of public education is to prepare students to have both an economically productive life and function as member of a democratic society.  Students must learn how to behave in organizations, they must learn self-discipline, they must learn how to learn, and they must demonstrate successful acquisition of those skills via a variety of measurement tools.  The true measurement of the success of the system is the eventual future success of each of the students.  Graduating a flock of seniors who have demonstrated mastery on multiple years of standardized tests in multiple content areas means little if the prison population increases, the number of patents issued decreases, the number of participants in elections decreases, the number of citizens in need of government subsidy increases, and the general productivity and outlook of the nation declines.  These are the important measures and they are not quantitatively available for years to come.  When they do come, they are real celebrations.

School systems are mindful of the past.  Every adult carries an image of what school should be based upon their own childhood experiences.  Positive experiences garner ardent support for the programs and processes that formed the context of that experience.  Negative experiences predispose adults to be suspicious of programs and processes that formed the context of those experiences.  Therefore, the programs and processes that tend to engender the most support from the adults in the community surround co and extra-curricular programs.  Athletics, home economics, cheerleading, Ag, Band, etc., are subject to passionate defense by adults even if the resources required to continue to implement those programs make little sense in a future oriented organization.  Curriculum and instructional decision making are likewise difficult areas to alter though they are most in need of new structures and expectations.  The math and science and social studies and language arts taught to the current adult generation are not the same subjects needed for the next and future generation of adults.  It is difficult for parents and communities to support new curriculum and instruction when they do not know what they do not know.  Most seem to recognize that schools must change programs, practices and procedures to prepare kids for the future, but seldom consider abandoning practices, programs and procedures of the past.  The school house itself has changed little in the past two hundred years and is ill suited for nurturing critical thinking, creative thinking, problem-solving, and information managing skills.

Schools are highly complex social organizations.  School systems do not have a tangible product.  They are staffed by hundreds and thousands of adults who are charged with the safety, health and improvement of thousands and millions of children.  There is no widget to weigh at the end of the day.  It is the mindset, values, culture and climate of the adults in the school and the parents of the children in the school that have a much more dramatic impact on the school day in and day out than any instructional program or process.  Schools operate on a daily basis much more like churches than like the military, or corporations, or retail outlets, or universities or amusement parks, or prisons.  If the adults feel disengaged then the system is in trouble.  If the adults feel undervalued, the system is in trouble.  If the adults do not connect with the students the system is in trouble.  If the school is structured to serve a mostly homogeneous population then there is much more likelihood of success.  The more diverse the culture and the ethnicity of the students and staff the more challenging it becomes to maintain a positive, productive, engaged climate in the school house.

Schools are highly complex political organizations.  Because schools do not produce tangible products and because resources are so scarce, many within the walls of the schools believe decisions are made for political rather than instructional reasons.  The system can be perceived as operating on “Who you know” not “What you know.”  Because school systems are funded by tax dollars every patron of the system perceives they should be doing more with less and every decision by a school board to spend money is scrutinized.  Because school systems are dependent on both state and federal dollars as well, they must comply with mandates from state capitols and Washington D.C., where policy makers are subjected to lobbying by virtually every group who has a solution that involves schools.  A school leader, that is superintendents and school boards, have the least influence in these settings.  Locally, groups may form to oust specific personnel or defend the continuation of a program.  School leadership must deal with the political realities of every decision they make and those realities stretch from the teachers lounge, the local coffee shop, to the state capitol and the seat of the national government.  Mandates with programmatic and procedural strings attached to funding are the most recent iteration of school improvement efforts.  The net effect of such mandates by governments on school professionals is demeaning, the implication is improve the performance of children by fiat, and perform these services for this dollar amount.

Schools are devoted to human interaction and qualitative assessment.  Ask a student how his or her day was and the answer will not be, “I responded correctly to 90% of the verbal queries posed to me in class, I consumed 100% of my lunch, I turned in 100% of my homework assignments, and I am at zero risk of dropping out of school tomorrow.”  The answer will be qualitative and will be based on human interaction:  “Johnny and I made up today.  Sally and Rachel are having a fight.  Ms. Jones was in a bad mood today.  Sammy gets to start Friday night, not me.”  Kids will report on the emotional impact of human interaction.  Adults are much the same.  A school building houses purposeful adults paid to work together to accomplish a mission with a swarming mass of young people who tend to be present only because they are required to be and whose mission is very different than the adults.  This inherent conflict in a compressed space leads to daily qualitative assessment by staff, kids and parents about the effectiveness of the school.  Kids may leave “happy” but unschooled and the community is at peace.  Kids may leave stressed and pressed and the community is aroused, but the learning is enhanced.  It is the daily qualitative assessment that forms public perception about the quality of schools, not the annual statistical report in the newspaper.

The event horizon for tangible professional assessment of the quality of a school’s processes and products is almost an entire generation away.  The notion that we can somehow assess whether public schools are promoting “college readiness” is absurd.  At best, we could perhaps talk to recent college graduates and ask what it was that public schools did to prepare them for college, or talk to those who either did not attend college or dropped out and seek to discover why.  Even if we found data that would inform instruction, it would be too late.  Public schools are not clairvoyant.  Those of us in schools have no idea what the work force or the world will be like in 20 years, what information or skills or processes will be needed.  We do know that teaching kids how to teach themselves, how to learn, how to problem solve, how to be critical thinkers, how to collaborate will be essential processes.  Yet, these skills are diminished in an environment based on standardized test preparation.  Teachers know that students will return years after they have left the classroom to thank them for the lessons learned and the attention given.  Typically, teachers are surprised by which students do so.  The event horizon of a teacher’s success is years away, not months away on a bubble sheet.

The practical horizon for public assessment of the processes and products of public schools is daily.  There is not a day in a public school where someone, adult or child, makes an error.  There is not a day in a public school where someone, adult or child, fails to perform at an expected level.  Because it is an intensely human enterprise, public education is inherently flawed by the humanity housed within.  A child is tardy because parents are running late, a child is pushed around on a playground and the adult was not watching, a child fails to earn an award or grade or starting position envisioned by a parent, a coach fails to lead a team to victory, a principal fails to notice a dress code violation, a student sneaks off to smoke a cigarette or joint unmonitored and unmissed, an adult stressed at home dumps emotional vitriol at school.  Any of these events and many, many more can trigger uproar and demands for heads to roll.  In tragic cases of serious injury or death the demand for blame and consequence exceed the boundary of the system.  Regardless, as glitches occur, and they always will, local leaders will look for lessons learned and people to blame.  It can happen any day regardless of the long term mission horizon for the school system.  On those occasions, the decision making can be more like “As the Knee Jerks” than, “As the World Turns.”  And on those occasions, public assessment of a school system may become fixed for years to come regardless of any other measure.

Public school systems have virtually no organized political or economic clout, though their subtle impact on every community is dramatic and not fully understood until the impact is negative.  In most communities, the school system is the largest employer.  In most communities, there is no other enterprise with more degreed and certified professionals than the school.  In most communities, there is no other food service that serves more meals and likely no other transportation service that moves more humans.  The payroll of a school system, not to mention the purchase of goods and services, has a huge economic impact on every community.  The public perception of the schools impacts the property values of homes and businesses.  Given all of this and more, one would think that schools dramatically shape political and economic decision making in any given region or state.  But we do not.  We are strictly forbidden by policy and law from entering the political arena even though our operations, programs, processes and funding are all determined by elected officials.  Recent elections in Texas demonstrate that even folks who are the payroll of public schools most likely voted for candidates sworn to reduce the funding and increase the accountability of public schools.  Poor performance of the school, however, that results in threatened closures, or talk of consolidation with another school system will arouse the passion of defiant citizens who will fight to maintain their own systems, realizing all too late that the fate of the local community is vitally connected to the fate of the public schools.

So what?

First, we must make decisions about public schools in a broader context with an eye to an uncertain future.  We cannot make decisions based on either standardized tests this year, a recently promoted “silver bullet” program, or the knee jerk reactions to a local issue.  We must promote funding that is disconnected from popular politics and prescripted programs.  We must find ways to share with our patrons that learning is a community responsibility.

Second, unless our goal is to provide cheap labor for the world, we must educate our children.  All our children.  There will never be enough charter schools, private schools or homeschoolers to provide the leadership for the next generation.  It must come from the public schools.  I would argue that any resource re-directed from public schools to some other option is a step toward promoting increasing the wealth of the few while converting the context of America to a second world or third world position. 

And finally, we must respect and honor our public schools and the adults therein.  Perhaps you had a bad experience in public schools.  I am sorry.  Perhaps you are concerned that your child will have a bad experience in a public school, or come in contact with children and ideas that you do not like.  I am sorry.  Perhaps you are convinced that public schools are wasteful governmental boondoggles that need to be dramatically reduced in funding to save your tax dollars.  I am sorry.  Public schools are the very first line of national defense.  Without education, we are prone to make terrible decisions as a nation and our productivity will decline.  The adults who show up at your schools tomorrow are dedicated folks.  They are not there to pick on your kids or harm your kids or hurt your kids’ feelings.  They are there for the future of your kids.  Support them locally, state-wide and nationally. 

How?  If you are a parent know that we are doing absolutely the best we know to do.  If we mess up we are truly sorry.  If we ask too much, we are not sorry.  If your child fails to get something you hoped he or she would get, we are sorry, but we will not change the outcome.  If you are a voter know that we are payroll intensive.  We serve children and even now they outnumber us tremendously.  We could do better with more staff, more resources, and better facilities.  We cannot do better with less.  We will not do better because the tests get harder.  If you are a voter, vote.  If you are over the age of 18 and are not voter, then get registered and vote.  Be mindful of the policies the candidates endorse regarding public schools.  Please know that for the public schools to provide an education to every child is absolutely in our best national interest.

Public schools, the kids and adults therein, are making sacrifices.  Let’s ensure they are the right ones.  Kids and adults in public schools have much to celebrate.  Join them and support them.

Thanks.  Have a wonderful Holy Week.